Lower your insurance costs and add
more protection. Compare what you have to pay now with
the family friendly values we find. American
Insurance Depot.
I found eight extremely old Dali prints at a North Little Rock Flea Market. They were stacked together among some of the usual arts and crafts. The first one catching my eye was Average Atmospherocephalic Bureaucrat in the act of milking a cranial Harp, an 8 3/4 X 6 1/25 oil on canvas.... 1934
The second one was titled Autumn Canibalism. The third Slave Market with the Apparition of the Invisible Bust of Voltaire. The fourth is Apotheosis of Homer. (Detail) Another one might be called Piano on Fire with facets. Six, Ink Wells with green background, probably early works I do not recognize. Seven, another unknown dark landscape with a rather wet looking surface runway, a man, a woman, a dog and several Dali type boxes with faces protruding from them. The last is a table in the desert with objects in the background.
To the best of my knowledge, the originals of the prints I now own are part of the Mr. and Mrs. A. Reynolds Morse Foundation Inc. collection in Cleveland Ohio and the Edward H. James, Tate Gallery, London.
Having been around the offset printing processes for 25 years I could tell just by looking that these were the old fashioned four color process and not the latest high tech lazer color separation printing technique. These were probably printed in the 50's when Dali was alive, in good health, and keeping a close eye on his work. Dali only allowed a specific number of prints to be made of each printing to be reproduced. Sometimes even personally showing up at the photoengraver's shop to destroy the plates and negatives. Now they stamp them out like doughnuts, so many they are worthless but tasty to the eye.
The sheer size and glass covered paper proved they were not original oil on canvas, but also indicated to me that they might be at least 20 or 30 years old. I found them at a flea market in North Little Rock Arkansas. The owner was asking $120 for the set. That was about right if they had been printed yesterday. If I was right about the age then the price might well have been $1200 each.
The antique frames alone would exceed the $120 mark, for each one. However, since I am still just a struggling young artist, I couldn't even afford the $120. Therefore I offered $80 to the owner, and got them just a week later for $85
It seems strange, even portent, that these should come to me, almost a gift from the great master in heaven. Dali liked to play around with numbers in his paintings, and eight is the lucky number on the other side of the globe in China.
Although I am primarily an abstract painter, like a doughnut dunked in the sea of imagination the surrealistic dream quality of Dali's paintings feel sweet and natural to me. He has been an influence on my style all my life. Perhaps that very influence is what prompted Hillary Clinton to purchase one of my paintings, and Jimmy Buffet as well as many others.
The first Dali painting I ever noticed was the famous Persistence of Memory (Soft Watches), a small but impressive surreal painting measuring only 9.5" by 11" now hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Never having been to New York or the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida, these prints are the closest I have ever been to the great surrealist.
For some reason I had, just two weeks before seeing the paintings, checked out a library book on Dali and had been drawing his painting "Soft Watches" in great detail, carrying the drawing and the book around in the back seat of my '55 Chevy.
About a week before finding the prints, a young lady recognized me in the Levy area of North Little Rock and began yelling my name. "Danny, Danny."
She told me that her mother had bought one of my abstract paintings twenty years before and everyone still loved it.
She wanted to take a picture of me and my antique car. Then she noticed the drawing in the back seat and exclaimed, "Oh WOW! Did you do that?"
She looked so precious when she said that! A sucker for praise, my heart leaped into my throat.
"It isn't for sale," I told her. "But I will give it to you."
"I can't take it," she said, then clapped a hand to her mouth. "What am I saying? Of course I can take a Danny Ridling drawing!"
The funny thing is, even though I explained who he was twice, she still thought "Dali" was a Broadway play, and liked the drawing simply because Danny Ridling had worked on it.
So,
Goodbye Dali;
Hello Danny.
Marleen's note: Danny is an artist from North Little Rock with multiple talents. He was the only artist to actually sell a painting to the Clintons when they lived in the Governor's Mansion. I've bought six of his paintings with a $5,000 discount off each one with the stipulation that when I become the next governor of Arkansas Danny's paintings will go in with me. If he doesn't finish that Arkansas Traveler painting for me though, all bets are off!