However, the blessing of having great wealth did not necessarily equate to happiness for James, who, under the immense expectations thrust upon him, cut an isolated figure and was plagued with uncertainty throughout his life. Salvador Dali Interview on the Merv Griffin Show 1965. When his home was finally finished in 1937, his whimsical surrealist showcase was painted lavender, had mock bamboo drain pipes and a chimney clock that counted the days of the week. A passionate collector of Surrealist art, he amassed the finest private collection having invited Rene Magritte to stay in his home and even bankrolled Dalí so that he could produce what he wanted. A patron of the arts he commissioned Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s last collaboration and even published John Betjeman’s first book of poetry while still at college. Įdward James, the great champion of the Surrealists, was a fascinating character, who inherited a huge fortune at just six years old. The house had already been embellished with three of his sofa’s in the shape of Mae West lips when James asked for his telephones to be given the Dali treatment as well. When the artist first revealed the Lobster Telephone James was delighted, the artist had located the crustacean’s tail, where its sexual parts are located, directly over the mouthpiece of the receiver. It was first commissioned by the English collector Edward James, whose dream of turning his home Monkton House into a Surrealist’s fantasyland teeming with exotic objects could only have been realized with Dalí’s help. Typical of his work from the 1930s-when he was said to be at his peak- Lobster Telephone reveled in the audiences’ bewilderment at its simple incongruity. The combination of items never normally associated together produced something playful but quite menacing, and Dalí believed that such conjunctions were capable of revealing the true desires of the unconscious. Salvador Dalí’s Lobster Telephone-a work that epitomized the decadent humor of the Surrealists-is up for auction this December at Christie’s London. “I do not understand why, when I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, I am never served a cooked telephone I do not understand why champagne is always chilled and why on the other hand telephones, which are habitually so frightfully warm and disagreeably sticky to the touch, are not also put in silver buckets with crushed ice around them.” Salvador Dalí
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