A pomegranate and a painting

Have you ever wondered why there’s a pomegranate in Salvador Dali’s painting “Sting Caused by the Flight of a Bee…”? You know the Spanish artist? I’m sure you’re familiar with the picture I’m talking about, or maybe not. After all, it’s pretty complex to explain (that’s perhaps why you don’t remember it as well as say those warped watches and time pieces in the most well-known of his paintings, “The Persistence of Memory”), so let me describe it to you.

Right slap bang in the middle (well okay, a little towards the bottom) there’s a naked belle of a woman splayed across a rock, or okay more like hovering above it. The bayonet of a gun is sticking into her arm and above her are two angry looking tigers, lunging at her with their paws outstretched. The one tiger is jumping out of an orange fish (a sort of massive goldfish), which in turn looks like it’s just emerged from a large pomegranate, the hard shell of its exposed skin broken apart to reveal a bed of red seeds. In the background you can see a strange elephant, walking on stilts in the clear blue sea, while in the foreground another pomegranate, a smaller one, hovers below the belle.

What I was getting at is, have you ever wondered why there’s a pomegranate there and not say, I don’t know, an apple or peach or perhaps a bunch of grapes? Probably, you didn’t, right?

The full name of the painting is “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening”

So you gotta agree with me here, for it to be in the actual title, the pomegranate must be quite important. I heard some say it actually holds the whole thing together. Others say that the pomegranate was the true inspiration for how the entire painting got started in the first place. Take away the pomegranate and what do you really have?

But does anyone ever ask how those pomegranates got into Dali’s painting in the first place? No, they don’t. People ask about the woman, like who is she (the Belle is apparently modelled after Gala and her name is painted on the rock above which she is floating – Dali finished the painting while he and Gala were living in the US during the Second World War)? Or they ask about those tigers, like how come did he paint them so realistically if they are virtually jumping out at you when you look at the painting? Or maybe they ask where exactly that backdrop (the sea and rocky outcrop near the horizon and the rocks the Belle is hovering above) was taken from (some say it’s Portlligat, a small bay on Spain’s Costa Brava). But do they ever ask about the pomegranate?

Or more importantly, did they ever mention my great-uncle Fred? In family circles he’s a legend. His name comes up every now and then when at a family dinner the subject turns to art. Like when someone, be it uncle Tony or my sister Luisa mentions that they were in this or that city on holiday and visited an art gallery. No one has to even mention the name Dali and you can be sure someone will have steered the conversation to great-uncle Fred (we usually just call him great Fred for short, which is how I’ll refer to him here).

The story has been doing the rounds I don’t know, for years now. It feels like a hundred years. You see Great Fred ran a grocery store in Manhattan, New York. You could call it a bodega. His father or his father’s father started it. And then one day Great Fred found himself overseeing the place himself.

Back then each day was the same. They’d bring in the fruit and he’d pay them and lay the fruit out in baskets in the front of his store. It was on a busy stretch of a street near Union Square, I don’t remember exactly which street even though I pass the place occasionally still, on the way to work. I have to say the store looks like any other bodega you see around Brooklyn, Queens or Manhattan.

Great Fred said many big guys came in there, guys in suits, sports stars in baseball caps. And then one day, a day like any other, this guy in a cheap suit comes in, with jet black hair and Latin looks. And this long pencil-thin moustache. Great Fred said the moustache really got him. Said it looked ornamental. Anyhow the guy was apparently looking for fruit. Said he needed it for a painting he was making. The story goes that Great Fred asked him what kind of work it was and that Dali just stared at him. I think at that point he was annoyed that Great Fred didn’t recognise him. He says he watched the man as he grabbed a basket and began collecting apples and pears and bananas, all kinds of fruit. He took some vegetables too. When he was just about done, Great Fred told him that he should come back in a few minutes because he was expecting delivery of some pomegranates. A shipment was due in from California, was he interested? Great Fred said the man stared at him, paid what he owed and said if he had time he would return later. So, what did Great Fred do? He followed the great artist. All the way to his apartment a few blocks away. He then waited to see which door he entered so that he knew where he lived. Then he returned to his shop.

Great Fred said he waited the entire day for that shipment of pomegranates. It was a long day, was all he remembered. It was already dark and he was preparing to close up when he spotted the truck coming down the street. Apparently they’d had engine trouble somewhere just outside New York. Back in those days everything came in by road or rail. This shipment was all by road. It was crazy the time you had to spend on the road back then. Great Fred was pretty mad. He told the guy, who could hardly speak English by the sound of it, that he’d been waiting all day for the pomegranates, which a great Spanish artist had ordered. I don’t think they quite got it.

Anyhow, by the time Great Fred drove over to the apartment where Dali was staying, it must have been after 10 or something. He had two wooden crates on the back seat of his Chevrolet. He took one of the crates out of the back, and climbed the stairs. But when he reached the entrance to Dali’s apartment he hesitated. Perhaps at this hour the great artist was asleep. Or perhaps he was in bed with Gala, or out at a show. He says he almost turned around and left, but that just as he was about to knock on the door, someone appeared in the window opposite the entrance, a woman. When he saw her he held up a pair of pomegranates. He heard what sounded like a woman’s voice call out to someone inside the apartment. Then the door opened. Before him stood the great artist, in a dressing gown. He looked annoyed. What, he demanded to know, at this hour was this man doing there before his door.

