If you are unable to come to UMMA in person due to illness, quarantine, etc., you can choose a work from this set of surrealist and surrealist-adjacent pieces from the UMMA collection. 
59 Items in this Learning Collection
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Copyright
All Rights Reserved ()

Télévision liquide et gazeuse

Accession Number
1981/2.110.3

Title
Télévision liquide et gazeuse

Artist(s)
Salvador Dali

Artist Nationality
Spanish (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
1975

Medium & Support
drypoint etching, lithograph, screenprint and collage on paper

Dimensions
30 5/16 in x 21 15/16 in (76.99 cm x 55.72 cm)

Credit Line
Anonymous Gift

Subject matter
This work was part of Salvador Dalí's 1975 Imaginations and Objects of the Future portfolio. It contained ten prints with an introductory text by the artist that discussed the project's focus on new technologies' ability to create an alternate universe, especially through holograms. 
In this print and collage, the television screen plays out in a few ways. First, the small collage of his 1934-35 painting "Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment" (Art Institute of Chicago) is set into a tv-like cube and is intently watched—marked by the dotted lines that transverse the small inset page—by the robot-man at the left. Mae West was an early-twentieth century film star and was once Dalí's muse; he created a number of works using her visage. Her image is here like a rerun of a movie playing on TV. At the same time, the inset cream page acts as a kind of screen that obfuscates the face that can be seen in the black lines on the main sheet. Perhaps, this screen is inside the mind of the drawn woman. Dalí provides a Surreal vision of television that does not adhere to the laws of physics—liquid or gaseous.

Physical Description
In this mixed-media print, there is a white background with black outlines of facial features, lips and an eye, and a creature in the bottom left. In the upper left corner there is a rectanglular sheet in cream layered on top; a wavy vertical design stretches diagonally from the top of the rectangle to the bottom in yellow, red, and blue. Within this sheet, there are small figures at the center left drawn in black. To the right in the sheet, there is a collaged image of one of the artist's paintings, incorporated into a cube. Above, there are drawn birds. There is a small mechanical-like figure on the sheet at the bottom left. At the center of the print, in the cream page, the artist signed "Dali" and dated the print "1975. To the bottom left, on the larger white page, there is text inscribed in the plate, mirrored and someone illegible, that possibly reads "Leill Ciclopeer Alucire la bouche Almient tire / Lula [illegible]." The print is number at the lower left in pencil.

Primary Object Classification
Print

Additional Object Classification(s)
Mixed Media

Collection Area
Modern and Contemporary

Rights
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please visit http://umma.umich.edu/request-image for more information and to fill out the online Image Rights and Reproductions Request Form.

Keywords
Surrealism
Surrealist
eyes
faces (animal components)
gas (material)
liquid
modern and contemporary art
mouths
noses
rooms
seated
television (telecommunication system)

& Author Notes

All Rights Reserved