But we may finally have the answer: these billboards were encrypted replicas of Salvador Dalí paintings. Returning to Ballard’s billboards in the context of his love of Dalí, a picture begins to emerge that links the esoteric words, names and phrases with soon-to-be-published stories. One billboard, “mr f is mr. f”, refers to Ballard’s 1961 surrealist short story of the same name. Another of Ballard’s billboards, T-12, mirrors Dalí’s 1931 painting Persistence of Memory. As with the “mr f is mr. f” billboard, the text stands in for objects and figures in Dalí’s painting.

Source: The Guardian January 19, 2017 13:28 UTC