Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: A Premonition on Civil War is a painting done in 1936, by the star of Surrealism, Salvador Dalí. It hangs among other paintings of the Surrealist movement in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I was drawn to this work by the strangeness of it. It shows a large human-like mass of body parts looming over you in front of an ominous, foreboding sky-scape. It appeared very mysterious to me, and that …showed first 75 words of 1309 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1309 total…I embellished with a few boiled beans, for one could not imagine swallowing all that unconscious meat without the presence (however uninspiring) of some mealy and melancholy vegetable." (Shanes, 78) Even when you here it from the artist himself, you are still left wondering. This is what is fascinating about Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: A Premonition of Civil War. We can recognize and identify with his feelings, and awe in the way he expresses them.