Beyond the ordinaire

Show time at the V&A: the latest in its series of survey exhibitions brings us Surrealism in all its faded glory and sempiternal intrigue — a gallery of the visually fickle and macabre, the once-disturbing and the lastingly chic. The exhibition starts well with a de Chirico stage set for Le Bal (1929), a couple of gorgeous drawings for it close at hand. Masson’s designs for the ballet Les Présages (1933) are not nearly so stunning, but with Miró we strike a return-to-form with a costumed figure actually pirouetting and film clips of Jeux d’enfants and the controversial Romeo and Juliet (designed with Ernst) showing nearby. In the second room, however, is the real justification for this exhibition — a collection of Surrealist objects. There’s never a problem finding these, the thing is to discover or relocate ones which are sufficiently haunting. Or haunted.

So here we have such classics as Duchamp’s bottle rack, Man Ray’s wrapped object (foreshadowing Christo by many a year), and his poignant flat iron with its ripping row of tacks. Dalí’s ‘Aphrodisiac Jacket’ covered in glasses and the plushly upholstered wheelbarrow of Dominguez bring a note of loucheness to the proceedings. But then we rather flatline into furniture, with Leonor Fini’s all-too-elegant Corset chair and a trio of wardrobes. A really surrealist wardrobe would probably shred or incinerate your clothes, not keep them safe from moths. This is where the taming of Surrealism first rears its head — the anarchic wildness of a movement which challenged preconceptions, conventions and pushed back the very boundaries of sanity was all-too-soon domesticated and de-fanged, kept as a house-pet by designers and couturiers who wanted to inject their work with a frisson beyond the ordinaire.