OP: Les Diners de Gala

Felicie Inc., New York, 1973. Hardcover. Very Good. First printing.                

If you’ve never encountered cannibalistic, erotically suggestive, hallucinatory imagery of the grotesque in a cookbook, then you have certainly never seen Les Diners de Gala (1973).

Though a cookbook might not be the first thing you would expect from the master of Surrealism, Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala were gourmands and hosted extravagant dinner parties—perhaps more performance art than meal—including wandering exotic animals and wildly costumed celebrity guests.

So stunning is the visual stimulus in Les Diners de Gala—color photography and Dalí’s own artwork filling every page—that the recipes, and there are many of them, are almost lost in the dreamworld. It would not be unreasonable to wonder if they are even viable or simply bizarre contrivances from a fevered mind. In fact they were contributed and developed by some of the finest Parisian restaurants of the day, including La Tour d’Argent, Lasserre, and Maxim’s. The recipes, while occasionally unusual, can be taken in all seriousness.

Published by Dalí’s friend and gallery owner Felicie Balay, this large (9” x 12.5”) and handsome volume is a masterful production. We are thrilled to offer the first (and only) Felicie printing in Very Good condition, the book block and illustrated case clean and unmarked. Light shelfwear to both the case and gold foil jacket. A highly sought collector’s item in this edition (the current Taschen printing is available here).