Sunday Dalí: The Sense of Speed, 1931. Oil on canvas, 33 x 24 cm.

Part two of a three part series of posts focusing on Dalí’s surrealist landscapes. If you missed it, check out The Sign of Anguish from last week.

The Sense of Speed, to me, embodies the surrealist landscape that I associate with Dalí’s style. Like The Sign of Anguish The Sense of Speed features a single cyprus tree which, as I wrote before, relates to Dalí’s fascination with Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead. The clock embedded in the rock is a reference to de Chirico’s who also painted clocks in his most melancholic paintings.

The rock, which is in the shape of a shoe, has two shoes “carved” onto it. Dalí fetishized shoes as can be seen in Scatological Object Intended to Function Symbolically. Dalí once sent a letter to his friend Federico García Lorca with several shoes from different eras and cultures revealing the differences of utility and taste.¹ This analogy can be read back on art, which was likely Dalí’s intention.