The Mae West Lips Sofa (1937) is a surrealist sofa by Salvador Dalí. The wood-and-satin sofa was shaped after the lips of actress Mae West, whom Dalí apparently found fascinating. It measures 86.5 x 183 x 81.5 cm.
Edward James, a rich British patron of the Surrealists in the 1930s, commissioned this piece from Dali.
Famous quotes containing the words mae west, west, lips and/or sofa:
“Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success—had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.”
—Mae West (1892–1980)
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“For his lips could well pronounce
Words that were persuasions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)