Consider the Lobster

 

Hello? Hello?

It's me. Your surrealistic telephone.

This past fall, I visited the Surrealism exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and this is where I found Salvator Dali’s Aphrodisiac Telephone. The sculpture is an actual telephone with a white Bakelite lobster attached as the ear and mouth piece.

In dream logic, this makes perfect sense. But then, when one is in a more rational mood, we might say--what!? A lobster attached to a telephone? That's crazy!

But there, in a glass case at the Pompidou, it's truly a work of genius. This is the power of context.

When I was a little girl, I would wake up in the middle of the night, afraid that there were evil sea creatures hiding under my bed. I imagined lobsters, crabs, and snapping turtles--the sort of things that grab a hold of children's toes and pull them into the netherworld under the bed--the land where missing socks, headless Barbies and sad-sad dust bunnies lie in wait.

I outgrew these childish fears long ago, but I must admit that even now, I am a little shy around lobsters, even if a lobster, in and of itself, seems kind of ridiculous. I mean, really--doesn't it look like some kind of overblown insect with antennae? Or an ant eater with a foldable torso, a giant crustation with claws that are much too big for its body. And then, there's those teeny-tiny legs that don’t look like they could get the lobster very far.

But as we know, evil sea creatures and monsters can actually get pretty darn far--if we believe in them.

Creative Friends--Your assignment for this week is to look under the bed. Talk to the lobster. Tell him to get the heck out of there. Tell him he’s a paper tiger. Call your representative, your senator. Tell them what you think. And then get to work, making art.

Love,

Jamie