112 EXHIBITION
Surrealist house. Te building’s exterior walls were painted purple, its columns disguised as palm trees and the drainpipes made to resemble bamboo stalks. Inside, along with a wealth of Surrealist art, were all manner of quirky furnishings, including padded walls, psychedelic wallpaper, lobster telephones and a carpet woven with the footprints of James’ wife, the dancer Tilly Losch.
Among Monkton House’s eccentric furniture was Dalí’s Cat’s Cradle Hands Chair (1936), in which the back took the form of two spindly arms ending in open hands, and the iconic Mae West Lips sofa, a joyous expression of Surrealism that similarly combined the fanciful with the practical. James suggested the design after seeing Dalí’s drawing, Mae West’s Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment (1934–35), in which a portrait photograph of the Hollywood star is transformed into a fantastical room-setting; her eyes hang as paintings, her nose becomes a double fireplace and her famous full lips provide the seating. Two bright red lips sofas based on Dalí’s drawing were made for James’ dining room, fabricated by the London design firm Green & Abbott. Never one to shy away from publicity, Dalí ensured that the collaboration was promoted far and wide. It clearly caught the eye of Carlo Mollino: in 1939 the Italian architect designed his own
lips-shaped sofa for the interior of the Casa Devalle in Turin. Mollino’s engagement with Surrealism is evident in the large number of photographs of his interiors included in ‘Objects of Desire’, such as the Casa Miller, a model home that he designed for himself in 1936 and decorated with plaster body fragments. Also on display is his plywood and glass coffee table, Arabesco (1950), the undulating, biomorphic forms of which appear to have fallen straight out of a Dalí painting. Te Italian architecture studio, Studio 65, revisited the Mae West Lips sofa for a new generation with its Bocca Sofa (1970), originally designed for a new fitness centre in Milan. Mass produced in polyurethane and elastic fabric by Gufram, the couch became one of the most famous symbols of Italian Radical Design and remains available today in 25 colours. An irreverent streak ran through many of Studio 65’s projects in the 1970s, recalling their compatriot Piero Fornasetti, whose printed ceramic plates featuring the distorted face of opera singer Lina Cavalieri, Tema e Variazioni (1950s onward), similarly reflected Surrealism’s desire to break free from the dogma of functionalism. Take the studio’s iconic Capitello Chair (1971), which melds Surrealist ideas with Pop Art to transform the classical ionic capital and column into a lounge chair. Te subversive furniture replaces marble for
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soft, self-skinning polyurethane foam, forming a seat whose subversive attitude would surely have delighted Breton. Te chair is one of several exhibits in ‘Objects of Desire’ that would not seem out of place in one of De Chirico’s metaphysical landscapes. Others include Man Ray’s unsettling oversized eyeball that turns into a sofa (Le Témoin, 1971); Gaetano Pesce’s lounge chair in the form of a giant foot (Il Piede, 1969); and the iconic Hand Chair (circa 1965) by Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg.
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12 Man Ray, Ingres’s Violin (Le Violon d’Ingres), 1924. Man Ray 2015 Trust/DACS, London 2022
13 Salvador Dalí,
Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937. Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS 2022
‘Objects of Desire’ contains a wealth of modern design objects that embody the Surrealist spirit. Gae Aulenti’s Tour (1993) channels Duchamp’s readymades with its glass table top mounted on bicycle wheels, while Konstantin Grcic’s witty hybrid Coathangerbrush (1992), which was re-released by Muji in 2002, nods to Magritte. In 2003, Dutch designer Wieki Somers melded the ritual of tea drinking with the spectre of death when she designed a teapot shaped like a pig’s skull – an uncanny combination evoking Oppenheim’s fur-lined teacup. Te celebrated Brazilian designers Fernando and Humberto Campana cite Surrealism as a point of reference for their mysterious freestanding Cabana bookcase (2003), the circular shelves of which are concealed beneath a curtain of hand knotted raffia viscose fibre, evoking a shaggy-haired yeti. A real animal provides the inspiration for Swedish design duo Front’s head-turning Horse Lamp (2006), in which a life-sized PVC horse stands with a lampshade atop its head. All of these designs adapt the outlandish aesthetics of Surrealism to items of everyday use, at once critiquing the orthodoxy of strict functionalism while revelling in the creative possibilities afforded by modern materials.
Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today is at Te Design Museum, London from 14 October 2022 to 19 February 2023
Te dialogue between Surrealism and designers that unfolds across ‘Objects of Desire’ reveals that Surrealism is less an aesthetic than it is an attitude, one shaped by the pursuit of innovation as much as subversion and a desire to escape functional constraints. Some early Surrealists such as Tristan Tzara criticised the movement’s drift into the commercial world, but as the exhibition so ably demonstrates, it was through design that Surrealism was able to fulfil one of its original aims, namely the freeing of quotidian objects and customs from convention while giving the realm of dreams, obsessions and fantasies a place in our everyday lives.
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