3Įven taking into account Dalí’s view of warfare as ‘natural history’, there is remarkably little in Autumnal Cannibalism that firmly connects it to a war narrative beyond, perchance, the inclusion of boiled beans, which also figure prominently in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans – Premonition of Civil War. 2 In fact, this is a slightly abbreviated version of a lengthier statement, later published in Descharnes’ Dalí, l'oeuvre et l'homme, in which the artist added provocatively that his view of the Spanish Civil War as a ‘phenomenon of natural history’ was opposed to Picasso, ‘who considered it a political phenomenon’. Given Dalí’s self-imposed distance from the Civil War, it is perhaps unsurprising that Autumnal Cannibalism appears cold towards the conflict Dalí later illuminated this perspective in conversation with Robert Descharnes during their collaboration on the book Dalí de Gala, saying of Autumnal Cannibalism, ‘Ces êtres ibériques, s’entre-dévorant en automne, expriment le pathos de la guerre civile considéree comme un phénomène d’histoire naturelle’ (These Iberian creatures, devouring each other in autumn, symbolise the pathos of civil war seen as a phenomenon of natural history). Both factions were committing atrocities, and so Dalí refused to take sides – neutrality that disgusted the other Surrealists, who had been following the plight of the Frente Popular since 1931 and zealously supported the Republican Left. ![]() Here, he claimed publically to be more or less indifferent to its outcome: the Nationalists assassinated his dear friend Federico Garcia Lorca, he admitted, but the Republicans had murdered nearly every bourgeois citizen in his hometown of Cadaqués (and would later imprison his sister, Ana María). Unlike Picasso or even his fellow Catalan Joan Miró, Dalí adopted a very passive attitude towards the conflict, following its events from the safety of London. Its relative tranquillity suggests that Dalí’s position on the Spanish Civil War was not one of condemnation, or even partiality. ![]() Whereas his other great war work, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans – Premonition of Civil War 1936 (Philadelphia Museum of Art), presents a figure horrifically tearing itself apart as a powerful metaphor for civil war, Autumnal Cannibalism is far more delicate, offering an almost amorous situation of consensual consumption. It has been widely speculated that Autumnal Cannibalism reflects Dalí’s views on the Spanish Civil War, which had erupted in July 1936, the year the painting was executed. Perhaps he was attracted to autumn’s poetic suggestion of melancholy, though as Jennifer Mundy has written, ‘autumnal’ may simply denote the season in which the pictures were painted: Autumnal Cannibalism, for instance, was not listed among the works shown in Dalí’s solo exhibition at Alex Reid & Lefevre Gallery, London during the summer of 1936, but was exhibited for the first time at the Julien Levy Gallery, New York that December, suggesting it may indeed have been painted during the autumn. Dalí executed a handful of paintings prior to 1936 that also referenced autumn in their titles, including Materialisation of Autumn (… at Seven it’s Already Dark) c.1934 (whereabouts unknown) and Autumn Puzzle 1935 (The Salvador Dalí Museum, St. A cut of (presumably raw) meat rests on the masculine figure’s head, providing a precarious pedestal for a conspicuous golden apple – a sure reference to the legend of the Swiss patriot William Tell, whose story of having to shoot an arrow at an apple on his own son’s head moved Dalí to read it in Freudian terms as a son being ‘castrated’ by a dominant father-figure. ![]() Dalí positions the two beings on top of a chest of drawers littered with cutlery and foodstuffs. ![]() Although the characters lack any distinguishable facial features, they are nonetheless sexualised: the male (on the right) dips his spoon into his partner’s right breast, while the woman (on the left) gracefully reaches around her companion to cut the flesh that is actually her own elongated left breast thrown over the male’s shoulder. The setting for the scene is the plain of Empordà, the region of Catalonia where the artist was born. Matthew Gale (ed.), Dalí & Film, exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London 2007, p.10.Īutumnal Cannibalism depicts two interconnected figures within a scenic landscape, delicately devouring one another with disconcerting civility.
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