Great Fred showed him the crate of pomegranates and ever the salesman, told him he’d throw in another crate free of charge, if he took this one. The great artist took hold of one of the pomegranates and turning it around in the palm of his hand, slowly inspected it, tapping on it with one finger and even putting his ear to its hard skin. Then he nodded and told Great Fred to bring the two crates in, that though it was late, he would take both crates. Great Fred said when he entered the place was a mess. Clothes were draped over furniture, magazines and books stacked high on the carpeted floor and there were a pile of loose papers in one corner of the living room. On the walls hung what Great Fred could only describe as strange, but very colourful, paintings. A sort of dream world is how Great Fred said they looked. The great artist shuffled along, in his dressing gown which hung loosely from his wiry frame. On the way to the kitchen he passed a small room, and as the door was half open he spied an easel propped up inside, with a smallish canvas resting on top of it.

As he put the two crates down on a table in the kitchen, which just like the living room looked a mess, with dirty plates piled up in the sink and various boxes and cans of food lying about on the kitchen counter, he asked the great artist what it was that he was currently working on. He said the great artist simply shrugged his shoulders and told him that it wasn’t yet finished. Great Fred could’ve stopped there and taken the money and disappeared, but he didn’t. Instead he lingered, and asked the great artist if he could show him how far he was with the painting.

In an English strained by his Spanish accent, the great artist said that he wasn’t expecting any visitors at this late hour. He should come back another time. But Fred, the ever insistent salesman wasn’t letting up. After all he’d never been in the house of a great artist before. Please, show me, he asked. But it’s not yet finished, insisted the great artist. In fact, I have hardly begun. But since you are so persistent, I will allow you a quick look and then you must be on your way. They left the kitchen, with Great Fred in tow. He pushed the half-open door aside and waved his arm in the direction of the easel. Great Fred stared at the canvas, at a light blue sky and two thirds down the canvas, at a darker blue that was the sea. His eyes moved to a bright red apple, floating above an area where the light blue of the sky met the dark blue of the sea. As you can see, I have only just begun.

The great artist seemed to be watching intently for Great Fred’s reaction. What, you don’t like it?

Well, like you said, you have only just started, said Great Fred.

It’s the sea, isn’t it? suggested the great artist. Is it too dark? I could make it lighter.

The sea is fine, said Great Fred.

Okay, then is it the sky that troubles you?

Well, said Great Fred.

Yes, okay, it is too empty.

Yes, perhaps, said Great Fred.

Look, you can tell me what it is that is bothering you, the great artist said.

Well, said Great Fred, whose eye had cast on the apple.

Aaah, said the great artist. It is the apple, no?

Well, said Great Fred, not wanting to say anything out of turn, for who was he but a mere fruit and vegetable seller. The great artist came closer to the painting as if studying the brush strokes he’d used or perhaps the shading on the apple. Then he took a number of steps back, right to the door and turning, he studied the painting again, his chin resting on his hand.  

Great Fred, all this time, had been thinking about the pomegranates. It was after all the reason he’d come all this way at this hour, to the great artist’s apartment. But perhaps he had overstayed his welcome.

Mr Dali, I think I should be going now. Be sure to let me know about those pomegranates, how you found them.

He said that at that very moment he saw the great artist’s eyebrows rise and his eyes fill with that intense look of shock that would come to characterise him in publicity shots for years to come. He then muttered something excitedly in Spanish and called out Gala’s name. Pomegranates. Mister you are quite right. Bring me one of those crates, he heard him say. It was as if he had triggered something wild and fanciful in the great artist’s mind. He had barely set the crate down on the floor when the great artist snatched the biggest pomegranate of the lot that he could see, and then placing it at his mouth, he tore feverishly at it with his teeth, and then spat sending the hard shell scattering out onto the floor.

Great Fred said it was then that wry smile came across his mouth, as he held the pomegranate a loft. Gala, who had entered at that moment, and Great Fred stood and watched this scene unfold.

Great Fred says he was still in shock as Gala led him to the front door. She thanked him for delivering the pomegranates. Until his visit, the great artist, she said, had for days been in quite a mood. She couldn’t thank him more and handed over to him payment for the two crates, with a little extra on top, for making the delivery at such a late hour.

Of course Great Fred never thought much of this. Sure, he’d mention it to friends or family, something like he’d delivered pomegranates to a great artist. But no one took much notice of it.  Until a couple of years later when he and was at a newsstand and caught sight of a big black and white photo of the great artist himself adorning the front cover of one of the magazines, I think it was Life. There was no mistaking that moustache, the slicked back hair and those eyes as they stared intensely out at you, in a sort of demented way. He grabbed hold of it and paging through it he came across the story and an image of the artist next to a painting with a backdrop of sea and sky that looked surprising familiar. “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” read the caption beneath the image. Pomegranate? Great Fred strained his eyes and sure enough on the left-hand side of the painting, where the light blue of the sea met the sky, was the unmistakable image of a pomegranate. Even as a black-and-white photo, he could recognise the hard shell of the fruit, torn open to reveal its needle-like seeds and fleshy insides. But he still had to ask the news agent seated there, if what he saw was a pomegranate or not. He held it up and the news agent studied it. Says here, pomegranate in the name of the painting, what more would you want to know, he said in a disinterested way. Will I’ll be darned, thought Great Fred.

Great Fred said he’d gone back to the apartment to congratulate the great artist, or to just see if he wanted any more pomegranates. But that when he got there he was told that he and Gala no longer lived there and the new owners couldn’t say where the couple were now living. Legend has it, that years later still he and Aunt Flora had landed up at some museum in Madrid, you know to see the real thing. And that standing there behind the rope, a few metres back from the painting he’d almost wanted to tell everyone present that it was he who had provided the great artist with the idea to use a pomegranate. But likely, they wouldn’t understand. Instead he’d smiled quietly to himself and turning to Aunt Flora had told her, come let’s get out of here and go get something to drink. How about some freshly squeezed pomegranate juice? I heard it’s really good around here.

---