Historic Surrealist Design

The creation of the surrealist object emerged as a new practice in the early 1930s. The shift away from text and image was driven by the need to engage directly with the material worlds of objects and commerce. The surrealist object reflected the complexities and contradictions of life at that time. Based on texts by Salvador Dali, in 2019 the Vitra Design museum published an imaginary interview with the pioneers of Surrealism, Breton and Dali, in which the latter artist's thoughts on his desire to create objects are: "I try to create fantastic, magical objects as if in a dream. The world needs more fantasy because our civilisation is too mechanical. Let's make the imaginary real, because these things become more real than the things that actually exist" (90). Meanwhile, Breton's famous phrase, which has come down to our own time, says that we should create exactly the things we dream or fantasise about and put them on the shelves. Some Surrealist artists, of course, did just that.

Salvador Dalí's Lobster Telephone (1936) is perhaps the most famous example of a surrealist object (91) (Figure 4). With Dalí at the forefront, 20th-century artists began to create new surrealist objects - constructed from pre-existing and often redundant objects. These constructions created new meanings with mystified juxtapositions that allude to subjective fantasies or desires. The surrealist object was partly dedicated to a critique of consumer culture. However, by creating a surreal reality, using objects and interacting directly with the material world, the artists also emphasised the commercial possibilities of surrealism and its application in applied art (92).

Pav. 4. Salvador Dali, Lobster Telephone, 1938.

However, the Surrealists were not only interested in single objects, but also in the interiors of houses. Interpreting Freud's theory of dream analysis, in which the home had a multitude of disturbing and sexualised meanings, the Surrealists combined the old, the new and the strange-uncanny to create a kind of environment of objects that was completely at odds with the prevailing image of the interior of the time (Fig. 5). The display of the body, especially the female body, provided a common thread in the Surrealists' work and became intensely detailed - dismembered, disfigured or eroticized. This allowed an exploration of sexuality as an aspect of modernity and became the driving force behind the commercialisation of Surrealism (93).

Pav. 5 Surreal dining room in Monkton House

As for the spaces that balance above reality, it is worth mentioning Turin, a whole city that today is described as one in which nothing happens on the surface, but in the crevices of the city there is magic, madness and the occult. Looking back over the last century, it seems that for many artists and philosophers, this place has been the starting point of depression, of existential crises, of magical experiences or madness. Nietzsche, for example, suffered an attack of madness in Turin from which he never recovered (94). Fellini, the famous director, famous for his films based on dreams, used to consult clairvoyants in this mystical Italian location. So it is no wonder that even today, Turin is a city filled with art that, like a ghost from the past, speaks of an occult landscape.

Another inspiring example of a design that goes beyond surrealism, but whose eclecticism makes it difficult to fit into the definition of any artistic movement, is that of Carlo Mollino, who worked in Turin with a particular focus on symbolism, occultism and mythology. The artist's most famous work is the Arabesque Table (fig. 6), whose body, inspired by the biomorphic lines of Surrealist art, especially the work of the painter and sculptor Jan Arp, and the shape of the tabletop, based on a sketch of a girl reclining by the Surrealist artist Leonor Fini, is a kind of iconic key to Mollino's work (95).

Pav. 6 Arabesco coffee table by Carlo Mollino

In fact, one of the most mysterious, spectacular and still the most questionable of his projects is La Casa di Mollino. An apartment that was only discovered after Mollino's death. The existence of this space was kept secret even from his close friends, but today it belongs to the art curator Fulvio Ferrari and his son, who, in 1999, transformed this sanctuary into a museum described as a modern Egyptian Book of the Dead, not written in ink, but in tiles, carpets, mirrors and second-hand objects (96). Mr Mollino studied the occult and was obsessed with the tomb of Kha, the ancient Egyptian royal architect, which was preserved in a museum in his hometown. Like the ancient Egyptians, Mollino believed that the human soul was made up of semi-divine parts that survived after death. He therefore spent the last years of his life decorating this apartment, just as Kha decorated his pyramid in his spare time.

This theory, about the apartment's allegedly Egyptian design, became even more important when Ferrari invited the director of the Egyptian Museum in Turin to visit the space designed by Mollino. The decadent bedroom, with its leopard skin wall covering and framed collection of butterflies (fig. 7) and a cushion embroidered with an image of a boat carrying the souls of the dead to the holy city of Abydos, and the intricately carved wooden bed on which it was placed - as if to symbolise a sarcophagus - attracted the attention of the researcher of Egyptian culture. According to Ferrari, a whole symbolic construction emerged from these allusions. For example, the butterflies can be seen as C. Mollino's army of women's shabtis, figurines usually found in Egyptian tombs, intended to serve the dead, and the zebra-skin rug is a map for travelling between dimensions (97).

