Chocolate Box

Author: Marijke Peyser

In the 1960s Salvador Dalí was involved with countless commercial products and television advertisements where he deliberately used his eccentric image to recommend the product concerned. In 1969, for example, Dalí featured in a television advertisement for Lanvin chocolate.^[1] He held the large bar of chocolate in his outstretched hand towards the viewers, tore open the wrapper, took a large bite and looked straight at the camera. His famous moustache curled up and he exclaimed, ‘Je suis fou du chocolat Lanvin!’ (I’m mad about Lanvin chocolate!).

In the museum collection there are a number of objects Dalí designed specifically for the commercial market. One such is Le Roy Soleil, a perfume bottle for the Schiaparelli fashion house, and the ashtray he designed for Air India (Swan-Elephant II ashtray). In 1967 the artist designed two more commercial products: playing cards and a chocolate box (not for Lanvin). For years the playing cards were kept in the chocolate box in the museum’s repository, but the museum recently woke up to the fact that these were two separate products.

The playing cards were commissioned by the firm of Puiforcat.^[2] The first edition was printed by the Parisian publishing house of Draeger.^[3] The designs for the playing cards, which come from Puiforcat’s collection, were shown at the major Dalí exhibition in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 1970-71. The cards were contained in a black file and a silver-grey box – two decks in each – with Dalí’s signature in gold or black letters respectively on the front. The cards are attractive and colourful with typical Dalí motifs here and there: the king of diamonds, for example, has a melting watch on his shoulder and the king of spades has an apple on his head.

The large, lidded box in which the cards were kept for years is actually a chocolate box. In view of the date – 1967 – the kind of object and the initials of the famous Parisian chocolatier Marquise de Sévigné on the box, it must have been a commercial commission. On the outside of the lid of the box, set in an oval frame, there is one of Dalí’s most famous oil paintings, La persistance de la mémoire (1931). It featured in Dalí’s first solo exhibition (3-15 June 1931) at the Paris gallery of Pierre Colle. The New York gallery owner Julien Levy bought the painting and contracted with Colle to represent Dalí in the United States.^[4] The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) acquired the painting in 1934. Two years later in the MoMA Alfred H. Barr Jr staged the first retrospective of Dadaist and Surrealist art: Fantastic Art, Dada. Surrealism. La persistance de la mémoire was a huge draw. It was the ‘melting watches’ that made an overwhelming impression on visitors. In his autobiography, La vie secrète de Salvador Dalí (1935), Dalí praised his muse Gala for the way she taught him to overcome his shyness and clumsiness and to keep his head in all kinds of situations: ‘She made a me suit of armour so that to the outside world I appeared to be a fortress whereas inside I was still “soft”. Yes, “super soft”.’ Dalí continued: ‘So on the day I decided to paint watches I painted them soft.’^[5] Like Dalí’s armour, the box is a suit of armour for the chocolate, which after all has to stay in the box and may only melt in the mouth.