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Illustration

Return of the Salvador Dalí Tarot

Last Modified December 13, 2019 Leave a Comment

When most people think about Salvador Dalí, the first thing that comes to mind is likely his mind-bending work as one of the vanguards of surrealism—melting clocks, spindly-limbed monsters, bizarre tableaus that tread the line between dreamscape and nightmare… either that or his trademark mustache. 

However, Dalí’s oeuvre is not simply limited to oil paintings; throughout his career, he dabbled in a wide variety of eccentric and surprising formats. He made sculptures, cookbooks, wine guides, designed sets for plays and operas, and even collaborated on an animated film with Walt Disney. One of the most unique undertakings of his career though is undoubtedly the infamous Dalí tarot deck, which has been a highly-sought and hard to find collector’s item since its original release in the mid-80s. Well, good news: the Dalí tarot deck is back, and it’s better than ever.

Return of the Dali Tarot Deck

Taschen, the publisher behind a number of high-end hardcover volumes of Dalí’s work, has recently re-released the Dalí tarot deck as a beautiful 78-card box set. Included with the deck itself is an insightful companion book by author and tarot scholar Johannes Fiebig, which delves into Dalí’s life and process while completing his tarot series. The book also provides detailed information on the history of tarot, explanations of what the individual cards mean, and instructions on how to perform your own readings with the deck. The addition of Fiebig’s book elevates the previous version of the deck by making it one of those rare art objects that are not only inspiring to behold, but also functional to use.

Although it’s easy to imagine Dalí deciding to delve into tarot cards on a psychedelic whim, his original impetus for creating the deck is perhaps even stranger than the fact that he made one at all. The deck was commissioned by famed film producer Albert Broccoli as a prop for the classic 1973 James Bond film Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour. In the film, Seymour plays a psychic medium called Solitaire who uses tarot cards to track the legendary MI6 spy James Bond. Legend has it that after Dalí began working on the deck it became clear that his fees would be too high for the production to afford, so Broccoli decided to scrap the idea and the tarot deck prop was cut from the film.

Thankfully, Dalí’s wife Gala encouraged his interest in mysticism and the occult, and he became so enamored with the process of creating the tarot deck that he continued to work on it for more than a decade. 

Many of the cards themselves feature Dalí’s interpretations of classic works of art, such as Vincenzo Camuccini’s The Death of Julius Caesar, which stands in for the Ten of Swords. As a tribute to Gala, he included her likeness in the deck as the figure of the Empress, which is quite an appropriate choice, since the Empress represents the creation of life, romance, and art. Dalí also included himself in the deck as the figure of the Magician, which represents self-confidence and signifies success in upcoming ventures. When he finally completed the tarot deck in 1984, the original limited edition was lauded by tarot readers and Dalí fans alike and quickly sold out, so it seems that his casting of himself as the magician was indeed a prophetic choice… fated by the cards, perhaps?

For a particularly surreal tarot experience, and as a supplement to Fiebig’s guide, try combining the Dalí tarot deck with surrealist filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s series of instructional tarot YouTube videos, in which he provides in-depth lessons on the history and practice of tarot reading, as well as personalized readings for followers of his channel. Jodorowsky and Dalí were contemporaries, and Dalí was even slated to appear in Jodorowsky’s ill-fated attempt to make a big-budget version of the sci-fi classic Dune. Although there’s no evidence that the two surrealist visionaries ever discussed their mutual interest in tarot, at least not on record, it’s fun to imagine what that conversation would have been like; one has to assume it would have been either extremely profound or completely incomprehensible.

Until the new Taschen edition, which was released this past November, original copies of the deck were extremely hard to come by, selling for upwards of $500 on online auction websites like eBay. The 2019 version of the deck is much more affordable, retailing on Taschen’s website for $60 USD. It makes a perfect gift for any lover of Dalí’s artwork, or just tarot cards in general. So if you want to take a surreal glimpse into your future, or just have some fun with your open-minded, art-loving friends, there’s no better way to do so than with a tarot deck designed by the inimitable Salvador Dalí.

