Salvador Dalí's Bacchanale
Bacchanale, the largest work Salvador Dalí ever created, is heading to auction as part of the Surrealist Sale. The monumental 13-panel stage set was designed for the Metropolitan Opera's 1939 production of the same name, set to an adaptation of Wagner's Tannhäuser. Spanning more than 65 by 100 feet, it was Dalí's self-described first paranoiac-critical ballet, a hallucinatory total work of art in which he also wrote the libretto and designed the costumes. Painted with near-photographic precision, the canvases center on the Mount of Venus overlaid with a giant swan, a symbol of sin and desire through whose body dancers emerged onto the stage, with the Ampurdan Plain and a temple borrowed from Raphael's 1504 The Marriage of the Virgin stretching into the distance. Scenographer Alexandre Schervachidze built the set at the Ballets Russes workshop in Monte Carlo, choreographer Léonide Massine directed the ballet, and the costumes and accessories were designed by Coco Chanel.
