Salvador Dalì and Venus de Milo with drawers on their bodies

In Ekebergparken there was a sculpture made by Salvador Dali, it is Venus de Milo Aux Tiroirs, 1964. It is equipped with drawers that you can pull out, one in the forehead, several in the chest, in the stomach etc. It made me curious to find out what he might have meant by that and it led me into the surrealist universe of Salvador Dalí.. I understand why he often said: "I am surrealism"

He didn't just mean that he painted surrealistically - he meant that he lived surrealism. He made his own life a stage, and himself a work of art. During a lecture in London in 1936, he appeared in a heavy diving suit to symbolize that he was going to "dive into the human subconscious." He was about to suffocate and had to be rescued from his helmet.

He could also show up to a party with a baguette strapped to his head, a surreal gesture that elevated the banal to art.

In the 1960s, he was photographed several times in Paris with a live anteater on a leash. He liked to provoke the audience by doing the unexpected.

He used to say, "The difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."

Dali is known for his symbols such as melted bells, eggs, ants, crutches, elephants, and drawers that have become modern icons. He made surrealism accessible to the masses through his theatrical personality.

What kind of education did he have?

Yes, he began studying at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1922 and was expelled from the academy in 1926 for causing unrest. He is said to have stated that no teachers were qualified to judge him. That same year, he met Picasso in Paris, which strengthened his path towards modernism.

When I read about his upbringing, I was both sad and shocked. I am very fascinated by what shapes us humans to become who we are, and here may also be some answers to why Salvador Dalì became who he became...?

The story goes that he was born in 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia. He was named after his late brother who died shortly before he was born. His family told him that he was the reincarnation of his dead brother - an idea that left a deep mark on his self-understanding and later on in his art, where themes such as double identity and reflections often appeared.

So back to the Venus de Milo with the drawers, what do those drawers mean?

Even though Dalì's pictorial universe seems absurd, it is full of layers of meaning and here are explanations of the symbols he is known for:

• Melting clocks - the subjectivity of time, influenced by Einstein's theory of relativity and the dissolution of order in dreams.

• Elephants on razor-thin legs - the paradox between strength and fragility.

• Ants - decay, death and anxiety.

• Egg - life, hope and rebirth.

• Crutches - symbol of support and human weakness.

• Double images and reflections - often expressions of his feeling of being both himself and his deceased brother.

• Drawers on the body - hidden secrets of the psyche, inspired by Freud's ideas about the unconscious.