Sunday Dalí: The Enigma of William Tell, 1933.
Completing the trilogy of the available William Tell canvases is Dalí’s most famous work of the three.1 Here William Tell is pictured kneeling with the grinning face of the Russian despot Vladimir Lenin. He has one enlarged buttock and an enlarged brim of his hat, both of which supported by wooden crutches suggesting impotence in the limb’s flaccidity. According to Dalí’s iconography the crutches symbolize death and resurrection.2 Tell is kneeling before an alter in the shape of a piano, a theme which occurs frequently in this period of Dali’s work. Upon the piano is one of Dalí’s famous soft watches. In the background some blackbirds peck at crumbs on the ground signifying death.
Tell, the father figure of this painting, is holding the infant Dalí in hi arms. From the Tell fable Dalí interpreted the apple-on-the-head part as “the symbol of passionate cannibalistic ambivalence” and as “paternal vengeance”. Instead of an apple, Dalí choose a piece of lamb cutlet to show that the father wants to eat the baby. This expression of father-as-destroyer is amplified by the positioning of a very tiny cradle next to the gigantic foot of the father.
Dalí was nearly expelled from the Surrealists for this work’s depiction of Lenin. Breton, Péret, and Tanguy attempted to deface it when it was hung at the Grand Palais, but it was too high. Dalí’s relationship with Breton deteriorated significantly after that attempt.
