This is a classic example of a Surrealist object, made from the conjunction of items not normally associated with each other, resulting in something both playful and menacing.

For the 1939 New York World's Fair, Dalí created a multi-media experience entitled Dream of Venus,[2] which consisted in part of dressing live nude models in "costumes" made of fresh seafood, an event photographed by Horst P. Horst and George Platt Lynes.

[1] In 1935, Dalí was commissioned by the magazine American Weekly to execute a series of drawings based on his impressions of New York.

In the Dictionnaire Abrégé du Surréalisme of 1938, Dalí contributed an entry under 'TÉLÉPHONE APHRODISIAQUE' which is accompanied by a small drawing of a telephone, its receiver replaced by a lobster surrounded by flies.

A similar drawing is printed in The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí which contains the following: "I do not understand why, when I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, I am never served a cooked telephone; I do not understand why champagne is always chilled and why on the other hand telephones, which are habitually so frightfully warm and disagreeably sticky to the touch, are not also put in silver buckets with crushed ice around them.