Another unexpected highlight is the eight Tulip chairs, designed by Eero Saarinen, which were used on the Starship Enterprise, in the TV film Star Trek . Together, these chairs form a lotus ring around an oval dining table designed by Mollino (Fig. 8), whose proportions are exactly 3:1 - the same as the cartouche (98). The lotus is considered to be a symbol of rebirth and a unified Egypt. Upper Egypt was represented by a tall white crown and its symbol was the flowering lotus. On the other hand, even if all these symbols are excluded, according to Ferrari, La Casa di Mollino is a place where one can seemingly reach a higher state of consciousness (99).

Pav. 7 La Casa di Mollino bedroom

Pav. 8 La Casa di Mollino dining room

Returning to the importance of the body in the work of the Surrealists, C. Mollino is no exception. Mollino's Polaroid photography is characterised by the fact that, even in the domestic eroticism of the women he encountered on the streets of Turin, he approached them as an architect, draughtsman and engineer of relentless curiosity. So, in addition to the aforementioned Egyptology, the designer was interested in the female body. In order to understand the ergonomic relationship between his interest in furniture and women, it is worth looking at Polaroid photographs of women and the details around them that create a local history (fig. 9; fig. 10) (100).

Fig. 9 C. Mollino Polaroid photography of women

Pav. 10 C. Mollino Polaroid photography of women

Meanwhile, fashion provided the Surrealists with even more opportunities to explore sexual symbolism and, in particular, the focus of sexual desire on a particular part of the body or object (fetishisation). According to influential Surrealist gallery owner Julien Levi, Elsa Schiaparelli was the only fashion designer to successfully interpret Surrealism. The 1938 shoe hat with a pink velvet high heel is a famous example of the Surrealist shift, whereby the object is removed from its intended context, and even though Schiaparelli's design went beyond fashion, it was still wearable (101).

In her autobiography, A Shocking Life (1954), Schiaparelli refers to herself as a mystic, claiming that her life was a means to something else. Her beliefs had a profound influence on the view of fashion as a transformative process that brings together the inner self and the outer self. She drew on Italian folk traditions, Eastern philosophies, religions that directly related to the source of harmony and creativity, theosophy, the occult and parapsychology (102).

Before becoming a designer, Elsa Schiaparelli moved from her native Rome to England, where she worked as a nanny and attended an occult club, and later emigrated to the United States, where, from New York to Boston, she publicly demonstrated hypnosis, fortune-telling sessions and other spells for several years. Schiaparelli's surrealist design journey thus arguably began with a fascination and exploration of parallel worlds.

As a child, Schiaparelli, in an attempt to empower fashion, not only played with dressing up in different clothes, but also resorted to more and more drastic measures, planting flower seeds in her throat, ears, nose and eyes in the hope that she would become beautiful. Schiaparelli is believed to have passed on this story, which perfectly reflects Surrealism, to his close friend Salvador Dali, who later interpreted it as - Women with flowers, in three paintings, two of which belonged to Schiaparelli, and the third, Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra (fig. 11), which was the inspiration for the collaboration The tears dress (fig. 12).

Pav. 11 Salvador Dali, Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra

Pav. 12 E. Schiaparelli ir S. Dali created The tears dress

E. Schiaparelli believed that when you take off your clothes, you take off your personality, and at that moment you become a completely different person, which is why she has said that she knows Schiaparelli only by hearsay and has seen her in the mirror (103), and there is no doubt that she was interested in the motif in the mirror. For example, the rococo mirror motifs used in the famous Vera's dinner jacket seem to bring back the magic and make haute couture magical. Meanwhile, the surrealist Pierre Mabille described the mirror as the most banal and original magical tool of all, which causes fundamental problems of self-identity, while Jean Cocteau, E. Schiaparelli's fashion houses and standing in front of mirrors in them were described by Jean Cocteau as a parallel world in which the women who enter are trapped and eventually leave wearing masks, either disguised, deformed or reformed, depending on Schiaparelli's whims (104).

