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Dali Magazine Mall, The Villages, FL (2025)

11/21/2025

Pay your money and take your chances

I’ve done a few posts that included Dali society portraits. In researching those posts I came across an amusing slant on some of them. The source is Meryle Secrest’s book, Salvador Dali, A Biography (pages 185-187).

According to Secrest, Dali was a bit unpredictable about how he portrayed his subject. Sometimes he did it with flattery, sometimes with humor and sometimes with a bit of a barb. Mrs. Harrison Williams, once called the best-dressed woman in the world, was portrayed as being barefoot and wearing a ragged Grecian tunic. (See photo). Princess Gourielli (Helena Rubinstein) was portrayed as being hewn from a granite cliff. She liked it. (See photo).

With the portrait of Chester Dale and his dog, according Secrest, Dale was “depicted showing a solemn and unmistakable resemblance to his poodle”. I’m not sure I see that. (See photo).

Here is what Secrest says about, the French-born wife of William I. Nichols, former editor of This Week Magazine.

“When they decided to commission Dali to do her portrait - it would have to be a sketch, since they could not afford a painting - Gala did all the bargaining. ‘She had a way of jabbing her finger at you. She said, "We will give you a special price", but she wanted cash on the line.' The portrait took about three years of spasmodic sittings. When it eventually arrived, 'It was awful,' Nichols said. 'I had never seen her look so hideous. He made her elderly and ugly, which was unfair because she was, and is, a beautiful woman. Nobody recognized her.' They could not bear to look at it, so it was not even framed but put in a closet.

Sometime later they decided to give it to charity, without thinking that the store was not far from the St Regis and that Dali was in town. One day Mrs. Nichols was lunching at the Caravelle on 55th Street, when she suddenly heard a voice hissing 'Cocul' It was Dali. 'Somebody so stupid as to give away a Dali has to be a cu***ld !' Everyone in the restaurant stood up to look. She was so astounded that she could not say a word. That was not the end of it, either. The Nichols had the misfortune to meet the Dalís shortly afterwards at a Park Avenue dinner party. Dalí told them, 'I just want you to know that I bought the portrait. I keep it and I am sticking pins into it. Because, you see, I have magic and do you know where I am going to stick pins? Into your eyes.' Mrs. Nichols tried to shrug off the incident.”

Sorry I couldn’t find a copy of the portrait. I guess Dali had a bit of a temper and really used it as he said he would!

There are many wonderful and interesting stories about Dali American society portraits in the online book https://www.portraitsbydali.com/ written by Karl Heinz Klumpner and Julia Pine.

11/19/2025

Caresse and Dali again
If you follow my posts, and I hope you do, earlier I had a series on Caresse Crosby and how she helped to get Dali established in this country. Some 14 months after arriving in this country Gala and Dali were set to sail back to Europe on the ship Ile de France on January 19, 1935.

On the night before their departure, Caresse Crosby and Joella Levy (the wife of Julian Levy) hosted a mask ball as a going away party for the couple. They named it “Bal Onirique” or “Dream Ball”. The party was held at the fashionable Le Cog Rouge restaurant in midtown Manhattan. (See photos).

The elites of New York’s high society were invited to come dressed as one of their dreams. Some of the costumes at this Surrealist costume party were apparently as controversial as Dali's paintings. One writer described it as “half-naked women danced with other masquerade bohemian members”. The ball was so scandalous and the press coverage was so negative that apologies were issued the following day.

In 1934 Dali created a small untitled painting that was the basis for the invitations to the ball. I had to Photoshop the painting in order for me to be able to show it here. I was temporarily banned from Facebook earlier for having a photo of Dali with a topless girl far off in the background. Facebook apparently doesn’t like ni***es and I’m not ready to test them on p***c hair. (See altered photo). Also shown is an image of the actual invitation. I blacked out the ni***es and Dali added a modest skirt to the figure for the invitation. Dali believed in recycling since he used an almost identical image that appears in a February 1935 American Weekly story. (See photo).
For the event Dali was dressed as a display case holding a bra in honor of Caresse Crosby who invented the modern-day bra. Dali had his head wrapped in gauze and he was photographed dancing (sorry I could not find it) under a giant cow’s carcass. (See photo of costume).

Gala wore a red cellophane skirt over a pair of shorts. On her head was a baby with a lobster on its head. The baby on the invitation and Gala’s headdress was perceived as a mockery of a recent tragedy, the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby which caused a wave of negative press. Despite ending his first trip to the United States on a sour note, Dali was firmly established in this country as a premiere artist and the face of Surrealism in this country.

