Salvador Dalí’s Haunting 1975 Illustrations for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Even from just what we’ve post­ed about Sal­vador Dalí, you can tell he had a mis­sion to spread his dis­tinc­tive sen­si­bil­i­ty far and wide: he made films with Luis Buñuel, col­lab­o­rat­ed with Walt Dis­ney and Alfred Hitch­cock, showed up for Andy Warhol’s “screen tests,” and illus­trat­ed some of the best-known texts in west­ern his­to­ry, like Dan­te’s Divine Com­e­dy, Lewis Car­rol­l’s Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, and Shake­speare’s Mac­beth. All those projects might seem well suit­ed to the Span­ish sur­re­al­ist’s famous skill at artis­ti­cal­ly ren­der­ing the torn edges of human con­scious­ness, but what would he do when pre­sent­ed with some­thing more psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly straight­for­ward — Romeo and Juli­et, say? You can see the results of just such a project at Twist­ed Sifter, which presents ten notable illus­tra­tions from Dalí’s sec­ond Shake­speare­an project.

These images come from a 1975 Riz­zoli and Riz­zoli edi­tion con­sist­ing of “ten off-set lith­o­graphs on heavy paper with 99 pages of bound text con­tained in a red/burgundy silk slip­case with the lith­o­graphs signed in the place.” You can find out more about this book at the site of Plain­field, Illi­nois’ Lock­port Street Gallery, which offers the copy for sale and a warn­ing against all the “fake prints” (inau­then­tic Dalí hav­ing long con­sti­tut­ed a robust indus­try of its own) in cir­cu­la­tion. Romeo and Juli­et, per­haps due to its ten­den­cy to get assigned in high school, can come off as one of Shake­speare’s milder, more famil­iar plays, and mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tions of the mate­r­i­al fall flat as often as they rise up to it. But Dalí’s con­tri­bu­tion makes the old tale of star-crossed lovers strange and haunt­ing again — exact­ly the spe­cial­ty, I sup­pose, that would attract any­body to him with an offer of col­lab­o­ra­tion in the first place.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Vin­tage Films by Sal­vador Dalí and Luis Buñuel: Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or

See Sal­vador Dali’s Illus­tra­tions for the 1969 Edi­tion of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land

Sal­vador Dalí’s 100 Illus­tra­tions of Dante’s The Divine Com­e­dy

Des­ti­no: The Sal­vador Dalí – Dis­ney Col­lab­o­ra­tion 57 Years in the Mak­ing

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

Free Online Shake­speare Cours­es: Primers on the Bard from Oxford, Har­vard, Berke­ley & More

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.