Chaise atmosphérique © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP, Figueres, 2019 © Man Ray Trust, VEGAP, Girona, 2019
Chaise atmosphérique © Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, VEGAP, Figueres, 2019 © Man Ray Trust, VEGAP, Girona, 2019
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Cat. no. OE
16

Chaise atmosphérique

Atmospheric Chair

Atmospheric Chair

Cat. no. OE 16

Atmospheric Chair

1933

Description

Unique Original Work
Date:
1933
Technique:
Assemblage
Dimensions:
Unknown
Location:
Unknown
Description:
The identification of this surrealistic object was also made possible by the aforementioned photograph by Man Ray, which includes some of the works on show in the Exposition surréaliste at the Pierre Colle gallery in 1933, and also thanks to an article in the daily L’Intransigeant, accompanied by the same Man Ray photograph, with the caption ‘La chaise atmosphérique’. On the basis of these data, the title listed as number 8 in the exhibition catalogue has been assigned to this work: Chaise atmosphérique. It is also worth noting that the photographic collage Le phénomène de l’extase, published by Dalí in Minotaure in 1933, includes an image of this work, and that in the text of the corresponding article Dalí refers to the ‘atmospheric chair’. He also refers to the process of creating this work in The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, where he relates it to the characteristics of a Surrealist object: ‘One day I received a present from my very good friend Jean-Michel Frank, the decorator: two chairs of the purest 1900 style. I immediately transformed one of them in the following fashion. I changed its leather seat for one made of chocolate; then I had a golden Louis XV door-knob screwed under one of the feet, thus extending it and making the chair lean far over to its right, and giving it an unstable balance so calculated that it was only necessary to walk heavily or to bang the door to make the chair topple over. One of the legs of the chair was to repose continuously in a glass of beer, which also would spill each time the chair keeled over. I called this dreadfully uncomfortable chair, which produced a profound uneasiness in all who saw it, the “atmospheric chair”.’ It seems reasonable to attribute this description to the work presented at the Galerie Pierre Colle, given that elements similar to those mentioned by Dalí can be seen at the bottom of the legs of the chair. In 1934 the artist presented a work of similar characteristics in the window display for the exhibition Salvador Dalí 42 eaux-fortes et 30 dessins pour Les Chants de Maldoror at La Librairie Les Quatre Chemins bookshop in Paris.  
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