I’m not going to lie to you...there are a lot of animals in this painting that I just don’t recognize.

They actually seem to be combinations of animals rather than just a single species. Picabia just had to make everything complicated.

Everyone will probably see something different but this is our guess as to what species these animals are from left to right.

1. Cyclops/Unicorn/Elephant Seal

2. Chihuahua/Duck

3. Chiton (for its many eyes)/Bull

4. Regular Dog I guess

5. Camel/Woodpecker

Picabia wasn’t the most normal dude, obviously. He had a knack for the surreal in a Doctor Frankenstein kind of way. This painting was made just after he left his Dadaist group of ten years in favor of Surrealism. He decided that the anti-art Dadaists had become too mainstream and just another art movement. He decided to bash all of them in a magazine he started called 391, modeled after his pal, Alfred Steiglitz’s magazine called 291. Ironic that he was the one calling the Dadaists unoriginal after a title like that but whatever…

So Picabia moved to the south of France with his second wife and, as artists are apt to do, fell in love with his son’s governess. In with the new lady friend came a new artistic style. It seems his ADD qualities effected all aspects of Picabia’s life. We aren’t sorry that this disturbing and nightmarish style left as quickly as it came, however. These are exactly the kinds of animals that I pictured lurking under my bed as a child.