The Sentiment de la Vitesse - the feeling of speed - is surprisingly small, measuring only 13" x 10" (33 x 24 cm). In the Thirties, especially in 1930-31, Dalí often used small canvases, and sometimes he would cram them with intricate details. Here, however, he has left the picture bare.
   Dalí has placed three objects on a flat blue expanse: in the foreground a white, gleaming skull, a cypress tree and on the left, a rock in the shape of a shoe. Shoes were one of Dalí's many "fetishes", incorporating them into objects and hats. Shoes obsessed Dalí because for him they represented sin, based on the idea of the foot being the starting point of all sin.
   Dalí used the image of a rock with a "soft" watch mounted on it in The Triangular Hour (1933). However in this painting the emphasis is placed more on the rock than on the watch. The watch is flat against the rock and seems to be a part of it, a shadow from an unseen cypress tree creates the hands. Dalí has painted two further shoes to ensure that the viewer recognizes the shape of the rock.

   Dalí as a child observes the mutilated body of an old woman, barely able to hold itself together. The upper half is made up of a giant sausage, which represents mortality, as symbolized by the perishable character attributed to all foodstuffs. In Dalí's universe the crutches are sometimes a sublimation of the idea of impotence.

    The center portion of this painting shows Dalí's aging nurse Lucia sitting with her back to us, in the position of a netmender. Netmending was an important task in the Catalan fishing villages of Dalí's youth, and he associates that importance with Lucia. The hole cut from her back is a paranoiac-critical transformation whose original inspiration came from Dalí's visit to Paris in 1928. There he visited the Hotel of the Invalids, which sported windows made from mannequins with holes cut into their mid-riffs. He transforms them into the seated Lucia here, who is also shown being propped up by a crutch, here a symbol of solemnity, a wish by Dalí to support her as she grows older.
    Next to Lucia, to her right, are a medicine table and bottle, supposedly the 'object' that has been removed from Lucia's back. Next to that is another smaller chest and bottle, these having been removed from the first.
    To Lucia's left are 4 fishing boats which have been pulled up onto the shoreline. As is suggested by both Lucia's netmending, and the boats themselves, fishing was of paramount importance to the Catalonians on the coastline. Despite the craggy rocks and treacherous currents, fish had always been a staple in Dalí's time. Farther off in the distance are a building and then the unique stepped hills of the Coasta Brava.
    This work is actually very small in person, like many of the oil on panel paintings that Dalí was doing at the time. It is reported that some of these were fashioned by Dalí's use of a single horsehair for a brush, creating intricate levels of detail. When viewed in person, one can actually see the individual brush strokes in this work, which imparts a new sense of respect for Dalí's still blooming talents.

    Out of the series of paintings using the theme of Millet's The Angelus, this painting portrays the emotional fears that the painting aroused in Dalí the most effectively. In The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dalí writes that he saw The Angelus, which to most people is a religious work showing humble folk praying, as a "monstrous example of disguised sexual repression".
    The Angelus of Gala contains two versions of The Angelus: the first is the unusual portrait of a double Gala, the second is the copy of The Angelus above Gala's head. The Gala that we see here is, unusually, unattractive; her mouth clenches tightly together, her eyes stare aggressively at her double. Looking at the reproduction of The Angelus above Gala, the female perches on the wheelbarrow, as does the main figure. The female in The Angelus is sexually aggressive; like a praying mantis, ready to devour her mate after receiving the attention that she hunts for. This explains the fierce look on Gala's face as she stares at her double, who is the male counterpart to her female "Angelus".

    Millet's Angelus painting had a profound impact on Salvador Dalí. He had first seen the work as a child in school, but in 1932, he has a series of experiences that led him to have several paranoiac-critical transformations on the subject. The original painting shows several peasants, working in a field, who have stopped for an afternoon prayer. Their heads are bowed reverently, and there is a wheelbarrow between them, with field scenery stretching out behind them.
    This painting is a continuation on that theme, but has several instances of Dalínian continuity included as well. The original two Angelus figures have been transformed into towering architectural ruins, which probably were inspired by Dalí's visits to the Roman ruins near his childhood home. The third figure of the dead son is absent in this rendition of Dalí's obsession with the original Millet painting. Instead, the female has been made to look even more like a praying mantis, thus reinforcing Dalí's association of sex with death. Dalí spent time on the plain of Ampurdan, and has added elements from that landscape into this one.
    In the foreground, however, is another example of Dalínian continuity. Here we see yet again the tiny father/son figure that began to show up in Dalí's works starting in 1929 with The First Days of Spring.

