Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944) is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dalí. A short, alternate title for the painting is Sting Caused by the Flight of a Bee. It was painted in 1944, while Dalí and his wife, Gala, were living in America. In this “hand-painted dream photograph” — as Dalí generally called his paintings — we find a seascape of distant horizons and calm waters, perhaps Port Lligat, amidst which Gala is the subject of the scene. Next to the naked body of the sleeping woman, which levitates above a flat rock that floats above the sea, Dalí depicts two suspended droplets of water and a pomegranate, a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. Above the pomegranate...