Critics are still coming to terms with Dalí’s influence on artists of the 1950s and 60s, such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, to say nothing of his influence on contemporary art. Dalí was a famed self-publicist, enacting stunts such as employing topless models at exhibition openings and delivering lectures in a full diving suit.

But this exhibition shows a more subtle and restrained Dalí, focussing on etchings from the early-to-mid 1970s. They are remarkable not just for their thematic coherence, but for their playful use of large stencilled fields of pastel colour. The works conjure up a dreamlike world which is less charged with uncanny grandeur than it is airy and spacious. The show also features some exceptional bronzes from the same period.

Art aficionados are gearing up to celebrate sought-after works on paper which only very rarely come onto the market. The exhibition opens this Tuesday May 7th at Meller Merceux’s Oxford space.

Gallery Director Aidan Meller says, “It’s my job to track down rarities which will get the public excited about art. After fourteen years in the business this is the most important body of work I’ve had the pleasure of exhibiting. We’ve had several works by Dalí come through the gallery in recent years, and they’ve been very popular, but never anything like this. To have thirty signed works at one go is highly unusual.”

Hundreds of thousands of people visit Dalí museums in Florida and Catalonia every year. His popularity with the general public is equalled only by the sway he holds over collectors. This was evidenced by the sale at auction this February of the artist’s Portrait of Mrs Harrison Williams for over £2m. The forthcoming exhibition at Meller Merceux is an opportunity to acquire Dalí works at an affordable price before – as art market experts have suggested – his prices realign with those paid for works by Pablo Picasso.

Dalí is one of an elite group of visual artists who transcended the limits of the art world to become icons of popular culture. At a time when psychoanalysis was still a new discipline, his art took the grandeur and ambition of Renaissance painting and added to it symbolic objects which evoke the logic of the unconscious mind. In recent years Dalí has been recognised not just as a modernist master but as a fore-runner of Pop, conceptual, and performance art, a sign that his influence is here to stay.

Note: the above image is an example of an original Dalí recently shown at Meller Merceux. Watch this space to see reproductions of the actual works on display from May 7th.

Mumuye figure Nigeria late 1900s

In the early 1900s, Paris was the centre of the art world, and the place where the cultural riches of the nation’s colonies were gathered for display. Since 1855, a number of Expositions Universelles had been held in the French capital, having a profound effect on a group of artists who were hoping to push representations of space and form in strange new directions. These grand “world’s fairs” stimulated desire for ethnographic trophies, but none featured the art of an elusive tribe called the Dogon. This fascinating but often-misunderstood society hails from the inaccessible Bandiagara Escarpment to the south of the Niger Delta in Mali.

Yoruba-Shango-staff-Nigeria holding a baby on its back 59.5cm high. Late 1900s.

The work expresses a rich and complex cosmological vision, and is now among the most sought-after tribal art on the international market. So why did it take so long for the West to appreciate its virtues? As early as the 16th century the Portuguese had the West Coast of Africa well mapped out, and while much of the African interior remained a blank in the European mind, it is interesting to note that the Bandiagara region lies just 100 miles from Timbuktu, which, at the flourishing centre of the Mali Empire, had been Islamised since the 1300s. And while England and France had been subjugating West Africans since the late 1700s, the Niger Delta was one of the last areas to be explored by Europeans. By the 1900s, the Dogon’s lands lay within a triangle which as yet only the French military had explored. The Dogon tribe is thought originally to have comprised immigrants from the Mande region, who may have settled in the Bandiagara precisely because of its inaccessibility. The fact that their society developed in the remote environs of a 125-mile long strip of cliffs was the major factor in their ability to retain their distinctive cultural traditions. The Dogon learnt to eke out nourishment even from this arid, rocky region, and supplemented their admirable farming skills with the rain-making ceremonies to which their sculpture was central.

Mbala Coffin Zaire late 1900s

Dogon Tribal Figure, Mali.

A rich variety of sculptural styles and subject matter existed across Dogon society. The human form is depicted in a variety of situations, from the bearded elder in ritual dress, to the figure of the mother, especially revered in those communities which may once have been matriarchal; and that of the horse rider, associated with royalty and foreign powers. Notable is the tendency to elongation and abstraction of the human form. The Dogon’s iron staffs feature elegant, highly simplified representations of the body, which call to mind the sculpture of Alberto Giacometti. Elsewhere the work boasts sensitive modelling of detail, above all of the human face, where we frequently see broad mouths, scarification marks, and bulging, rimmed eyes. Dogon sculpture is frequently polished and smooth, yet as part of their ritual lives the Dogon often painted the pieces with sacrificial blood or porridge. Also famous are Dogon masks, either carved in wood or made with fibre, these were often used in days-long funeral rites and could represent a broad range of subject matter, from lizards to mammals, humans, and also abstract concepts.

Dogon Figure, Mali

The exhibition at Meller Merceux of these rare and magnetic works of Dogon art is an opportunity to reflect on the sway that Africa had over the Western artistic imagination, and to take a glimpse into the powerful ritual lives of this – until recently – remote and misunderstood people.

written by Dr. Thomas Slingsby