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"One of Dali's most Freudian paintings. Indeed, the elderly gentleman helping the lady in distress seems to be Freud himself, borrowed from [Max] Ernst's Pietà or Revolution by Night." (Caption); "Illumined Pleasures is one Dali's works that most lends itself to Freudian analysis. Indeed, it even appears that the elderly gentleman exquisitely assisting the frenzied female with bloodied hands in the foreground is none other than Freud himself, his representation here deriving from Max Ernst's depiction of the founder of psychoanalysis in Pietà or Revolution by Night, which, since it belonged to Éluard, Dali may well have admired in Paris. […] With its borrowings from De Chirico (the picture-within-a-picture boxes, the threatening shadows, the 'cephalic biomorph' with a toupee near the horizon), Illumined Pleasures would need a monograph to itself. Here we can only consider it briefly. […] Who is the woman being helped by the Freud-figure in the foreground? It seems obvious that there is an allusion to Gala as Venus rising from the waves - the face, with its long nose, calls her to mind immediately. The body, however, with its full breasts, is much heavier than hers. Perhaps the figure is a fusion of Dali's mother and Gala. Her bloodied hands show that she has just committed a terrible act, presumably with the knife represented on the left, held by a female hand which a male one is restraining. Again, from the Freudian point of view there can be no doubt about what act has been perpetrated: castration. The supposition is reinforced by the fact that, as Dawn Ades has pointed out, the shadow in the center foreground of the picture, cast by a person out of frame, is identical to that thrown by the father figure on whose shoulder the castrated son is leaning in The Lugubrious Game. The scene reminds one, finally, of Dali's affirmation, in The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus, to the effect that, in the early stages of their relationship, Gala took the place of the threatening mother and enabled him gradually to overcome his panic fear of sexual intercourse. […] Further allusions to the family come in the group on top of the central panel, where we find Dali, once again in the guise of a jug, accompanied this time by his sister similarly depicted. The lion, habitually a symbol of sexual desire in the paintings of these months, here probably also represents Dalí Cusí, the angry father. It is hardly the snapshot of a happy family group. […] And what of the personage, distinctly effeminate in appearance, who stands with his head against the right of the central panel? He appears to be a combination of Peeping Tom and the ubiquitous ashamed figure of the paintings of this period, Dali having cleverly arranged a double image so that the shadow of his head is also a hole in the wall. The hand seems to be lightly spattered with blood, the emblematic color of guilt as of blushful shame. The hint, once again, is surely that the figure is engaged in masturbatory activity. […] As for the bevy of cyclists in the box on the right, the stones they are carrying on their heads, according to Dali, represent magnified versions of the pebbles he used to enjoy gathering on the little beach of Confitera, across the bay from their house in Cadaqués. Confitera means 'Confectionist' (female variety), and the pebbles, which presumably gave the beach its name, looked like sugared almonds. They recur in other paintings of the period, and Dali said that for him they symbolized 'solidified desire'. Perhaps, therefore, the cyclists are pedaling in search of sexual fulfillment. (Excerpt, pp.284-285) |
