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Salvador Dali and wife Gala, 1964
NARIQUE MENESES/REX FEATURES
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Salvador Dali who inspired Elsa Schiaparelli's lambchop hat and jacket, painted in early 1930's a portrait of his wife Gala with a pair of raw chops poised on her shoulder.
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Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops in Equilibrium Upon Her Shoulder,
Salvador Dali 1934
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Image: Copyright Whitney Museum of American Art
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Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder,
Salvador Dali 1933
© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2004.
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"I painted a portrait of Gala with a pair of raw chops poised on her shoulder.
The meaning of this, as I later learned, was that instead of eating her, I had decided to eat a pair of raw chops instead. The chops were in effect the expiatory victims of abortive sacrifice - like Abraham’s ram and William Tell’s apple. Ram and apple, like the sons of Saturn and Jesus Christ on the cross, were raw - this being the prime condition for the cannibalistic sacrifice.
In the same vein I painted a picture of myself as a child at about the age of eight, with a raw chop on my head. I was trying thus symbolically to tempt my father to come and eat this chop instead of me.”
Salvador Dali from his 1942 autobiography "The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí"
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