Surrealism meets Symbolism in Salvador Dalí’s tarot deck

Combining the occult with his own unmistakable sensibility, Dalí’s tarot is a pastiche of old-world art, surrealism, kitsch, Christian iconography and Greek and Roman sculpture.

— openculture.com

Deck of 78 tarot cards with booklet in a box, 7.4 x 13 in., 184 pages

Pre-Order Dali’s Tarot Deck.

Further Reading:

Salvador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Will Tell Your Surreal Future
Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Tarot Card Designs from the 1970’s to be Released as a Complete Deck
Salvador Dalí’s surreal tarot cards from the ’70s and ’80s being reissued

Filed Under: Book Tagged With: Alegorical, Conceptual, Figurative, Illustration, Juxtaposition, Mysticism, Painterly, Psychological

Genres: Mystical and Occult, Surrealism

Gadzooxtian

Last Modified November 11, 2019 Leave a Comment

Biography

Melbourne artist Xtian was conceived in East Germany but born in Hungary – that makes him one part Australian and two parts former communist.

He’s been actively collaging for two-plus decades – but is not adverse to making music or short animations. His works can best be described as questions, or “edge of comprehension”. He has exhibited and been published both locally and overseas – most recently by Oyster Moon Press’ Hydrolith 2: Surrealist Research & Investigations.

He is also one half of the now ten-year-old – and still growing! – exquisite corpse project The Infinite Collage (close to 80m long!), and is the creator of the longest-running surreal collage comic series The Micturating Angel.

Xtian is the founder of Melbourne Kollage Ultra, and a contributing member of a number of other collage groups.

Artist Statement

(Before you proceed: the images are an extract from a much larger work.)

“…too arty for comic book lovers, too comic booky for art lovers…”

Do you like comics? So do I. Marvel? Hell no! Okay, we’re gonna be friends then.

This is not an “artist statement” – that will come some other time. This is an introduction to “The Micturating Angel”. A spiel. A sales-pitch. But not an explanation – maybe an excuse? A necessary use of words to explain images that have already said all they can?

Do you like comics? I mean REAL comics, like Charles Burns’ stuff, or Druillet’s or Kago Shintaro or Nihei Tsutomu? Or “The Sandman” series by Neil Gaiman?

Right.

But what about weird stuff by the original Surrealists and the Dadas? Are you familiar with Max Ernst’s collage novels or Gilliam’s animations from Monty Python? What about free jazz, avant-garde music and the writings of William Burroughs? The (good) films of David Lynch? Those books from the 90s put out by V. Vale, the “REsearch” books? Are you familiar with the æsthetics of early industrial music culture or with the visuals of punk underground collages and photocopy art?

Am I laying this on too thick?

You wanted a statement, an introduction, so a schooling you’re gonna get, son.

Right. We’ve established the basics, so meet “The Micturating Angel”, the “Naked Lunch” of comic books! I unashamedly call it a comic, ‘graphic novels’ are for pretentious twats. But its a comic with a fatal flaw: too arty for comic book lovers, too comic booky for art lovers – where do you draw the line?

Why even draw it? (And why even draw a comic in the first place?)

I grew up in Eastern Europe, pre-Fall-of-Communism, so my background is a little different from yours. I read mostly French comics translated into Magyar, I read nonsense literature from Germany and local writers and science books (never became an astronaut though). Emigration was a grand adventure and high school was a ridiculous shock: all the beauty of learning coupled with everyone hammering a round peg into a square whole.

Squares man. They can be so beautiful when they’re not people.

Like the panels of a comic book. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In high school, I invented surrealist writing – not being aware of its well-established existence. It saved my brain for greater things. Eventually, I met some actual surrealists, some actual poets, and artists and some actual interesting life.

And here we are today – and I’d like you to meet my children – The Micturating Angels (there’s more than one).

