EXHIBITION 105


2 Wall plates no. 116 from the series Tema e Variazioni [Theme and Variations], after 1950, Piero Fornasetti, Silk print on porcelain. Fornasetti Archive


3 Hand Chair, about 1962, Pedro Friedeberg, Production this copy: c. 1965, Carved mahogany. Vitra Design Museum


4 Tour, 1993, Gae Aulenti, Manufactured by FontanaArte, Glass; bicycle wheels. Vitra Design Museum


5 Horse Lamp, 2006, Front Design, Manufactured by Moooi BV, Breda / Niederlande, Plastic; metal. Vitra Design MuseumPorca Miseria!, 2019 edition of 1994 design, Ingo Maurer, Steel; porcelain. Vitra Design Museum


6 BLESSbeauty Hairbrush, 2019 edition of 1999 design, Bless, Beech; human hair. Vitra Design Museum


7 Sarah Lucas, Cigarette Tits [Idealized Smokers Chest II], 1999. Chair, balls, cigarettes, bra,


78.74 x 49.53 x 52.71 cm (31 x 19″½ x 20″¾ in) Sarah Lucas. Courtesy of Sadie Coles HQ, London.


‘The


movement’s adherents looked to dreams,


unconscious desires and the irrational as they sought to unlock


subconscious ideas and images’


7


the covers of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Te movement continues to inspire designers today, whether in motifs drawn from its outlandish imagery, its rejection of rationalism or its fascination with the human psyche. Te rich connections between Surrealism and design are the focus of the exhibition ‘Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today’ at the Design Museum, London. Organised in conjunction with Germany’s Vitra Design Museum and curated by its director Mateo Kries, the show brings together more than 270 works of art and design by some of Surrealism’s greatest artists and those they inspired, revealing the extent to which the movement has influenced design for nearly a century.


Beginning with an overview of Surrealist art and design from the 1920s to the 1950s, the exhibition demonstrates how the movement’s ideas escaped the bounds of avant-garde art to influence the world of product design. A key focus is the object, from experimental sculptures made with everyday items, to products inspired by eroticism and the irrational. Surrealism’s engagement with objects began in the 1930s as artists working with painting, drawing and collage began exploring the possibilities of three dimensions. Rather than sculpting with clay or casting in bronze, they combined or altered pre-existing objects to produce strange new forms. Te Surrealist object, the roots of which lie in Marcel Duchamp’s readymades such as his


upside down bicycle wheel mounted to a stool (Bicycle Wheel, 1913), came to represent the contradictions of modern life and reflected Breton’s encouragement to challenge rationality by presenting mundane things in unexpected ways.


One of the most famous examples of the Surrealist object is Meret Oppenheim’s fur- lined teacup and saucer set of 1936. Simply titled ‘Object’, the impractical sculpture riffs on sensual pleasure – inviting to the touch yet repellent to the tongue. More practical, though no less strange, is Oppenheim’s small gilded Traccia table of 1938–39. Indented with a bird’s footprints on its top, it stands on two spindly bronze stork legs complete with talons. Another famous example is Salvador Dalí’s


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