Salvador Dali was one of the world’s quintessential surrealist painters. A fan of Sigmund Freud’s work in psychology, Dali sought to tap into the creativity of the unconscious. By doing so, Dali created fantastic and somewhat irrational works that still perplex audiences today. Illumined Pleasures, painted in 1929, is a forerunner for one of his more well known works, The Persistence of Memory. The earlier work is currently on display in the MoMA. It features a distortion of reality with very abstract subjects. In this work, Illumined Pleasures, Dali explores the complexity of the human psyche through his representation of faces, use of sinister content, and employment of mixed media and reveals the core of his humanist philosophy.

The acts depicted in Dali’s 1929 work are caricatures of humanity. Dali displays the malignant side of humanity through scenes of fighting, murder, and sex, as well as the benign side of humanity through scenes of conformity, resting, and questioning. The contrast between the content of each image explores the human capability to perform both atrocious evils and magnificent deeds. Dali places the benign scenes of humanity behind screens as if to suggest that in order to act in a peaceful manner, humans must cage their primal urges. The scenes of lust, violence, and murder on the other hand are uncontained, suggesting that acts of sin are natural. The middle and largest screen portrays Dali’s own decapitated head, alluding to the death of one’s person caused by rejecting the malignant parts of humanity.  This characterization of mankind reveals that Dali views man as a complex being capable of both evil and good; however, to limit himself to either extreme is to kill his own humanity. Considering that Dali himself was an atheist when he created this work, Dali could also be criticizing the Christian rejection of sin.

Three faces tower over all the scenes in the work: one of a man, one of a beast, and one of a beast-man. Being that Dali was largely influenced by Freud’s writings, the faces in the sky can represent the trifold nature of the human psyche—the ego, the super ego, and the id. The faces’ location above every scene, gives them a godly presence as if they control everything happening below them. Thus, Dali suggests that the balance between the three aspects of the human psyche govern the consequent scenes. The superego urges the conformity in the bottom right screen, the ego advocates the pursuit of knowledge in the bottom left screen, and the id creates the chaos in the unscreened scenes. These faces reveal that Dali was a humanist, rejecting God’s power over man and instead suggesting that man governed himself.

Dali relies on a heavily contrasting color scheme as well as strong shadows to highlight each individual scene within the chaotic whole of the work. The ground and sky of the painting are both painted in solid colors, free of any unnecessary scenery. In creating a simple portrayal of the earth, Dali draws focus to the screens that litter the landscape. Dali views the human condition as being contaminated by mental chaos. While man is surrounded by order in the world around him, his internal processes distort that reality into disorder. Overall, the colors are uniform across the canvas; however, dark shadows behind the screens further draw attention to the depictions within their frames. Additionally, an unidentified person’s shadow lays present in the foreground of the work, presumably that of the viewer. By painting the viewer into the scene, Dali wanted the audience to experience the chaos of the scene on a more personal level. Rather than looking at an arbitrary collection of images, the viewer relates the content of the work to his own inner thoughts and psyche.

Dali’s use of a small canvas and mixed media mirrors the complex nature of the human psyche. The painting itself is a small work roughly one square foot in dimension. The miniature size of the canvas makes it difficult to understand what is going on in the hectic work. As a result of this compression, the canvas forces the viewer to come close in order to examine the painting and, as such, quite literally draws him into the scene. The work relies on oil paints as well as collage in order to create its scene. The contrast between these two mediums is immediately evident. The collage stands out against the paint surrounding it, distinguishing the screens from the natural background. This contrast gives the screens a more movie-like feel, distinguishing what humanity strives to be like from what it really is. Dali has a depressed outlook on mankind—no matter who a man thinks he is, he will always be a lustful and sinful murderer.

Overall, Dali’s Illumined Pleasures, explores the Freudian ideas on the workings of human consciousness. For Dali, being human is not about stifling the primitivity of the id as social norms and institutions dictate, but rather finding a humanist balance to live a more genuine version of oneself. A person living a fulfilled life is not just ruled by a superego. He has found the balance between the id and superego and, as such, becomes an autonomous individual ruled not by the world, nor by God, but by his own mental processes. Ultimately, the work leaves the viewer wondering: Can man contain his primal instincts or will doing so be suicide? In Dali’s case, the artist’s head is still rolling.