Dali's Tarot Cards

[Allan Balliett]

So it seems to go with so many “collectible” investments :-) heat anything
about my oversized Crowley Tarot calendars? (Including an unreleased card)?

On Thu, Nov 7, 2019 at 6:19 AM Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de>
wrote:

>
> Tarot & 007 are both recurring motifs in Pynchon's novels ...
> ----------------------------
>
> + ... In the early 1970s, the surrealist artist ventured into the occult
> with a custom deck of tarot cards featuring himself and his wife, Gala, as
> mystical figures. The deck was originally created for the 1973 James Bond
> film Live and Let Die, starring Roger Moore and Jane Seymour, but it never
> appeared in the picture.
>
> In 1973, Albert R. Broccoli, a producer for the 18th James Bond spy
> thriller, approached Dalí with an offer to create the tarot deck for a
> scene in the film. The cards were needed as props for the character of
> Solitaire, played by Seymour, a psychic who works for a menacing drug lord.
> As Bond films typically go, the psychic changes sides to become the spy’s
> collaborator and love interest.
>
> Dalí accepted the offer and started working on the cards, possibly
> encouraged by his mystically inclined wife Gala, but it was rumored that
> the contract fell through when the artist demanded an astronomical fee that
> was too high even for the film’s $7 million budget.
>
> Dalí was eventually replaced by a much more affordable artist named Fergus
> Hall, whose Tarot of the Witches card made a short appearance in the film.
> Nevertheless, Dalí continued working on his deck, which he eventually
> offered for sale in 1984. The deck came with a companion book that included
> instructions on how to use the cards and a description of their making.
> Now, Dalí cards are available to all in Taschen Books<
> https://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/art/all/44640/facts.dali_tarot.htm>‘s
> reproduced edition of the deck, released in October of this year. A deck
> will cost you $60.
>
> The deck’s 78 cards combine classic tarot themes with Dalí’s signature
> motifs: dissected faces, ants, roses, and butterflies. The deck features
> the artist himself as the Magician, while his wife poses as the Empress.
> Dalí’s Ten of Swords card — which can represent betrayal, backstabbing, or
> the death of a relationship — is a depiction of the assassination of Julius
> Caesar. The Queen of Cups is a play on François Clouet’s portrait Elisabeth
> of Austria, Queen of France (circa 1571), whom Dalí dresses with a goatee
> and mustache. The Moon is a woman’s face looking down on at a modern
> metropolis and Death is an ominous skull in a floating, cut-off cypress
> tree.
>
> As a poke at the producers of Live and Let Die, Dali gave the Emperor’s
> face to actor Sean Connery, who was the first to portray Ian Fleming’s
> literary spy character in a film. Connery and Moore were in public rivalry<
> https://www.varsity.co.uk/culture/3948> at the time, each criticizing the
> other’s performance of the secret service agent ... +
>
>
> https://hyperallergic.com/525929/salvador-dalis-tarot-cards-will-tell-your-surreal-future/
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>