Le désir hyperrationnel
1984
Pâte de verre and bronze 249/300

This most elegant of Dalí's Surrealist objects, Le désir hyperrationnel (The hyperrational desire)- utilizes the Venus de Milo, the most famous antiquity in the Louvre. In 1936, Dali created the Venus de Milo with Drawers by cutting six drawers into the famous statue. By perforating the Venus, Dalí engages in the defacement of a classic symbol and demonstrates his preoccupation with Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theories.

Dalí's later interpretations are based on his obsession with modern physics and contemporary scientific discoveries. In this new version, Venus's head and abdomen are "dematerialized" from the body to an adjacent pedestal demonstrating the dissolution of gravity and the divisibility of matter.