Sunday Dalí: The Invisible Man, 1932. Oil on canvas, 6½ x 9⅜. The Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL.
This painting shares the same name as the 1929 painting, which was an early treatise on the paranoiac-critical method. Here bread takes on a prominent role serving as a symbol of human presence.
The loaf that is balanced on the back of the chair, which can be seen in sever Dalí works including Retrospective Bust of a Woman, refers to the William Tell myth in which Tell shot an apple off his son’s head. For Dalí, the Tell myth contains symbolism to Oedipal desires, child sacrifice, and castration.1
The loaf in the chair refers to Dalí. In particular a story Dalí recalls in The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí in which he became fascinated with a piece of bread.2 He emulated fellatio on the bread until his saliva made the end soft enough for it to stand erect on a table. Like most erect phalluses in Dalí’s art, this piece of bread likely refers to Dalí’s father.
The cut bread on the table is another representation of castration which is also reinforced by the red cloth.
The window is a very early appearance of one of Dalí’s hyper-cubes.
