THE MEANING BEHIND DALIS "THE LOBTER TELEPHONE"

“The Lobster Telephone”, completed in 1936- Tate, London.

The piece is one of the best-known icons of the 20th-Century. A collaboration between Dali and his patron and co-creator, Edward James, the telephone emerged from a conjunction between the idea of the surrealist object, which Dali had launched in 1931, and the exploration of interior design as a new and creative means of expressing Surrealist ideals. ‘Lobster telephone’ is made from the conjunction of items not normally associated with each other, resulting in something both playful and menacing. Dali believed that such objects could reveal the secret desires of the unconscious. Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations fro Dali. In the piece, the crustaceans tail, where its sexual parts are located, is directly placed over the mouthpiece. Dali combines the ready made and real life, using materials such as steel, plastic, rubber, resin ad paper. Dali suggested that James fill his rooms with what he called ‘The Surrealist object- one that is absolutely useless from the practical and rational point of view, created wholly for the purpose of materialising in a fetish way, with the maximum of tangible reality, ideas and fantasies having a delirious character.’ Dali wrote of Lobsters and telephones in his book ’The Secret Life,’ demanding to know why, when he asked for a grilled lobster in a restaurant , he was never presented with a boiled telephone. The piece is a composite of an ordinary working telephoned a lobster made of plaster. Dali created this object with the specific intention of aligning the lobsters genitalia with the end of the phone into which one would speak, thus aligning the speakers mouth with the lobsters genitalia. These were an example of sexual references through set, but represented through food items. This is a surrealist interpretation and therefore, associates the work with surrealism. Dali promoted the idea of the Surrealist object in the early 1930’s , of which this is a classic example. The surrealists valued the mysterious and provocative effect of such unexpected conjunctions, as mentioned before, Dali in particular believed that objects could rival the secret desires of the unconscious. “Lobster telephone” takes the ready-made and makes everyday objects useless and this piece is the best and ionic example of Dali’s bizarre juxtapositions and is therefore associated with the surrealist movement.