Lobster Telephone

Material Used: Painted plaster and mixed media
Size: 6 × 12 × 6 2/3 inches
The Dali Museum, St Petersburg

The Lobster Telephone is one of Dali’s most sardonic and unsettling creations. The simple placement of two unrelated objects together – a lobster on a traditional phone receiver – turns the everyday device into something surreal, making it strange but fascinating.

This surreal object also can be seen as Dali’s salute to Vincent van Gogh, the 19th century painter, who came to symbolize the mad artist by cutting off part of his ear to prove his love to a woman. Dali liked to think of himself as the mad artist of the 20th century, proclaiming,”The only difference between a madman and myself is that I am not mad!”