    The Horseman of Death shares images from several of Dalí's works dating from this time. The rainbow set against dense clouds is an image that Dalí also used in Le Spectre et le Fantome. Dalí interpreted this combined image as a representation of the spectre from the title of the painting. The tower in the background can also be seen in several other paintings, such as The Dream Approaches. Dalí explained that the significance of this tower was a sexual one, as it was an image that formed the background to many of his long, erotic daydreams. A dense cluster of cypress trees hides the tower from our view. The cypress tree is also a familiar image in Dalí's paintings of the early to mid Thirties, their significance, once again, having roots in Dalí's childhood memories. The horseman itself is a frequent image, although here he is in a state of disintegration, parts of his horse still has flesh remaining, while the horseman is purely skeleton.
    Dalí wrote of this piece that it reminded him, with a sense of deja vu, of the interior of the Island of the Dead by Bocklin.

    This little picture on olive wood in the Edward James collection dates from the year 1935, a time when the artist had agreed to turn over his entire output for nearly two years to the English connoisseur. Several works in the James collection are characterized by their very small size. They are generally done in an extremely scrupulous manner and always with clear and luminous tones, such as White Calm, Paranoiac-Critical Solitude, Geological Justice, or Sun Table. Medianimic-Paranoiac Image was painted in Port Lligat. Several of the components were done after photographs and postcards - for example, the tiny person who is riding away on a bicycle on the wet seashore or the two workmen-masons in the foreground at the right. Dalí only transformed the faces of the latter, making them resemble the sons of Lydia, that peasant woman of Cadaqués who had sold Dalí and Gala the boat of a fisherman of Port Lligat. Her two fishermen sons were crazy - "crazy men of quality," says Dalí. They claimed to have found a radium mine at Cape Creus and spent nights covering the rocks with wheelbarrow-loads of stones to hide their treasure. In this composition, Dalí fuses them with two masons of Cadaqués who, at the time, were probably working on the enlargement of the house in Port Lligat. The person on the left is the nurse; in the foreground are the remains of some pottery, a Greco-Roman amphora, like those which were still found in abundance in the sea within several yards of the shore just a few years ago.

    This oil painting is the second version of Paranoiac Visage. An earlier drawing had previously been published in 1931 in the Surrealist journal Le Surrealisme au Service de la Revolution, for which Dalí wrote articles. He produced many new ideas and techniques while with the Surrealist group - probably the major one was his "paranoia-critical" method. Dalí used this method to envisage the double images employed in Paranoiac Visage and Invisible Afghan with the Apparition. Towards the end of the Thirties, he was criticized by André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, for descending to what he termed "puzzle" paintings; their only purpose being for the viewer to decipher the images.
    In Paranoiac Visage, a stone hut forms the face, the trees transform into bushy hair and seated people become the eyes, nose and mouth. The painting was based on a photograph of African villagers. At first sight, Dalí believed that the photo was of a Picasso face, as he had recently studied them. He showed the card to Breton, who thought it was a picture of the Marquis de Sade, who interested him. Therefore Dalí rationalized that the individual's mind gives an image the desired characteristics; viewers see what they want to see.

    During 1935 and 1936, Dalí's repetition and use of elements which are completely out of place is remarkable. Here the desired effect is obtained with the maximum of force, and the minimum of means. Dalí has taken a small piece of desolate landscape with some rocks. Into his decor, he has placed an automobile, or rather a wreck of an automobile - like those of Hibert-Robert - overgrown and half-covered with flowering plants, and then has incorporated the machine into the rocky crags, through which a hole has been pierced. Next, in a paranoiac manner, he has divided the image in two by repeating it on the left part of the rock while scrupulously re-creating the silhouette of the vehicle, impressed in the hollow of the rock, of which a piece, cut out in the same shape as the hole on the right, appears suspended in front. The optical uneasiness of this picture stems from the contradiction which exists between the piece of rock on the left in relief and the empty space in the rock on the right, which itself seems clearly in front of the car. Here in Dalí's research into dividing, one realizes how the stereoscopic phenomenon has always interested him in a continuos way, because it is definitely a question of the stereoscopic effect applied to the problem of the dream in colors and relief. In this work, it is also possible to understand the desire of the painter who is always looking for examples in natural phenomena to explain certain scientific laws, affirming that one day we will undoubtedly find in geology traces of holograms, while today that possibility remains quite out of the question in the minds of the specialists. Paranoiac-Critical Solitude was painted on olive wood in Port Lligat.