Jordan 1
Salvador Dalí: The Founder of the “Fake”
By
Jeremy Jordan
Art 109: Modern Art, Fall 2008
Professor Elaine O’Brien
December 10, 2008
In the early 1980’s a number of signed prints and several original works fraudulently credited to Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989) steadily entered the modern art market. These alleged Dali forgeries, produced from 1965 on, differed greatly from other forgeries fraudulently credited to prominent artists. The Dali prints were in fact signed by Dali himself, under his own power and free will. The resulting images, though in the style of Dali, were not directly created by him. They were comprised of other artist’s renditions of his style, or augmented versions of Dali’s originals [fig. 1]. This paper asserts the authenticity of these so-called fraudulent works, “Dalí Fakes,” by revealing the origin of these signed prints and providing evidence demonstrating how Dalí willfully relinquished control over the production of, and granted full license to the creation of these works.
Sol LeWitt (1928 - 2007), Jeff Koons (1955 - ), Damien Hirst (1965 - ) and Mark Kostabi (1960 - ) will be introduced as artists working in the post modern and contemporary art world, after the time of Dalí, who executed similar tactics in the creation of works directly credited to them. All of their works, as well as the “Dalí Fakes,” were created in the tradition of conceptually based art, a style that originated in Dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887 – 1968). The works created by the artists after Dalí were consistently accepted by the contemporary art market and embraced by the art community. The acceptance of works created by these artists in the same tradition of the “Dalí Fakes” containing a genuine Dalí signature confirms their authenticity as Dalí prints.
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí í Domènech was born on the eleventh of May, 1904 in the town of Figueres, Spain. Dalí was named after his older brother who died at twenty one months, nine months prior to his own birth. His parents were never able to deal successfully with the loss of their first born son. The overwhelming sense of grief they experienced skewed their perceptions regarding their second born son. They interpreted the arrival of Dalí as a means of resurrecting and sustaining the life of the first. At five years old Dalí was taken by his parents to the grave side of his brother where it was explained to him that he was his brother’s reincarnation. They were never able to let go of the memory of their first born son. As a reminder they hung his picture over their bed for the remainder of their lives. This behavior and constant image literally hanging above his parent’s bed would haunt Dalí for the rest of his life. He was forced to carry the “lifelong burden of guilt that he had stolen his elder brother’s very existence.” (Etherington-Smith, p. 3)
Constructing a life with the knowledge of his parents’ feelings toward him and what he represented to them, Dalí knew he needed to make an impact on the world. He knew whole heartedly that he needed to make certain the name “Salvador Dalí” would be recorded in the annals of history. His reason for this was twofold; first he felt he needed to honor his brother’s name, the name passed on to him by his grieving parents. The second, he needed to leave evidence that he and he alone was worthy of creating his own name and identity, to carve out an existence separate from that of his older brother. “He was fighting early on to prove that he existed.” (Etherington-Smith, p.4) Maintaining this focus throughout his life, Dalí succeeded in both of these quests. His concepts, actions and creations made him an invaluable member of the modern art community and created his permanent place in art history.
In the mid 1950’s Dalí was approached by art publisher Joseph Forét. His meetings with Dalí were attempts to convince him to produce illustrations based on the classic novel Don Quixote by Spain’s legendary author Miguel de Cervantes. Some of his trips to Dalí’s home included his arrival with heavy lithographic stones to help convince Dalí to create lithographs. “Dalí was ‘against the art of lithography for aesthetic, moral and philosophical reasons,’ considering the process was ‘without strength, without monarchy, without inquisition.’ In other words, the project either bored Dalí, or Forét was not prepared to pay enough for it.” (Etherington-Smith, p. 339) In response to the insistence and persistence of Forét, Dalí agreed to create lithographs by his own design. To fulfill this commitment Dalí developed the concept he called “Bulletism.” This process involved firing bullets filled with ink at the lithographic stones and printing the image they created. The resulting sale of these lithographs for large amounts of money caused Dalí to reconsider his position regarding lithographic prints. Responding to the sale of these works Dalí realized both the importance of, and the shear monetary value of his own signature. He knew that the public would pay handsomely for anything he signed, regardless of its image, content or meaning. “The germ of this idea lay dormant in Dalí’s mind for some years, but when it flowered in the mid-nineteen sixties, it would lead Dalí into some extremely questionable activities.” (Etherington-Smith, p. 339) Approximately ten years later, these “questionable activities” came into being.
In 1965 Dalí began selling signed blank sheets of lithograph paper for ten dollars a sheet. Between the mid 1960’s and the late 1970’s Salvador Dalí signed somewhere between 50,000 and 350,000 blank sheets of artist paper. On these pages numerous amounts of “alleged” fake Dalí lithographs and prints were created. Though the image was not directly created by Dalí himself, they were created in his artistic style. Some of these prints were generated by directly pulling from original images created by Dalí. They were then embellished, reversed or adjusted in scale. By the early 1980’s other artists began referencing his early works and successfully produced these images on the pages containing Dalí’s signature. Along with these works, a large number of prints were created that were in fact fraudulent works, ones not created on the signed pages. These fraudulent works did not originate implementing the use of lithographic paper displaying an authentic Dalí signature. These works did not follow the same path as the legitimately signed works; they abruptly strayed from the concept and did not involve any collaboration with or handling by Dalí. As news of these works became public, numerous attempts were made to discredit the “Dalí Fakes,” several of which succeeded, that classified both the works created on paper containing an authentic “Dalí” signature and the works containing a forged signature as fraudulent. This simply was not the case; any work created on a blank sheet of paper that bore an original “Dalí” signature, signed in pencil, should be considered a genuine Salvador Dalí print, a genuine “Dalí Fake.” Dalí spent the entirety of his life establishing the name “Salvador Dalí.” These works were based upon Dalí’s ideas and concepts; they possessed that which Dalí held at the highest esteem, his signature. The official Salvador Dalí museum in St. Petersburg, Florida confirmed the significance, power and eternal timelessness of his signature. When the museum opened in March of nineteen eighty two they attached a large metal cut out of his signature to the exterior of the building. This large scale replica of Dalí’s actual signature became the official sign for the museum [Fig. 2]. In their museum store, they currently display and sell gold plated and sterling silver lapel pins. The pins merely portray the easily recognizable “D” taken from Dalí’s signature [Fig. 3]. The availability of these items not only confirms the strength of Dalí’s signature, they demonstrate the impacted and durability of his signature as an image and recognizable icon. The strength of Dalí’s signature is the backbone supporting the rampant success of the signed blank pages, the “Dalí Fakes.”
