Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards, Cookbook & Wine Guide Re-Issued as Beautiful Art Books

Main­tain­ing an aggres­sive­ly upward-waxed mus­tache; mak­ing a sur­re­al­ist film with Luis Buñuel that Buñuel described as “noth­ing more than a des­per­ate impas­sioned call for mur­der”; bring­ing an anteater on The Dick Cavett Show: Sal­vador Dalí can be described as a mas­ter of atten­tion-grab­bing gam­bits, by his admir­ers and detrac­tors alike. No won­der, then, that he appears to have some seri­ous admir­ers at Taschen. Known as a pub­lish­er of books that draw a great deal of press for their bound­ary-push­ing size, con­tent, and pro­duc­tion val­ues, Taschen would seem to be a nat­ur­al home for Dalí’s lega­cy, or at least the parts of it that fit between two cov­ers.

Besides his well-known and much-reprint­ed paint­ings, Dalí left behind a body of work also includ­ing not just film but sculp­ture, pho­tog­ra­phy, archi­tec­ture, and books. His first pub­lished vol­ume, 1938’s The Trag­ic Myth of the Angelus of Mil­let, offers a “para­noiac-crit­i­cal” inter­pre­ta­tion of the tit­u­lar pas­toral paint­ing by Jean-François Mil­let. In the 1940s he wrote, among oth­er books, The Secret Life of Sal­vador Dalí, a kind of auto­bi­og­ra­phy, and Hid­den Faces, a nov­el set among aris­toc­ra­cy in France, Moroc­co, and Cal­i­for­nia.

It was in the 1970s that Dalí’s lit­er­ary efforts took a less pre­dictable turn: 1973 saw the pub­li­ca­tion of his Les Din­ers de Gala, a cook­book fea­tur­ing such recipes as “Veal Cut­lets Stuffed with Snails,” “Thou­sand Year Old Eggs,” and “Tof­fee with Pine Cones.” In 1978 came The Wines of Gala, a per­son­al guide to “Wines of Friv­o­li­ty,” “Wines of Sen­su­al­i­ty,” “Wines of Aes­theti­cism,” and oth­ers besides. In recent years, Taschen has reprint­ed Dalí’s food and wine books with char­ac­ter­is­tic hand­some­ness. Those two now sit in the Taschen Dalí col­lec­tion along­side Dalí: The Paint­ings, the most com­plete such col­lec­tion ever pub­lished, and Dalí Tarot, a pack­age that includes not just the Dalí-designed tarot deck orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1984 but a com­pan­ion book by tarot schol­ar Johannes Fiebig.

Dalí’s wife and savvy busi­ness man­ag­er Gala — she of all those din­ners and wines — would sure­ly approve of the skill and taste that Taschen has put into pack­ag­ing even the artist’s minor work as a viable 21st-cen­tu­ry prod­uct. Well-heeled Dalí enthu­si­asts will sure­ly con­tin­ue to pay Taschen prices for such pack­ages, and even the less well-heeled ones can’t help but won­der what future reprints are on the table: lav­ish new edi­tions of Hid­den Faces, The Secret Life, or even 1948’s 50 Secrets of Mag­ic Crafts­man­ship (with its endorse­ment of pow­er nap­ping)? Dare we hope for the defin­i­tive Sal­vador Dalí Bible?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

The Most Com­plete Col­lec­tion of Sal­vador Dalí’s Paint­ings Pub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful New Book by Taschen: Includes Nev­er-Seen-Before Works

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Illus­trat­ed by Sal­vador Dalí in 1969, Final­ly Gets Reis­sued

Sal­vador Dalí’s Illus­tra­tions for The Bible (1963)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.