Salvador Dali and his joint project with Playboy
At an unusual creative meeting between Salvador Dali and Playboy magazine, submissive and erotic goddesses from other planets listened to instructions and allowed the master of surrealism to place them in his world charged with sexuality and illusions. On that day in 1973, under the scorching sun of the Spanish town of Cadaques, locals gathered on the surrounding hills to delight the eye with naked bodies of the most beautiful symbols of secret male fantasies. As it turned out, this event became one of the most significant for the town, Playboy magazine and for Salvador Dali.
(Total of 9 photos)
A legendary artist depicting dreams, illusions and areas of the unconscious, Salvador Dali collaborated with the legendary Playboy magazine photographer Pompeo Pozar, best known for his pictures for the poster inserts and accompanying photos of the girls of the month. Together they created confusing but very attractive images.
The collaboration was both businesslike and extravagant. When the artist left the house, his priestesses-models shouted to him: "My Lord! The Master!" Dali completely supervised the whole process, building each frame based on his own sketches. He developed a system of commands.
Like a real master of these beautiful women, the artist built them into his own world of illusions, granted them immortality and demanded in return complete obedience to look at them and enjoy the voyeuristic position that he had arranged for himself and the rest of the world.
Obsessive images of eroticism, death and decomposition fill Dali's works, reflecting his fascination with psychoanalysis, popular in his time. Often referring to autobiographical material and childhood memories, the artist uses in his work symbolism that is obvious to interpreters, ranging from fetishes and images of animals to religious symbols.
Early discovering Freud's psychoanalytic principles, as well as the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico, Dali began to use the method of psychoanalysis to penetrate the subconscious in search of images.
Delving into his fears, Dali in his paintings talked about the psychological state of paranoia and the importance of studying this phenomenon. He painted bodies, bones, and symbolic objects that denoted sexualized fears of images of the father and impotence.
The collaboration with Playboy magazine photographer Pompeo Pozar for the 1973 shoot was not the first for the artist. In 1951, Dali worked with the American photographer Philip Halsman on several projects. Perhaps their most famous collaboration is the project In Voluptars Mors ("Voluptuous Death"). The name was given to the skull of seven naked women, which took more than three hours to compose.
Salvador Dali's admiration for the female body penetrated into his secret world of fears and anxieties. The passage of time was one of the dominant themes in his paintings, and Dali's women presented themselves as seducing temptresses, at the same time dangerous and strong, possessing sexual strength and power to seduce and infect the great master and the rest of humanity. His erotic images are filled with themes of fears and taboos, and the thirst for control is no longer surprising.
Submission is just a veil. Women are strong and allow themselves to be placed in the illusory world of the artist with flying asses, breasts, classical statues and various buildings. Given what is known about the artist, it is possible to understand why a huge snake wrapped around the model. Perhaps to control her or to prevent the woman from approaching. But the woman in the photo is not so helpless. She secretly enjoys the disturbing and amazing thoughts that visit the artist's mind.
Salvador Dali's erotic works for Playboy are collages that should be considered as a guide to the consciousness of one of the most outstanding artists of our time. Eroticism is mixed with pain and fear, and at the same time the images are very playful. The erotic and the strange have found common ground in the different worlds of Salvador Dali's sexually charged anxieties.
Keywords: Playboy | Spain | Models | Nudity | Salvador Dali | Surrealism | Surrealists | Photographer | Artist | Erotica