11/17/2025

Different worlds
Let’s be honest here, when you and I clean out the old attic and round up all that junk that we no longer want, we have a garage sale. Maybe we get enough money to enjoy a nice meal out that evening for all our hard work that day. The leftovers go to a local charity or thrift store.

That’s not what happens when very rich people decide to get rid of their old stuff. They sell theirs at Sotheby’s or some other place like that but definitely not in their garage. Apparently the heirs of Countess de Cuevas de Vera or “Tota” to her friends decided to get rid of some old stuff that had been collecting dust around the house since the 1930’s. They hauled it off to Sotheby’s and let them deal with hordes of bargain hunters.

It seems that they made more than dinner money on the deal. They had to settle for just under $8,230,000 for two old paintings. See the photos.

Oh apparently they had stuff left over too. They had a bunch of old photographs of “Tota” in a drawer somewhere. The photos were taken in Paris by some man back in 1934. Oh yeah, that was his name, Man Ray. Oh well they all got donated to some museum there in Paris.

So the heirs got rid of their old stuff and probably went out and bought more stuff just like me and you.

11/15/2025

Have a nice weekend!

11/14/2025

The Bonwit Teller Display – One of the Worse pictures of Dali ever

It was March 1939 and Dali once again was hired by Bonwit Teller to create a Surrealist window display for their 5th Ave store in New York. Dali created two window displays that he titled Day (Narcissus) and Night (Sleep).

For "Day," Dali placed in one window an old-fashioned bathtub lined with black Persian lamb and filled with water, from which three wax arms arose holding mirrors. Standing before the tub stood an old Victorian style wax mannequin that Dali had purchased in a second hand store. The mannequin was clothed in green feathers and had long, bright red hair. On the walls, upholstered in purple, small mirrors were fixed here and there, and narcissism was further indicated by narcissuses floating in the tub.
For "Night," Dali showed in another window a mannequin lying on a bed of glowing coals under a stuffed trophy of an animal. Dali described it as "the decapitated head and the savage hoofs of a great somnambulist buffalo extenuated by a thousand years of sleep."

Dali and Bonwit's regular window crew worked all night to finish the displays in time for the store’s opening. Dali then headed back to his hotel for a bit of rest.

Once the store opened, customers complained that the Dali windows were too extreme. By noon Salvador Dali's sleeping mannequin had been replaced by a seated figure, his bather replaced by a glamor dummy in a tailored suit. No one cared, until late in the afternoon when Dali strolled by and saw the changes that had been made to his Freudian designs.

Dali charged into the store and proceeded to jump in the window and was lifting up the tub that was filled with water when it slipped from his hand and both Dali and the tub broke through the store window and spilled onto 5th Avenue. Luckily nobody was injured. Bonwit Teller management was quite upset and had Dali arrested for malicious mischief but later reduced to charges to disorderly conduct. In night court Magistrate Louis B. Brodsky freed the artist with a suspended sentence: The judge stated that "These are some of the privileges that an artist with temperament seems to enjoy."

Unfortunately I don’t think any photos of the window displays exist but here is one of the damage being cleaned up. Lastly, the attached newspaper story about Dali’s release contains what has got to be the worst photo of Dali I have ever seen. Perhaps it is evidence of a news editor making his view of Dali’s art known?

11/12/2025

Bonwitt Teller Window Display

No this isn’t about THAT Bonwit Teller display. This is a story about the first one.

Stewart and Company
Stewart and company was a very upscale department store that built a 12 story edifice in 1929 on the corner of 5th Ave and 56th Street in New York. Previously it was the site of five private townhouses built in the late 1890’s by William Waldorf Astor. The store was the epitome of elegance and style.

Stewart was unfortunately the victim of poor timing. The stock market crash and onset of the Great Depression caused them to declare bankruptcy and their store was taken over by Bonwitt Teller in September 1930. Bonwitt Teller then became one of the best upscale stores of the “carriage trade” section of 5th Avenue along with Saks and B. Altman.

In 1936 in conjunction with a Dali exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1936 (see photo of catalog) Bonwit Teller had a Surrealist window display by Dali titled “She was a surrealist woman ● She was like a figure in a dream.”

Pictured is Bonwit Teller’s ad for the window display, the window display itself and a later newspaper story that included Dali’s window display.

The display consisted of a manikin whose head was made of red roses and who had fingernails of ermine fur. On a table, a telephone transformed into a lobster; hanging on a chair was Dali’s “aphrodisiac coat”. By all accounts the display was a success.

