Original Photograph

An unusual photograph of the surrealist artist together with rocker Alice Cooper, ca. 1973. Dali, at the right, is pointing to something off-camera, while a young Cooper looks on. Some overpainting around the eyes and Dali's mustache; toning and some wear; overall very good. 8 x 7 inches (20.6 x 17.4 cm).

The surrealist artist (aged 69) and the young shock-rock star (aged 25) met in 1973, when Dali created his work First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram Portrait of Alice Cooper’s Brain. This work, now at the Dali Museum, is a rotating three-dimensional hologram which depicts Cooper sitting cross-legged, wearing 2 million dollars' worth of jewelry, and biting the head off a Venus De Milo statuette; behind him is Dali's sculpture of Cooper's brain, covered in a chocolate éclair and swarming with ants.

The two men spent about two weeks together as Dali worked on the piece, during which Cooper was largely bewildered but game to enter into Dali's surrealist world. Paul Moody describes their first encounter in Another Man magazine: "April 1973. Even by the louche standards of the St Regis Hotel – a deluxe 1904 Beaux-Arts bolthole in midtown Manhattan frequented by Marlene Dietrich, Ernest Hemingway and John Lennon – it was quite an entrance. “All of a sudden these five androgynous nymphs in pink chiffon floated in,” says Alice Cooper [...] “They were followed by Gala (Dalí’s wife) who was dressed in a man’s tuxedo, top hat and tails, and carrying a silver cane. Then came Dalí. He was wearing a giraffe-skin vest, gold Aladdin shoes, a blue velvet jacket and sparkly purple socks given to him by Elvis.” Having announced his presence with a syllable-stretching cry of “The Da-lí… is… he-re!”, the artist requested a round of ‘Scorpion’ cocktails for his guests: rum, gin and brandy served in a conch shell, topped with an orchid. He then ordered himself a glass of hot water. Taking a jar of honey from his pocket and setting the glass on a pedestal, Dalí began pouring the liquid into the glass, dramatically raising it higher so that it formed globules on the surface. Cutting the stream with a pair of scissors, he then raised his arms in a dramatic flourish, prompting a round of applause from his acolytes. “Me and my manager looked at each other in amazement,” says Cooper. “I realised at that point that everything was about Dalí. The world revolved around him. I wasn’t meeting him. I was entering his orbit.” " (16963)

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Unsigned Photograph

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Art & Design

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