Q: What does “micturating” mean?
A: Pissing.
Q: Wut?
A: It’s all you get.

A surreal collage art-comic series seven years in the making (and counting). Somewhere between 2ooo – 3ooo collages in total, including the guest stars, the Secret Chiefs (guys in charge of this here Cosmos). Unraveling the adventures and sanity levels of young girls against their captive, oppressive world (is this a feminist comic? I don’t know…). Young girls against crappy old men and institutions, religious zealots, ignorance vs. science, freaks!

Drawing on source materials ranging from hardware catalogues to religious imagery to medical illustrations, alchemical instructions, furniture assembly instructions, “dirty” comics, mangas, giallos, and cannibalistic self-re-absorptions, the “Necronomicon” (containing not all but most of the sigils of the “Fifty Sacred Names of Marduk”), engineer’s manuals and mathematical formulæ

– do you still like comic books?

Then you’ll love this one! Playing with the conventions of comics to create striking visuals, adventures revealed through non-linear story-telling and complete non-sense dialogue – yes, the words are a red herring – “The Micturating Angel” is a unique comic that will never be understood by anyone – and that makes it an enduring mystery, I hope. (Aren’t questions better than answers? No, they’re not. But Bigfoot is more interesting when you DON’T know that it’s just mountain-lion footprints.)

And there it is. My seven-year Grand Opus, unlike its predecessors (all the other books I’ve made), and a never to be repeated exercise by me. And I WANT you to enjoy it! I really do, I want you to look beyond the confusion, I want you to stop trying to make sense of it and revel in what it actually IS: an ever-shifting series of nightmares laid out like the storyboard of a Hollywood blockbuster that will never be made.

Welcome aboard. I hope you like THIS comic.

– Xtian, 2019

“I LOVE your collage work! It is VERY surreal… your comics are great! … Good luck with your project!”
– Rev. Ivan Stang, Church of the Subgenius

“… a very original comic…”
– Surrealismo Internacional

Books: lulu.com/spotlight/gadzooxtian
Prints: redbubble.com/people/Gadzooxtian
Facebook: facebook.com/The-Micturating-Angel-1609957469288457
Site: gadzooxtian.com

Filed Under: Collage, Comic Tagged With: Black and White, Conceptual, Disintegration, Figurative, Illustration, Juxtaposition, Psychological, Whimsical

Genres: Low Brow and Pop Surrealism, Surrealism

Anis Tabaraee

Last Modified August 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

Dialog
Dream
Duality
Heritage
Match
Meeting
Patriarch
Remained by Anis Tarabee
Sensation by Anis Tarabee
Triple

Biography

Anis Tabaraee (Tehran, 1989) graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design in 2013 and an MA in illustration in 2018 from Tehran University of Art. Her art has been exhibited internationally.

Artist Statement

I am passionate about representing and expressing the world around me. I manipulate and exaggerate the details in the forms of creatures to create new and interesting worlds. I love to convey the Eastern mythos and mood in my art. I attempt to weave the threads from the rich historical tapestry of Eastern stories into my contemporary art. Work is strongly my culture, such as the sphinxes.

I draw with a ballpoint pen. This tool delicate lines and sharp color. It also helps me to develop my inspirations more easily to be close in my style. It’s also easy to be carried to every place that I have time to draw. I can pick it and start drawing even when I sit on a chair at subway to reach my destination.

I continue to develop my ideas to one day make an illustrated book of imaginary creatures.

Links:
Buy Anis Tabaraee Prints
instagram.com/anistabaraee
facebook.com/anis-tabaraee

Filed Under: Drawing Tagged With: Alegorical, Animals, Figurative, Illustration, Limited Color Palette, Lyrical, Monster, Mysticism

Genres: Surrealism

Toshiko Okanoue

Last Modified February 25, 2019 Leave a Comment

Born in 1928, in Kochi, Japan, Toshiko Okanoue grew up in Tokyo. She began to make photo collages while she was studying fashion design and drawing in Bunka Gakuin in the early 1950s. When she first began working, she had very little art historical knowledge, and knew nothing of the Surrealist movement.

