Man with his head full of clouds

This is a work of profound symbolic content, explicitly referring to René Magritte(1898-1967).  Dalí shows the symbol of the yin and yang at the transition between the two background colours, a reference of clear erotic implication. These cut-out silhouettes filled with space found a place in a number of Surrealist actions. They also appear in works by Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), such as the design commissioned from Duchamp by André Breton for his Galerie Gradiva in Paris comprising a door shaped like the outline of a pair of lovers in eternal union. They appear too in the work of Max Ernst (1891-1976), in particular in his fragmentary experiments with collage. We should also mention Dalí’s oil—also from 1936—Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, in which the half-length outlines of Dalí and Gala adopt the same positions as the two figures in Jean-François Millet’s (1814-1875) Angélus(1857-1859).

Note the play on words in the title, which refers to a dreamer or fantasist. Dalí took a particular interest in his titles and the semantic games that they often comprised and was known to say that the significance of the work was sometimes given in the title.