This weird landscape of corrugated fortifications, watchtowers, earthworks and unnameable molten forms, with a sundial and flying whiskers, is rendered subterranean or sub-aqueous by the ambiguity of the ‘sky’, which seems to be solid. It belongs to a series of works called ‘les coulées’ (flowing forms) inspired by a visit to Tunis in 1930, where Tanguy was impressed by the African landscape. The strangeness of this vision resembles a nightmare: this is characteristic of Surrealism’s interest in the irrational activity of the sub-conscious as expressed in dream.