This small gem reflects the influence of the thoughts and methodologies of surrealism, a movement in art which aimed to bring out the creative potential of dreams and the unconscious mind. In this painting, Dali rendered his hallucinations and paranoiac visions with seemingly journalistic accuracy that they were in settling in their factness. Accommodations of Desire is an oil painting and mixed media collage board measuring 22.5 cm x 35 cm. As with most of Dali's paintings, this piece of art was a result of the painter’s life events and the characteristic system of symbols present on his surrealistic artworks. The painted work represents Dali’s anxiety over an affair with a married woman and what the future would hold for him. It also mythologizes the painter’s relationship with his father.
Dali painted the picture after taking a walk with Gala, his 10-year-older lover, who was then the wife of artist Paul Éluard. The painting consists of seven lumpish white "pebbles", each symbolizing something that Dali believed lay ahead for him. These include "terrorizing" lions' heads (not very "accommodating" to the painter’s desires as the name of the art piece suggests), a toupee and a colony of ants which symbolize decay. Also in the painting are three figures on a platform and a number of vessels (one in the form of a woman’s head).
While the painted work is an exposé of Dalí's deepest fears, it is also a trial of the use of early collage techniques. The heads of the lion were not painted but, rather, glued onto the canvas and are thought to have been cut out from an illustrated children's book. The pasted-on cutouts have a visual style that bears an indistinguishable resemblance to the painting's aesthetic. The Accommodations of Desire is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