Captain Peter Moore, personal assistant to Salvador Dalí starting in 1962, when asked about the signed pages, or “signatures” as he referred to them, stated “I made Dalí a multimillionaire. People wanted Dalí’s signature?....Dalí has as many signatures as there are Dalí artworks on the market.” (Lauryssens, p. 199) In addition to the “signatures” Dalí sold directly to the public in 1965, he and Gala, his wife, drafted and signed contracts with several different publishers worldwide. The contracts drafted with the publishers did not specify the exact works that would be printed on the signed paper. By the mid 1970’s Dali developed Parkinson’s disease and due to the uncontrollable shaking of his hands lost the ability to sign his name. At this point Dalí ceased to sign any more blank sheets of lithographic paper. This did not stop the creation of authentic signed Dalí prints. This just meant that Gala and Moore needed to tap into the surplus of signed blanks already presumed to be in existence. In October of 1980 Gala signed a contract with Gilbert Hamon for the creation of six signed reproductions. She assured Hamon that she could produce pre-signed paper in the event that Dalí was unable to sign the prints. Gala indicated that she would pull these sheets of paper from the store in the castle (their home in Port Lligat, Spain). The signed contract [Fig. 4] not only demonstrates Dalí’s inability to even sign his own name in 1980, it confirms the existence of pre-signed paper for the purpose of creating “signed” Dalí prints; and confirms that Dalí and Gala had a surplus of signed sheets of their own in storage.
When Dalí applied his signature to the blank sheets of paper he unofficially established collaboration between himself and any artist or publisher that executed and completed the works created on the signed sheets of paper, the “Dalí Fakes.” This collaboration would span over a decade and forever leave its mark worldwide on both art community and the art market. The contracts signed by Dalí did not include any reference or requirements for morality, authorization or even his presence during the printing process. Not only did the contracts not specify the images that would be printed on them, they did not limit the use of the paper strictly to reproductions. The contracts focused on and only specified the number of blank sheets of paper to be signed and how much he was getting paid.
Dalí implemented and executed a theory developed in France by Marcel Duchamp in the early 1900’s. Duchamp acknowledged that art was more than the product of direct physical actions and techniques executed by the artist creating tangible results. His idea shifted focus from the physical work to the intention or concept of the artist. He wanted to produce work that epitomized the idea that art is strictly defined by the intent of its creator, not the final product. This theory placed equal, if not greater emphasis on the concept of a piece rather than the execution or outcome of the piece itself. The tangible works derived from the artist’s actions were merely the resulting byproduct of the original concept. Duchamp began to develop this theory in 1913 when he created Bicycle Wheel [Fig. 5]. He simply attached a bicycle wheel to a stool and declared it a work of art. His concept invaded the art community in 1917 when he submitted a piece entitled The Fountain [Fig. 6] to the first exhibition of the American Society of Independent Artists. The piece consisted of a standard porcelain urinal rotated ninety degrees, signed and dated. Duchamp did not even use his own signature on the piece; he signed it “R. Mutt.” The board immediately rejected the piece. “Consequently, this scandalous object was ‘suppressed’ (to use Duchamp’s term) by being hidden behind a partition for the rest of the exhibition.” (Judovitz, p124) The piece was sold to Walter Arensberg and eventually lost while in his possession. Replicas were created based on the Alfred Stieglitz photograph of the original. These replicas are housed in museums and are considered priceless works of art. Similar to the “Dalí Fakes,” the replicas of fountain are the representation of Duchamp’s concept; they possess the same intrinsic value of the original.
In 1945 Dalí met Walt Disney while attending a dinner party at Hollywood movie mogul Jack Warner’s home. This introduction eventually led to a collaborative effort between Dalí and Disney to create an animated movie. After eight months, fifteen paintings, one hundred and thirty five sketches the collaborative efforts ended due to monetary problems. While working closely with Disney in his cartoon studio, Dalí “was truly amazed when he discovered that Walt Disney couldn’t draw at all. His assistants did all of the work. Dalí liked what he saw and created his own Disney-like Dalí factory.” (Lauryssens, p. 118) Dali would hire assistants to create paintings and then affix his signature to the final piece. He would pay Spanish artists four to five hundred dollars a canvas to produce “his” artwork. Dali may have been the first artist to use this concept to create “legitimate” works of art, but he was not the only one, several artists after Dali created works in a similar fashion.
Sol LeWitt in 1972 introduced the art world to the concept of providing people with the design materials and tools they needed to create his work. When LeWitt provided the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York with the materials and instructions to create Wall Drawing #146 [Fig. 7], he was merely implementing his idea. “When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes art.” (LeWitt) Similar to LeWitt, Dalí provided the materials in the form of signed blank sheets and through the open ended content of his contracts gave freedom to the “machine” that completed his concept and created the “Dalí Fakes.” The artists that executed his idea were not just tools; they were integral parts of the concept that perpetuate his art resulting in pieces authenticated by his own signature.