Dream of Venus 1939

Salvador Dali made this dreamscape, Dream of Venus, with oil paint – and the colours are just bonkers. A kind of wild, theatrical approach to the making of a painting, like its an experiment, or a game. Look how thinly the paint's been applied, creating these washes of color. It's almost like a stage set design, isn't it? Like a dream you half remember. I'm drawn to the way the yellow in the foreground clashes with the muted blues of the sea and sky. It's jarring, but it works. I'm reminded of the work of Giorgio de Chirico and his uncanny cityscapes, the way he used simple shapes to construct an almost surreal space. With Dali, it's more the flat planes of colour and bold black lines that gives it this comic book energy. And the ambiguity – do we understand it or not? Never! That's the point.