“bread to strengthen the human heart” – Psalms 104:15c
What do you see? (OBJECTIVE OBSERVATION)
A basket, on a table, in a dark place. In the basket, some bread. It’s very realistic and the bread looks good enough to eat.
Pretty simple. Or is it?
Look at the bread. It’s not a whole loaf. Someone has torn off one end. What we see is the “heel” of the loaf. The basket is sitting precariously close to the edge of the table. It seems as though, if someone were to bump it, it would plunge into the darkness.
And something else you may have noticed. In this dark and mysterious space, with only a table, a basket and some bread, there seems to be an unusual light about the whole thing. The light looks as though it is coming from the bread itself. It illuminates the inside of the basket, shines through the woven side, illuminating the table behind the basket. And it casts a shadow on the table next to the basket.
What do you feel? (SUBJECTIVE EMOTION)
Do you hunger for this bread? Are you uplifted by the fine, almost photographic quality of this painting? Do you feel drawn to the light or are you curious to explore the darkness beyond the table? Are you worried that the bread may fall off the table?
Take a moment to meditate on the painting. Listen to your emotions.
What do you wonder about?
Do you wonder, “what is so special about this loaf of bread and basket that the artist should spend so much time painting it in fine detail”? The painting is 13″ x 15″, not quite life sized.
The artist is Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, or as you probably know him, Salvador Dali (1904-1989). He was a Spanish artist known for his iconic moustache that sometimes curled up, and sometimes curled down.
This painting, Basket of Bread, painted in 1945, was not the first (or last) painting of bread that Dali created. It had echoes of an earlier Dali painting, The Basket of Bread painted in 1926. Of bread, Dali wrote in 1945, ““Bread, has always been one of the oldest fetishistic and obsessive subjects in my work, the one to which I have remained the most faithful.” He chose bread as a sort of personal device or emblem, much like his famous moustache. Many of his works feature or include bread.1
Influenced by Cubism and Surrealism and by artist friends Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, Dali’s work became primarily Surrealist. Surrealism is an art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike scenes and ideas.2 The Surrealists, forming in the 1920’s, often used their works to express their philosophical points of view. For example, Magritte’s Treachery of Images states “This is not a pipe” on a painting of a pipe, expressing the artists view of art as a representation, not as the actual thing being represented. In this way art can carry “metadata”, or an additional context, structure, and information beyond the work itself.
In hi works of bread or including bread, Dali often wanted to express bread as the existential sustenance of life. But Basket of Bread had a subtitle that was in contra point to that meaning. Rather Death than Shame is a reference to “honor suicide”. The bread—a mere heel, and therefore seemingly at the end of its usefulness and life—is perched on the edge of the table against a bleak black backdrop as if on the precipice of its own self-inflicted demise.3 Coincidentally (or maybe intentionally) the completion of this work occurred simultaneously to the suicide of Adolf Hitler.
Dali’s homeland, Spain, suffered through a civil war (1936-1939) followed immediately by World War II (1939-1945). The ravages of the wars created an impoverished situation for the people of Spain. Many families were starving, and the essential sustenance, bread, was clearly on everyone’s mind. To paint the left-over end of a loaf of bread, precariously balanced on the edge of a table, is to highlight the importance of this life giving food, and how precarious life is in regards to bread. Bread later took on renewed significance when it was used as a central image for the Marshall Plan, symbolizing the rebuilding of Europe through shared resources—bread becoming a sign of restoration and hope.
But Dalí also invites us to contemplate something far deeper: the presence of Christ, the Bread of Life, shining in a world overshadowed by darkness.4
Consider bread as a symbol of life (and hospitality) in the Old Testament, and as a symbol of salvation in the New Testament. There are over 330 mentions of bread (or Manna) in the Bible.
Exodus 16:15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.
Genesis 18:5 (Abraham said,) Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.”
John 6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Matthew 4:3-4 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
Matthew 14:19-21 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.Matthew 26:26 While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
These are just some of the examples of the importance of bread in the Bible. Dali saw bread as “the elementary basis of continuity” and “sacred subsistence”.5 Dali alternately claimed to be a Catholic and an agnostic. And many of his paintings had religious themes, such as Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951) and Crucifixiion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954). The use of bread, the Judeo-Christian symbol of God’s life giving and sustaining gift, was prevalent through his life’s work.
What do you think?
Have you seen other works from Salvador Dali? What do you think of them? Would you have liked to have met Dali, maybe even break bread with him? Let us know your thoughts below in the comments about Basket of Bread or any of his other works.
- See archived article “Breaking Dalinian Bread: On Consuming the Anthropomorphic, Performative, Ferocious, and Eucharistic Loaves of Salvador Dalí” at https://web.archive.org/web/20200730163221/https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/breaking-dalinian-bread-on-consuming-the-anthropomorphic-performative-ferocious-and-eucharistic-loaves-of-salvador-dali/ ↩︎
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism ↩︎
- See supra note 1 ↩︎
- https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/john-6-30-35-2025/ ↩︎
- Dalí, Salvador (1993). The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. New York: Dover Publications. p. 306. ISBN 978-0-486-27454-6. ↩︎