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David Trigg visits the 'Objects of Desire' exhibition of Surrealist art at the London Design Museum (OPENS 14 OCTOBER)

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WHILE SURREALIST tendencies are found throughout art history – from the fantastical visions of Hieronymous Bosch and Giuseppe Arcimboldo, to the dreamlike worlds of Giorgio de Chirico – it was not until 1924, when the young Frenchman André Breton published the Surrealist manifesto, that one of the 20th century’s most outrageous and influential art movements was born. The term ‘Surrealism’, suggesting a realism extending beyond reality, was coined in 1917 by the avant-garde poet Guillaume Apollinaire. For Breton, however, it was to have a much wider range of senses: absurdity, paradox, exaggeration, the marvellous and the unexpected. The movement’s adherents looked to dreams, unconscious desires and the irrational as they sought to unlock subconscious ideas and images. Although beginning as a literary movement, Surrealism was quickly embraced by visual artists, resulting in some of the most memorable images of the last hundred years, from Salvador Dalí’s melting watches to René Magritte’s levitating apple obscuring the face of a mysterious bowler-hatted man.

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

The Surrealists’ jarring juxtapositions and unsettling distortions of everyday objects soon began influencing modern design. In the mid-1930s its ideas and obsessions could be seen permeating furniture, fashion, advertising, graphics, theatre, film, interiors and architecture. Some Surrealist artists worked as commercial designers themselves, and by the 1940s their creations were gracing the covers of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. The 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. The 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.

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

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. The 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.

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

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 Lobster Telephone (1938), which comprises a working telephone with a plaster lobster bolted to its receiver. The bizarre object was made for the eccentric British poet Edward James, who was Dalí’s main patron from 1936 to 1939. Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual connotations for the eccentric Spanish artist and they can be seen in several of his paintings of the late 1930s. ‘I try to create fantastic things, magical things, things like in a dream,’ he said. ‘The world needs more fantasy. Our civilisation is too mechanical. We can make the fantastic real, and then it is more real than that which actually exists.’

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

Fashion was another area in which Surrealist influence was felt and some artists, including Man Ray and Lee Miller, also worked as fashion photographers. The Italian-born French fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli collaborated with Dalí to create some of her most Surrealist designs, such as the Skeleton Dress (1938), a black evening dress with padded representations of human bones made with an exaggerated trapunto technique. Other designs include the Lobster Dress (1937), a white silk evening gown with a large lobster design, and the floor length, sleeveless Tear Dress (1938), which features a torn fabric motif. Her 1938 collection also introduced the humorous Shoe Hat (1938), which transformed a high-heel shoe into a piece of headwear – another example of Surrealist displacement, where an object is removed from its expected context to create something fantastical. While Schiaparelli’s designs pushed at the boundaries of good taste, they remained elegant and wearable.

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

Many Surrealists took an interest in interior design, taking their cue from Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams, in which the home came to signify various repressed aspects of the psyche. Not only did domestic environments feature in their paintings, but several artists created their own interiors, offering a radical alternative to prevailing trends. When the important collector and patron Carlos de Beistegui commissioned Le Corbusier to build him a two-storey penthouse on the Champs-Élysées in the early 1930s, he invited Dalí to design its roof terrace. The open-air drawing room featured a carpet of grass, a ventilation duct in the shape of a periscope and an ornate fireplace furnished with an antique clock and candlesticks. Le Corbusier was in close contact with the Surrealist movement as early as the 1920s, though Dalí had little time for the architect’s designs, calling them ‘the ugliest and most unacceptable buildings in the world.’

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.

In America, the Austrian émigré architect Frederick Kiesler created a ground-breaking Surrealist interior for Peggy Guggenheim’s Manhattan gallery, Art of This Century. Opened in 1942, the avant-garde gallery featured organic, cave-like spaces where sculptures hung in mid-air and paintings sprang out from curved walls on adjustable arms. Some works were viewed through peepholes, while others were lit by spotlights that flashed on and off in random sequences. Occasionally the entire space was plunged into darkness, disorienting viewers who then heard the alarming sound of an oncoming train played over a loudspeaker. Kiesler also designed a collection of multipurpose biomorphic furniture for the gallery. His plywood and linoleum Correalist Rocker could be used as a chair, a table, an easel for paintings or a plinth for sculpture, and reflected his belief in the integral relationship between objects and their environment. The biomorphic design language of Surrealism, exemplified by the Correalist Rocker, became an important foundation for the organic design expression of the post-war era, reflecting Kiesler’s declaration: ‘Form does not follow function. Function follows vision. Vision follows reality.’

Porca Miseria!, 2019 edition of 1994 design, Ingo Maurer, Steel; porcelain. Vitra Design Museum

One of the most important Surrealist interiors in Britain was at Monkton House, the Edwin Lutyens-designed West Sussex home of Edward James. In the 1930s, James collaborated with Dalí and the architects Christopher ‘Kit’ Nicholson and Hugh Casson, as well as decorator Norris Wakefield, to transform the six-bedroom lodge into a Surrealist house. The 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.

Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone, 1938. Photo West Dean College of Arts and Conservation. Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS 2022

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.

Leonora Carrington, The Old Maids, 1947. Estate of Leonora Carrington / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2022

The 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. The subversive furniture replaces marble for soft, self-skinning polyurethane foam, forming a seat whose subversive attitude would surely have delighted Breton. The 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.

Salvador Dalí and Edward James, Mae West’s Lips sofa, c. 1938. Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton and Hove. Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala- Salvador Dalí, DACS 2022

Man Ray, Ingres’s Violin (Le Violon d’Ingres), 1924. Man Ray 2015 Trust/DACS, London 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. The 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.

Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, 1937. Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS 2022

The 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.