Something Borrowed?

In the smoky coffeehouses where Madrid's art world gathers, an ugly word was buzzing last week around the name of Surrealist Salvador Dali: "Plagiarism." The respected newspaper A.B.C. had printed a series of photographs pointing up likenesses between Dali's work and that of some of his predecessors. Dali's Christ of St. John of the Cross (TIME, Dec. 17), said A.B.C., resembles a Crucifixion by the 81-year-old French artist Auguste Leroux. A dog in a recent Dali picture is the image of a dog in Anye Bru's Martyrdom of St. Mcdin (circa 1500), and the Dali horses in his set for the ballet Mad Tristan look like John Frederick Herring's 19th century favorite, Pharaoh's Horses. A.B.C. captioned its story "Three Coincidences," and let its readers judge for themselves.

At first glance, there did seem to be striking resemblances. Dali's Christ, like Leroux's, was seen from above and from much the same angle. The Dali dog rested head on forepaws in exactly the same position as Bru's, had the same collar and the same markings. And the main difference between Dali's wild-eyed horses and Herring's was that Dali had painted his with crumbling brick foreheads.

Dali's friends and admirers went into a frenzy of defense. But the master himself seemed supremely unconcerned. "Plagiarism?" he snorted. "Just my own original method of using images from my dreams and from some souvenir of long ago. I myself will discover hundreds of so-called plagiarisms in my work . . . The cover of my latest book is a collage of Leonardo's Mono, Lisa. I have no less than six paintings strictly derived from Millet's Angelus. Let my enemies gloat . . . To imitate is not important. To be inimitable is most important. I remain one of the greatest living painters."

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