Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 Today at the Design Museum, London

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Fri 14 Oct 2022 - Sun 19 Feb 2023

Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today at the Design Museum, London

A sofa modelled on Mae West's lips, a skeleton dress, a glass table on wheels and a lobster resting on a telephone will be on display at London's Design Museum this autumn.

Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today will, appropriately enough, focus on Surrealism impact on the world of design.



The exhibition will highlight how, in the 1920s, surrealists subverted everyday household objects into their imaginative world. One example is the way that Man Ray's unnerving Cadeau/Audace (1921) studded a traditional flat iron with nails.

Surrealist artists were soon courted by the commercial design world.

The Spanish artist Salvador Dalí found a collaborator and patron in the shape of Edward James, a poet from a wealthy family line. The mind-bending interior design which resulted included the Mae West Lips sofas, Champagne Lamps - Victorian standard lamps with brass versions of 'champagne glasses' as well as the famous Lobster Telephone.

Dali will also be a major part of the exhibition's fashion strand. His Vogue covers will be on display, along with those of other surrealists such as Giorgio de Chirico.

Another Dali collaboration - this time with French fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli - resulted in the Telephone Dial Powder Compact, a mirror and powder puff accessory, with a telephone dial design.

In turn, Schiaparelli influenced other designers such as Daniel Roseberry of the Maison Schiaparelli haute couture house.



Surrealism has now found its way into the digital world. Design studio Front has used 3D printing to turn motion capture into functional furniture. Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec employ automatic drawing processes in their work. Automatic creative processes were used by Surrealists to allow their imaginations to run freely, uninhibited by mental constraints.

The poet David Gascoyne wrote in his manifesto: "Surrealism's fundamental ambition is to abolish the formal distinction between dream and reality." and to express "thoughts unarrested by reason and logic."
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Design Museum Curator Kathryn Johnson said: "The early Surrealists were survivors of the First World War and the 1918 influenza pandemic, and their art was in part a reaction to those horrors. Today, in the context of dizzying technological change, war and another global pandemic, Surrealism's spirit feels more alive than ever in contemporary design.%%"



Other exhibits will include those by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and Leonora Carrington, Sarah Lucas, Björk, Tim Walker and Dior.

Objects of Desire will be made up of four sections focusing on everyday objects, interior design, fashion, the body and the mind.

London has always played an important role in the Surrealism Movement. In 1936 the International Surrealist Exhibition was held at the New Burlington Gardens. Salvador Dali made his contribution by being imprisoned in a deep-sea diving suit until David Gascoyne saved him from suffocation by unscrewing the helmet.

The performance artist Sheila Legge walked to Trafalgar Square wearing a mask of roses and ladybirds and carrying an artificial leg. The London Film Society screened surrealist films between 1926 and 1930 including Man Ray's Emak Bakia and The Mysteries of Château du Dé and The Starfish.

In 1978 Camden Arts Centre held the Surrealism Unlimited exhibition, organised by the painter Conroy Maddox and the writer Jean Schuster. It was a response to the impression they believed that had been created by the Dada and Surrealism retrospective at the Hayward Gallery, that the movement was dead and buried.


Whether you think Surrealist art and design creations are just jokes without punchlines or mind-expanding works of genius, Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today sounds like a unique chance to see a beguiling collection of exhibits in one place.

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!date 14/10/2022 -- 19/02/2023
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