Salvador Dali providing direction to Playboy photographer Pompeo Posar and a Playboy Bunny in Cadaqués, Spain in 1973.
 

“The meaning of my work is the motivation that is of the purest – money. What I did for Playboy is very good and your payment is equal to the task.”

—Salvador Dali on his collaboration with Playboy in 1973

For his photo shoot for Playboy magazine, Salvador Dali, long-time Playboy photographer Pompeo Posar, a gaggle of Playboy Bunnies and a giant egg headed to Cadaqués, a seaside town in Spain near where Dali lived in Port Lligat, a small village on a bay next to the town. The event would turn the sleepy village upside down during the shoot and local Dali-devotees would wait outside his home so that they could pay homage to the Surrealist by chanting “Master! Master!” whenever he left the residence to go to work under the blistering hot Spanish sun.

Working closely with Posar, Dali created a few sketches of his vision for the shoot which ultimately ended up including a giant egg, an equally fake large snake, various collage images that ran the gamut from a Coca-Cola bottle to Renaissance-style architecture, and of course, Playboy Bunnies cavorting around wearing little to nothing because this is Playboy magazine we’re talking about. Dali—who was 69 at the time—ran the shoot like the master that he was and residents of Cadaqués would watch the artist’s every move from the hills surrounding the location.

The final photos live up to Dali’s provocative, boundary-pushing style, and are gorgeously bizarre to behold. I’ve included a few of Dali’s preliminary sketches that detail part of his artistic vision for the shoot and many others including the master at work, as well as the finished product that appeared in the December 1974 issue of Playboy.

Pretty much all of them are NSFW. But you hate your stupid desk job anyway, don’t you?
 

 

 

 

 

A preliminiary sketch done by Dali for the Playboy shoot.
 

Another sketch by Dali.
 

 

 

 

A photo taken by Posar of Dali and a few of his nude models.
 

Dali sketching and looking like a rock star on location at Cadaqués, Spain.
 
HT: Playboy

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Amanda Lear: 70s disco diva, fashion model, TV star and Salvador Dali’s transsexual muse
At last, Salvador Dali’s insane sex-cookbook is getting republished
Down the rabbit-hole with Salvador Dali’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’
Salvador Dali goes to Hell: Astounding illustrations for Dante’s ‘Inferno’
Salvador Dali’s hologram portrait of Alice Cooper’s brain