Surrealist Object

Definition

The surrealist object is the designed or designated thing that stages desire. Dalí's 1932 taxonomy (in Weir's reading) orders such objects "based on the desire that the object generates," measured "by the kind of action that the desired object induces," in four increasing levels of engagement: first, when we take no part in them; second, the object acts upon our contemplation; third, the object operates symbolically and can be acted upon; and finally, the object "brings about a desire to be eaten [sic]." Desire, not function, is the object's defining force: "what matters is the way in which the experiments revealed the desire for the object, the tangible object." The genealogy runs from Giorgio de Chirico's metaphysical paintings — "crescents, macaroons, and biscuits finding a place beside T-squares," artichokes and bananas that "form on their own, and without any apparent modification, actual surrealist articles" — through Man Ray's wrapped figures (whose wrappings "produced the urge to explore them tactilely, so that one might identify through touch what their wrappings concealed"), to Dalí's manufactured desiderata: the half-stone, half-poached-egg table, the egg-built Venus de Milo, the Lobster Telephone (1936, made for collector Edward James). The general urge behind them all is unifying: "to form a whole with it, to dissolve the separation between the desired and desirer."

Key Thinkers

• Salvador Dalí (not yet paged — see log) — the 1932 taxonomy (The Object as Revealed in Surrealist Experiment); the psychoatmospheric-anamorphic objects; the desire-to-eat as the object's limit; "the surrealist act was the invention of the method to produce such objects."
• Giorgio de Chirico (not yet paged — see log) — the painted antecedent: metaphysical interiors whose eatables are "actual surrealist articles… without any apparent modification."
• Alberto Savinio (not yet paged — see log) — the theoretical frame (with de Chirico) behind the surrealist object's development; both "had considerable influence on the development of surrealist painting and the surrealist object."
• Man Ray (not yet paged — see log) — the wrapped figures bridging contemplation and tactile exploration.
• Simon Weir — the architectural reading: the objects as "mere synecdoche for the grand desire to eat everything," their interiors "unambiguously implied, but only imagined."

Related Concepts

• Cannibalism of Objects — the desire's programmatic name: the production problem of making the object world edible.
• Concealment — the object's structure: "only the elegant concealing shell is visible; vision is displaced from the true object of desire to that which conceals it."
• Readymade — the object-found-not-made lineage (Duchamp) that shares the surrealist object's displacement of the artwork from composition to designation — de Chirico's bananas become surrealist "without any apparent modification."
• Symbolism — the object's sign-work: the shell presenting itself as the desirable object, a synecdoche for the desired whole.
• Surrealism — the movement whose object-theory and object-practice this concept organizes.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Salvador Dalí's Interiors with Heraclitus' Concealment (Weir 2018) — the four-level desire taxonomy; Man Ray's wrappings; de Chirico's eatables; the egg table, the egg-built Venus and the Lobster Telephone; the objects as synecdoche for "the grand desire to eat everything," their interiors "unambiguously implied, but only imagined."

Open Questions

• Dalí's taxonomy terminates at the object that incites "a desire to be eaten" — an object that incites its own consumption. Is consumption the terminal relation between subject and designed object, or is there a design logic beyond eating?
• The egg table and egg-built Venus "were never produced," and the lobster "is only a painted replica": is the surrealist object essentially a project — a proposal whose unproductability is structural (the abstinence it demands) rather than accidental?
• How does Dalí's desire-generated object relate to the wiki's readymade lineage (Duchamp, via Meninato's everyday interiorities) — designation vs manufacture as the two modern ways of making the ordinary object matter?