Fantasies Diurnes, 1932 by Salvador Dali

Fantasies Diurnes is a thematic pendant to Memory of the Child-Woman. Once again, the landscape views along the margins of the painting can be identified as the rocks of Cap Creus and Port Lligat, the nostalgic site of Dali's childhood memories and the location of his current residence with Gala, just over the hill from Cadaques. Signs of Dali's s erotic attachment to Gala as the "Child-Woman" abound: in the snail shells that are scattered in the lower left of the painting; in the phallic key that is locked into one of the concave pockets in the fantastic, skull-like object that stretches across the middle ground; in the multiple inscriptions of the phrase "deux fois" in relation to the image of the key (a scheme borrowed from Rene Magritte's word-image paintings that alludes here to Dali's sexual relations with Gala); in the anamorphic head of the Great Masturbator that is inscribed on a red gem; and, most notably, in the obsessive repetition of the name "Guillaume Tell." The distended "anatomy " of the central object relates to Dali's exploration of the theme of anamorphosis and the abject symbolism of soft forms , while the ram's skull in the foreground is a sign of putrescence, one of the three great simulacra in Dali' s vision of the human libido.