by Jian Farhoumand.
Walking into the Brighton Museum, Pavilion Gardens, one is
immediately struck by the wide and eclectic array of exciting and bizarre-looking
pieces of furniture on display.
The free exhibition traces the development of innovation in modernist
and surrealist interior design throughout the twentieth century, a period marked
by political and social upheaval, clearly reflected in the emerging designs and
technologies of the day.
In 1924, Andre Bretoni’s Surrealist Manifesto began an
artistic movement concerned with the incongruous and irrational, drawing on Sigmund
Freud’s theories of the unconscious mind and power of dreams.
The Surrealist Manifesto proved a huge influence on the Spanish
artsist Salvador Dali (1904-‘88).
A few yards into the main hall of the Brighton Museum is the
prize piece of the exhibition: a 1938 example of Salvador Dali’s Mae West’s
Lips Sofa.
The sofa takes the form of a pair of bright red,
larger-than-life lips, and shows off an underlying sensuality that complements its
unusual choice of form.
The iconic sofa is based upon Dali’s original 1934 painting,
The Face of Mae West, and is built from wood and upholstered in red felt and wool.
Dali collaborated with his English patron, the poet Edward James
(1907-’84), on creating the sofa alongside other modernist and surrealist
objects, also notably the Lobster Telephone.
There are other intriguing pieces also on display in the
Brighton Museum exhibition.
A giant leather chair, known as the Joe Chair, formed in the
shape of a huge baseball glove, made as a tribute to baseball player Joe Di
Maggio (and clearly inspired by Dali’s lips sofa) is also on display.
The chair was first made by a Surrealist art group known as Memphis, founded in Milan in the 1980s, and shares an underlying playfulness and magnification of form with Dali’s work.
Both Dali’s Mae West’s Lips sofa and an example of Memphis’ Joe
Chair will remain on display at the Brighton gallery until March 2014.
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