In fact, the fashion house was closed in 1954 and only reopened in 2012, with a real comeback presumably taking place in 2019 with the launch of Daniel Roseberry. Although the latter collections, according to fashion professionals, combine Schiaparelli's heritage and modernity, in many of the collections we can observe the traditional symbols and motifs of twentieth-century surrealism, with a focus on the eye, the lips, the ear and other parts of the body (fig. 13), where modernity seems to be lost. On the other hand, looking at the recent collections (Fig. 13), it seems that not only fashion professionals, but also pop culture, believe in the symbols of surrealism that come from the past. Kim Kardashian wearing a corset from the 2022 collection (Fig. 14) or Bella Hadid wearing an elaborate, tree-motif dress on the Cannes red carpet in 2021 (Fig. 15).

Pav.13 Maison Schiaparelli 2021/2022

Pav. 14 Kim Kardashian wearing Maison Schiaparelli 2022 m. corset

Pav 15 Bella Hadid wearing a Maison Schiaparelli dress from the 2021 collection

90 Dream-like things. Imaginary interview with Salvador Dalí and André Breton. Vitra Design Museum. [Žiūrėta 2022 m. kovo 2 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.design-museum.de/en/ueber-design/interviews/detailseiten/interview-dali-breton.html

91 Lobster Telephone arba Aphrodisiac Telephone reikšmė - omarai ir telefonai Salvador Dali turėjo stiprią seksualinę reikšmę. Telefonas trečiojo dešimtmečio S. Dali paveiksluose, tokiuose kaip Kalnų ežeras (Tate Gallery kolekcija), vaizduoti ne kartą. Omaras, S. Dali kūryboje dažniausiai siejamas su erotiniu malonumu ir skausmu. 1939 m. Niujorko pasaulinei parodai Dalí sukūrė architektūrinę struktūrą/ patirtį pavadinimu „Veneros svajonė“, Omarą menininkas šiame kūrinyje panaudojo modelių moteriškiems lytiniams organams uždengti. Dali dažnai piešdavo artimą maisto ir sekso analogiją. Lobster Telephone kūrinyje, galima matyti, kad omaro uodega, kurioje yra jo lytinės dalys, dedama tiesiai virš telefono dalies, į kurią kalbama lūpomis.

92 KRIES, Mateo. CUNZ, Tanja. Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924-Today. Vitra Design Museum. 2019. p. 368. ISBN 9783945852330.

93 Surrealism and design. Victoria and Albert Museum. [Žiūrėta 2021 m. spalio 3 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/surrealism-and-design

94 Friedrich Nietzsche went mad after allegedly seeing a horse being whipped in the Italian city of Turin. The Vintage News. [Žiūrėta 2022 balandžio 26 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/02/05/friedrich-nietzsche-went-mad-after-allegedly-seeing-a-horse-being-whipped-in-the-italian-city-of-turin

95 Surrealism and design. Victoria and Albert Museum. [Žiūrėta 2021 m. spalio 3 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/surrealism-and-design

96 Decoding the secrets of Casa Mollino. Christie’s. [Žiūrėta 2022 m. balandžio 26 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.christies.com/features/Architect-and-designer-Carlo-Mollino-Turin-apartment-7339-1.aspx

97 Mirrored Walls, Custom Erotica, Supernatural Tales: Behind the Mythology of Casa Mollino. Art Review. [Žiūrėta 2022 balandžio 25 d.] Prieiga per internetą: https://artreview.com/mirrored-walls-custom-erotica-supernatural-tales-behind-the-mythology-of-casa-mollino/

98 Kartušas – tai Egipto karaliams amžiną apsaugą užtikrinęs ovalo formos simbolis, kurio viduje hieroglifais buvo užrašomi jų vardai.

99 Decoding the secrets of Casa Mollino. Christie’s. [Žiūrėta 2022 m. balandžio 26 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.christies.com/features/Architect-and-designer-Carlo-Mollino-Turin-apartment-7339-1.aspx

100 Decoding the secrets of Casa Mollino. Christie’s. [Žiūrėta 2022 m. balandžio 26 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.christies.com/features/Architect-and-designer-Carlo-Mollino-Turin-apartment-7339-1.aspx 49

101 Surrealism and design. Victoria and Albert Museum. [Žiūrėta 2021 m. spalio 3 d.]. Prieiga per internetą: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/surrealism-and-design

102 SCHIAPARELLI, Elsa. Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli. V&A Publishing. New York, 1954. p. 316. ISBN 9781851776702

103 SCHIAPARELLI, Elsa. Shocking Life: The Autobiography of Elsa Schiaparelli. V&A Publishing. New York, 1954. p. 316. ISBN 9781851776702

104 BLUM, Dilys. Elsa Schiaparelli and the art of illusion.Art Journal. NGV Publications. vol. 57. 2020.