Sleep

In Sleep , Dali recreated the kind of large, soft head and virtually non-existent body that had featured so often in his paintings around 1929. In this case, however, the face is certainly not a self-portrait. Sleep and dreams are par excellence the realm of the unconscious, and consequently of special interest to psychoanalyists and Surrealists.

Crutches had always been a Dali trademark, hinting at the fragility of the supports which maintain 'reality', but here nothing seems inherently stable, and even the dog needs to be propped up! Everything in the picture except the head is bathed in a pale bluish light, completing the sense of alienation from the world of daylight and rationality.

The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory

Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach