Cat. no. OE
25

Le veston aphrodisiaque

The Aphrodisiac Jacket

Aphrodisiac Jacket

The Aphrodisiac Jacket

Cat. no. OE 25

The Aphrodisiac Jacket

1936

Description

Unique Original Work
Date:
1936
Technique:
Assemblage
Dimensions:
Unknown
Location:
Unknown
Description:
Dalí classed this Surrealist object in the ‘thinking machine’ category and described it in his article ‘Honneur à l’objet’ in the following terms: ‘Tuxedo jacket covered with liqueur glasses containing peppermint, a liqueur endowed, it seems, with mildly aphrodisiac virtues. This jacket has the arithmetic advantage of the paranoiac-critical number games and combinations that can be evoked by the anthropomorphic situation of the glasses. The myth of Saint Sebastian offers us a similar case: objectivable and measurable pain thanks to the number and position of the arrows: the pain felt by Saint Sebastian can be evaluated. The aphrodisiac jacket is included in the category of “thinking machines”. It may be worn for outings on evenings meteorologically calm but pregnant with human emotion, provided that the person wearing it be transported in a very powerful machine travelling very slowly (in order not to upset the liqueurs)’. During 1936, Dalí exhibited this Surrealist object at least twice: between the months of May and July it was on show in the Exposition surréaliste d’objets held at the Charles Ratton gallery in Paris and at the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London. On this last occasion, André Breton was photographed next to this Surrealist object.