Dali’s Death Leaves the Market Muddled : Dealers’ phones remain silent while appraisers get inquiries from some worried owners

When Andy Warhol died, telephones at the Upstairs Gallery in Beverly Hills immediately started ringing. “Everybody was asking, ‘What (Warhol art) do you have and when can I see it?’ ” recalled Lee Sonnier, a director at the highly commercial gallery.

But last Monday, the day of Salvador Dali’s death, the splashy showcase didn’t get a single call about the late Surrealist’s work. To make matters more discouraging for Upstairs salesmen, the gallery the previous week had launched a monthlong promotional, offering a free Dali lithograph to anyone who bought $1,000 worth of art.

Los Angeles dealer Jack Rutberg had 15 messages on his answering machine when he opened his gallery on La Brea Avenue last Tuesday morning. “None of them was about Salvador Dali,” said Rutberg, who has sold 15 or 20 Dalis over the years and thinks he may have the only Dali original currently on the Los Angeles market--a 1933 engraving called “Grasshopper Child.”

Even Sotheby’s New York, which stands to gain enormously from any Dali mania that might result from the artist’s demise, promptly issued a restrained statement. “Salvador Dali’s death should have very little impact on his auction prices,” John Tancock, senior vice president of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern paintings department, said in a press release.

What happened to the rush for profit that oftens follows a major artist’s death?

“Dali killed his own market,” said Dick Ruskin, a Los Angeles appraiser who appeared as an expert witness in a round of trials involving fraudulent practices in the artist’s print market. Estimates of the extent of the international fraud run as high as $3 billion.

“Dali never protected his copyrights,” said Pierre Marcand, a Beverly Hills publisher of Dali prints who has seen a once-profitable business turn sour. “His graphics became just a pure financial enterprise,” Marcand said.

After parting company in 1974 with his long-time manager, Peter Moore, Dali lost control of his business affairs and seems to have been exploited by associates. He not only sold copyrights of his prints to various agents, he peddled thousands of sheets of pre-signed paper--like that used by the Upstairs Gallery to print its “free” lithographs. A single truckload, stopped by French customs officers in 1974 but allowed to pass into Andorra, reportedly contained 40,000 sheets of signed paper.

While some such sheets were used for legitimate purposes authorized by the artist, many others (plus paper bearing fraudulent signatures) landed in the hands of unscrupulous promoters, according to Albert Field, a New York-based art historian currently compiling a catalogue raisonne (complete record) of Dali’s prints. In addition, some publishers churned out photo-reproductions and tried to pass them off as original prints.

Martin Lawrence Limited Editions, based in Van Nuys, published Dali prints from 1974 to 1979 but got out of the business because customers became confused or lost faith in the work, according to Martin S. Blinder, chairman and president of the company.

Several dealers caught in the fraud closed shop. Others stopped dealing in works produced in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

Anyone who deals with the late prints is likely to get into such ludicrous problems as “trying to distinguish between an authorized fake and a fake of a fake,” said Rutberg. Few dealers want to bother with such vagaries, and the major auction houses simply don’t sell the late prints.

But if dealers have noted a deafening silence on the subject of Dali following his death, appraisers are getting inquiries. Field said he had 18 calls Monday and 19 more Tuesday, mostly from owners of Dali prints who are “scared” or worried that their investments may come to nothing. Ruskin said he was advising collectors to wait several months or a year before selling to see what happens to the market.

Dealers agree that confusion over true and false Dalis has led to a serious softening of the market for Dali’s late prints. But opinion varies on the extent to which problems with the late prints have affected his painting market.

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While some dealers point to works that have failed to sell at auction or to live up to their highest estimates, others say the disarray of the print market is separate from the market for paintings.

“Dali’s work has always sold well at auction--a trend that we certainly expect to continue,” Tancock said in Sotheby’s press release. “A popular and extremely successful artist during his lifetime, Dali was primarily known for his Surrealist works from the 1930s and early 1940s, and there has always been a strong market for these pieces. Recently, many of his later works have also been commanding very strong prices at auction.”

The statement cited the $2.4-million record price for a Dali, paid in 1987, for “The Battle of Tetuan.” Sotheby’s had predicted that the 1962 Surreal version of Mariano Fortuny’s 1862-63 painting of a Spanish victory over Morocco would bring $2 million to $3 million. While the painting didn’t sail past its high estimate, in the manner of some spectacular record-setters, it easily obscured the previous auction record for a Dali: $816,480, paid in 1982 for a 1929 oil, “L’Enigma du Desire” (sometimes called “Ma Mere, Ma Mere, Ma Mere”).

Auction houses subsequently have brought big prices for minor works by the controversial Surrealist. Three lots, for example, performed exceedingly well at a Sotheby’s New York sale in May. “L’Hirondelle Immodile, a 1956 oil estimated at $100,000 to $150,000, sold for $154,000; a 7-by-5 1/2-inch 1956 painting, “The Christ Child,” from the estate of Clare Boothe Luce, fetched an astonishing $115,500, far surpassing its estimate of $20,000 to $30,000; and “Surrealist Landscape” (circa 1963-64), valued at $80,000 to $100,000, also brought $115,500.

But there have also been notable glitches at the auction houses. Two large canvases failed to sell in New York in November: a 1934 oil called “Apparition of My Cousin Carolineta on the Beach at Rosas,” offered by Sotheby’s and estimated at $1.8 million to $2.2 million, and “The Red Piano and the Red Orchestra,” a 1957 painting valued at $1.2 million to $1.6 million by Christie’s.

Some dealers say even the highest Dali prices are actually much too low for a major modern artist. Blinder, for one, insists that Dali’s paintings are “absolutely” undervalued. In 1987, he arranged a widely publicized $2.3-million private sale of a Dali painting to an unidentified Japanese collector. Though the price for “Gala Looking at the Mediterranean Sea Which From a Distance of 20 Meters Is Transformed Into a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)” topped Dali’s auction record, Blinder said he thought the work was “very inexpensive.”

He and others contacted by The Times think it is only a matter of time until prime Dali paintings rise into the eight-figure sphere currently occupied by such modern masters as Picasso.

That, of course, will depend to a large degree upon the quality and rarity of works that are offered.

Meanwhile, Rutberg forecasts a short frenzy of boiler-room activity as unscrupulous print publishers churn out reproductions and try to market them as original prints. “Dali may be the only artist to produce art from the grave,” he joked.

Dali meets Disney-a Hollywood tale. See article on page 37