In 1980 Donald Trump bought the property and demolished it to build Trump Towers. Bonwit Teller relocated around the corner and is attached to Trump Tower’s indoor mall.

11/11/2025

My friend and faithful follower of my posts here, Mickael Mamou is holding an expo of his collection from December to February in France. I wish him great success on this project.

11/10/2025

Dali Window Displays
Most Dali fans are somewhat familiar with Dali wrecking his Bonwit Teller window display, falling through the plate glass window and landing on the street and into jail. Do you think that was the first window display by Dali? No it wasn’t.

The Chants of Maldoror
The scene was Paris in the early 1930’s. One of the Surrealist favorite works was the 18th century book by Comte de Lautreamont titled Les Chants de Maldoror. It was a poetic novel that describes a perverse and violent protagonist who had renounced God and conventional morality.

None other than Pablo Picasso suggested to Swiss publisher Albert Skira that Dali be commissioned to create a series of intaglio prints for a new edition. Dali was chosen and between 1932 and 1934 Dali produced the intaglios for the book. When the book was published in 1934, it was showcased at the Librairie Les Quatre Chemins in Paris. Two photographs of that display taken by Man Ray are show here.

The back of the first photograph has a handwritten note by Dali that says:
“Vitrine (showcase) for the exhibition of Les Chants de Maldoror which we have been forced to remove, for aesthetic reasons and because the public was crowding round and interrupting circulation. The legs of the chair were submerged, one in a shoe, another in a glass containing milk, another in another glass containing urine, and another in another glass containing blood. In the centre of the chair there is a raw steak.”

As you can see, even Dali’s first display window had its problems.
For those of you with sharp eyes you might notice that one of the books in that window display is Dali’s 1932 Babaouo. Dali, always a promoter. Attached are just a few of the 42 etchings, on Arches paper.

11/07/2025

You Can’t Please Everybody
I ran across two newspaper stories from 1954 that said Dali was suing Mrs. Ann Woodward for refusing to pay for a portrait that he made of her (see photos). He was suing her for $7,000. That doesn’t sound like much but in today’s dollars that is just under $74,000. Just who was this lady to get into a very public fight with Dali?

She grew up in Kansas and moved to New York and pursued a career in acting and modeling. In 1940 she was voted “The Most Beautiful Girl in Radio”. While working as a showgirl in a NY nightclub she met William Woodward Sr., a wealth heir to a banking fortune and a successful horse farm in Maryland. Through him she met and wed his son “Billy” in 1943 (see photo).

The couple had two sons but in 1947 Billy asked for a divorce. Ann refused because she did not want to give up her newfound wealth and status. As a result, the couple had a strained relationship after that. In 1955, after a string of robberies in the area, Ann shot and killed her husband with two blasts from a shotgun supposedly mistaking him for a burglar. She was never indicted but the public sentiment was that she killed him and her acceptance into high society ended. Life Magazine dubbed it “The Shooting of the Century”. (See photos)

In 1975 Truman Capote was writing a book titled Answered Prayers which included a thinly veiled account of the incident in which he basically accused her of outright murder. Not wanting to go through all that again, Ann killed herself by taking a cyanide pill but not before having her makeup done perfectly. A year later her youngest son committed su***de and her second son took his life in 1999.

Did Dali get his $7,000? You bet he did and “The Most Beautiful Girl in Radio” wasn’t beautiful where it counted.

11/05/2025

I get a kick out of Dali but apparently others do too but in a different way. Here’s a small blurb that appeared in the Wednesday October 8, 1952 issue of the Australian (Launceston, Tasmania ) newspaper Examiner:

Dali Routine
The world-famous painter, Salvador Dali kicked a notary down stairs at his Barcelona house on Monday when the notary tried to serve him with a document claiming damages against him for having kicked another man down stairs.

First of all, I know they got it wrong about where Dali’s house was located but you have to give them credit for not referring to Dali as a little Tasmanian devil. After all he could have just been practicing for this famous Halsman picture that appeared on the cover of the 2004 Arte Y Parte magazine.

11/03/2025

Funny or Mean Spirited

Salvador Dali is featured on three covers of a Spanish satirical magazine called Sal Y Pimienta (Salt and Pepper). They do a very good job of peppering their cover subjects with very unflattering caricatures and then inside they pour some more salt on the wound. Dali got no special treatment as you can see from the three covers.

One that I thought was a bit over the top is the issue from 1987. That was a time when Dali was ailing badly. He managed to hang on (most say suffered) for two more years until his death on January 23, 1989. To me the first two are funny but the last one I find mean spirited. How about you?

Dali Magazine Mall

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