Honey is Sweeter than Blood (also "Blood is Sweeter than Honey") (Honig ist susser als blut)
Salvador DALÍ
(Spanish, 1904-1989)
Honey is Sweeter than Blood (also "Blood is Sweeter than Honey") (Honig ist susser als blut)
Date1941
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensionsoverall: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm)
ClassificationPAINTINGS
Credit LineSBMA, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Warren Tremaine
Object number1949.17
Subject(s)
- figure
- nudes
- animal
- horse
- mythology
Collection
- 20th century European
- European
Sub-Collection(s)
- Surrealism
- Spanish
- Catalan
On View
On viewLabel TextThe Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí arrived in the United States in August 1940 with his wife Gala, having taken a boat from Portugal. This work was made in rural Virginia in September or October 1940 at the home of Caresse Crosby. Understandably, interpreters want to see this painting as an allegory for fascism—1940 was an especially dire year. France fell in May, and a Nazi invasion of Great Britain was considered imminent. Nonetheless, when a curator at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art wrote the artist in the 1970s with questions, Dalí told an assistant to copy a random paragraph out of a random book and sent it to the museum. Dalí wanted to confound the impulse to give everything meaning. This shortcircuiting of logic is a primary goal of Surrealism.
![View of the Ancient Substructures Built by Tarquinius Superbus called the Bel Lido, and Like Others, Erected by Marcus Agrippa in the Time of Augustus, When He Had All the Sewers Leading to the Tiber Cleaned [the Cloaca Maxima] (Veduta delle antiche Sostruzioni fatte da Tarquinio Superbo dette il Bel Lido, e come altri erette da Marco Agrippa a tempi di Augusto, in occasione ch’Egli fece ripurgare tutte le Cloache fino al Tevere), from the series "Views of Rome (Vedute di Roma)"](/internal/media/dispatcher/36177/thumbnail)
