The Hallucinogenic Toreador
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The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1970) is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dalí. A large painting — it measures in at 402 x 292 cm — it is displayed at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Dalí called the painting, all Dalí in one painting.
The toreador can easily be seen by noting the green necktie in the center of the painting. His face (made up of statues appearing to be the Venus de Milo) can be seen looking off to the right of the painting, while the flies (to the left and above) make up his cape and his beret, respectively. The head of Dalí's wife, Gala, was painted in the top left corner because she frowned upon bullfighting. A bull's head can be seen near the bottom left corner under an array of receding rows of coloured circles. Underneath the bull's head is a pool containing a woman in a bikini on top of a pool chair. When asked about the woman, Dalí said that the viewer needed something familiar to look at.
At the center in the bottom of the frame is a representation of a high contrast image of a dalmatian commonly used to illustrate the Gestalt principle of emergence.
