Saw this massive Dalí painting in Cologne, i had never heard of it before but it’s now by far my favorite work of his. It’s titled ‘Train Station in Perpignan’ which was a station in France he’d visit often to go to Spain. Apparently he had a ‘cosmogonic ecstasy’ there, after which he wrote in his book ‘Diary of a Genius’ (lol): “I had an exact vision of the constitution of the universe. It turned out that the universe, being one of the most limited things of all that exists, in its structure, observing all proportions, is exactly like the Perpignan station...” He was obsessed with this realization and the train station and painted this two years later—Dali floating into the light shining from crucified Jesus’s face, the self portrait repeated again above an incoming train at the top of the painting. He was haunted by this painting that he had seen by Jean-Francois Millet, who often painted scenes of rural labor. Millet’s ‘The Angelus’ (slide four) shows a farming couple bowed in prayer at sunset. Dali was convinced it was an image of mourning, not prayer, and pestered the Louvre to x-ray the painting. The results showed a faint geometric shape beneath the basket of potatoes that, for Dali, confirmed without a doubt that the couple was grieving over the casket of their dead child, and that Millet had painted over this original version (you can decide for yourself if it really is a casket, slide 5.) Anyways, because of his confidence in this, there are sacks of potatoes all over his painting. He also did many preparatory studies of ‘The Angelus’ (slide 6). Perhaps Dali was thinking about Courbet’s ‘A Burial at Ornans’ (slide 7) in which the open grave leads out towards the viewer, reminding us that we all die too. The so-called casket in ‘The Angelus’ also extends beyond the bottom of the canvas.