In post-war Japan, a shortage of goods and materials meant the country was flooded with commodities from foreign countries. Okanoue used fragments from Western fashion magazines such as Life, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, to create radical compositions combining body parts, animals and inanimate objects in dynamic arrangements. Although the component parts of her collages originated from Western sources, Okanoue herself regarded her technique of image making as deeply rooted in Japanese tradition. She thought of her works as a form of hari-e (‘hari’ meaning pasting and ‘e’ meaning a picture in Japanese), a traditional Japanese technique of making pictures by pasting small pieces of coloured paper onto pasteboard.

It was only in 1952, upon meeting the poet and artist Shuzo Takiguchi, that Okanoue found her own place in art history. Takiguchi was a leading figure of the Surrealist movement in Japan, and introduced Okanoue to the works of the famous Surrealist, Max Ernst, whose style had a decisive influence on her. During the subsequent six years, Okanoue produced over 100 works. Her collages remained idiosyncratic and dreamlike in their juxtaposition of contradictory imagery. In 1953 and 1956, she held solo exhibitions at Takemiya Gallery, Tokyo. However, as with many Japanese women of this era, her marriage in 1957 ended her artistic career.

Okanoue returned to her hometown of Kochi, where she now lives. She is married to the painter Fujino Kazutomo. Her work faded into obscurity and was overlooked for almost 40 years. However, it was rediscovered by the curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in the mid 1990s, and has since gained recognition for its contribution to the Japanese avant-garde. In 1996 her works was shown in Meguro Museum of Art, and has subsequently been collected by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

– via huxleyparlour.com/toshiko-okanoue-a-surrealist-in-japan/

Meeting - Toshiko Okanoue
Toshiko Okanoue - Autumn - 1954
Toshiko Okanoue - Full of Life - 1954
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Toshiko Okanoue
Toshiko Okanoue 3
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Toshiko Okanoue 12
Toshiko Okanoue 13
Toshiko Okanoue- in love - 1953
Toshiko Okanoue- The Miracle of Silence 2
Toshiko Okanoue- The Miracle of Silence 3
Toshiko Okanoue- The Miracle of Silence 4
Toshiko Okanoue- The Miracle of Silence 5
Toshiko Okanoue- The Miracle of Silence
Toshiko Okanoue
toshiko-okanoue-noblewoman-1954-from-the-miracle-of-silence-nazraeli-press-2007

Filed Under: Collage Tagged With: Alegorical, Black and White, Conceptual, Figurative, Found Materials, Illustration, Juxtaposition, Psychological, Victorian

Genres: Surrealism

Victo Ngai

Last Modified November 30, 2018 Leave a Comment

Forbes 30 Under (Art and Style) honoree and Society of Illustrators New York Gold Medalist Victo Ngai 倪傳婧 is a Los Angeles based illustrator from Hong Kong, graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. “Victo” is not a boy nor a typo, but a nickname derived from Victoria – a leftover from the British colonization.
Victo provides illustrations for newspaper and magazines such as the New York Times and the New Yorker; create storyboards and art for animations with studios like NBC and Dreamworks ; makes books for publishers such as Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Folio Society and Macmillan; and works on packaging and advertisement campaigns for Apple, Johnnie Walker, American Express, Lufthansa Airline and General Electric.
Victo has also taught at the School of Visual Art New York, the Illustration Academy and gives guest lectures and workshop at universities and conferences, this has become her favorite excuse to visit different cities.
Apart from drawing, Victo’s biggest passions are traveling and eating. She’s hoping that one day she will save up enough to travel around the world and sample all kinds of cuisines.

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victo-ngai.com

Filed Under: Drawing Tagged With: Figurative, Illustration, Juxtaposition, Landscape, Lyrical

Genres: Surrealism

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