From Dreamscapes to Dining Rooms - Surreal Things Q&A

Earlier this year, the Victoria and Albert Museum's "Surreal Things" exhibition -- on surrealism in design -- was slated to appear at the Dallas Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. But according to V&A curator Ghislaine Wood, the recession has since ruled out those venues. That makes the Art Gallery of Ontario the sole North American venue for the exhibition, which opened in Toronto this weekend.

Recently, I sat down with Wood at the AGO to chat about the show. Today the National Post published our condensed interview. Here's an excerpt.

Q Dali was really into creating fantasy worlds. What do you think he and his colleagues would have made of the Internet, a place where millions of people construct elaborate fantasies on sites like Second Life?

A I think Dali would have jumped to take over the Internet and make it Dali-Land. ... I also think that audience participation in the Internet would have intrigued Dali, because the Surrealists introduced those ideas. Dali once made a jacket with glasses all over it. And what you were supposed to do was take the glasses off the jacket, fill them with creme de menthe from a bottle nearby and get drunk in front of an object, therefore having a relationship with the object that's entirely subjective and personal. Participation in art [today] is a major idea, and that was Dali in 1956.

Image of Dali's Ruby Lips from the AGO