Mae West Lips Sofa

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:

    “Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from.”
    —Mae West, U.S. screenwriter, W.C. Fields, and Edward Cline. Flower Belle Lee (Mae West)

    “There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.”
    —Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    “If the lips are gone, the teeth are cold.”
    —Chinese proverb.

    “Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)