Sunday Dalí: Illumined Pleasures, 1929. Currently housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY.

Illumined Pleasures was created by fusing oil and collage on panel. The canvas of the painting is small, measuring only 10” x 14” (24 x 34.5 cm); its size compared with the mass of detail Dalí has managed to cram into it, clearly reveals Dalí’s great talent as a miniaturist painter.

Other Surrealist artists, in both paintings and objects, had made use of boxes. Here Dalí uses them to create scenarios - pictures within the main picture. In the middle box is a self-portrait, like that of The Great Masturbator. Blood flows out of the nose and above the head is a grasshopper: both symbolize a hysterical fear. The box to the left shows a man shooting at a rock. This rock can be construed as a head, with blood flowing from the holes. The box to the right has a pattern of men on cycles with sugared almonds placed on their heads.