LONDON — For an art movement that emerged from the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, surrealism perhaps wouldn’t be expected to produce work as playful as a Salvador Dali satin sofa made in the shape of Mae West’s lips, a ruby lips brooch crammed with pearls for teeth or an Elsa Schiaparelli dress with a skeleton appliquéd on the torso.
However, these are among the works featured in “Surreal Things,” an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum that explores the fantastical pieces that resulted when artists from the movement crossed over into the world of design.
The exhibition, which runs until July 22, examines how during the Thirties and Forties artists such as Dali, Man Ray and Joan Miró overturned the decree of the surrealism movement’s founder, Andre Breton, that “ideas should not be at the behest of money,” and engaged with the worlds of fashion and design. Dali produced pieces such as a vivid pink lobster print for a Schiaparelli dress and a shell-shape Baccarat flacon for Schiaparelli’s fragrance Le Roy Soleil. Miró designed graphic prints for Fuller Fabrics, including one that appears in a photograph of a Claire McCardell dress.
“They realized that fashion disseminated their work,” said Alexander Klar, assistant curator of the exhibition, “and dressing and the body were very intertwined for the surrealists. They were a background for ideas.”
While couture dresses and diamond jewelry may have been confined to the upper echelons of society, the movement did reach a wider audience through magazines and advertising. A 1939 cover of American Vogue depicts a version of Dali’s painting “Landscape With Girl Skipping” and a beauty issue of American Vogue from 1946, designed by Alexander Liberman, is a grid of images that contrast a model’s bandaged face with objects such as an eerie doll’s face. Klar said that editors relished the irony of engaging with a movement that began as a critique of consumer culture.
“For [magazine editors], it was something shameless,” Klar said. “Surrealism is essentially a subversive movement, and they were happy to promote the conflict between the bohemian and the bourgeoisie in fashion. It also spilled over into fashion photography, with photographers like Horst surrealizing their images.”
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The exhibition also highlights iconic objects from the movement, such as Dali’s lobster telephone that sits in a vitrine designed like a subverted suburban sitting room, next to the artist’s Mae West lips sofa, and sconces shaped like hands on the wall and a green carpet stamped with wolfhound paw prints.
Klar cited the work of designers such as Philippe Starck and Viktor & Rolf as evidence of the movement’s continuing relevance.
“It has to do with the individual seeing the world as complex,” he said. “It is a surreal world.”