The Minotaur

The Minotaur is one of the most repre­sented mythological characters in art history, expressing the sublimation of instinctive impulses. Dalí designed the cover for the Parisian surrealist magazine, Minotaur, in 1936. He later decided to use his paranoiac-critical method on the animal-shaped object with the posture of a model. The poetic Dalinian approach uses drawers open to the subconscious revealing the obsession for consumerism: “Beauty will be consumable or not.” With a woman’s body and a bull-wolf head, this Minotaur is more familiar than worrisome: it helps the artist to sublimate his private obsessions, symbolized by the lobster, the cup, the bottle, with a creative goal.