Tarot Universal Dali
by Juan Larch and Salvador Dali
 
I was tremendously disappointed with the famous Dali tarot.  I had been looking forward to reviewing it for years, and, finally given the opportunity to do so, I am almost sorry to say I did.  I have seldom witnessed such unadulterated artistic plagiarism in my life.

What I believed would be 78 paintings by the great master Dali himself turned out to be a finely-wrought deck made up of clip art and poster paints.  It appears as if Dali (and his assistants) took 78 pages from a glossy magazine with photos of paintings by the Masters, took a pair of school scissors to them, cut out the pieces they wanted, glued them on construction paper, and then took a paintbrush dipped in brightly colored paints and smeared and spattered designs all over them.  I guess I have seen too much of Dali's earlier works like "The Persistence of Memory," and not enough of his later works, because I expected to see more work like "Memory" and I didn't.

There are 22 Major Arcana cards, with titles from the traditional decks, but the pictures only vaguely resemble any traditional symbolism.  Dali's self-portrait was mutilated to be used as the Magician (interestingly, I think he looks like Vincent Price).  But once you leave the Major Arcana and proceed to the Minor, well, let's just say any resemblance to a tarot deck is merely a figment of the artist's assistants' imaginations.

The court cards are the only named or numbered cards in the suits.  Traditional suits of cups, swords, batons and pentacles are used, which means that the artist rudely painted these symbols all over the chopped-up pieces of the Masters'.  The deck is larger and stiffer than usual, and the edges are real gold, making this deck almost totally unuseable since shuffling would destroy the gold leafing on the edges.

I don't have much else to say about this deck, except that as a tarot deck it's worthless, although it's probably worth getting as a Dali collectible; at a hundred bucks a pop I'm not sure I can even recommend it for collectors.

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Review Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace
 
Tarot Universal Dali by Juan Larch and Salvador Dali
published by US Games Systems, Inc.
ISBN 0880790903