How weirdness took on the world

Who doesn't love Surrealism? Salvador Dalí's pouting lip sofa, Leonor Fini's hourglass perfume bottle for Schiaparelli, Meret Oppenheim's fur-covered cup and saucer.

For a movement that started with Marxist and Freudian theory, Surrealism sure hit the mainstream at speed. And why not? It is accessible, colourful and above all sexy.

Dalí's aphrodisiac jacket, covered in half-filled shot glasses, was originally served up with actual absinthe shots; Alexander Calder's jewellery made from "found" objects might be weird but it's definitely wearable.

The Surrealists had a sensual appreciation of the world, which is probably partly why their art went so quickly from two dimensions to three: they were tactile idealists, and it's not much fun to stroke a painting.

So their ideas overflowed: into clothing, advertising, set design. Giorgio di Chirico clothed Diaghilev's ballerinas; Joan Miró designed carpets. They clashed the unconscious and the utterly obvious together like cymbals that still vibrate a half-century later: who, now, is creating furniture as weird as Fini's corset chair, or as wonderful as Marcel Jean's wardrobe, in which trompe l'oeil doors open onto cloudscapes?

The Surrealists worked at the juncture of dream and nightmare, of the ridiculous and the practical - and, of course, of the clothed and the unclothed: fetishism really turned them on.

And this fantastic exhibition has kept faith with their craziness - not something the artists themselves always managed. Founder member Louis Aragon became a fascist; Dalí became a caricature, signing napkins for cash.

But so what? Here we have the flowering of the paradox, within a space that's as interactive as you could get in the Forties, with lights, sounds and vision all carefully tuned to provoke wonder.

Surrealists may have been millionaire's pets - and their wilder ideas may work only as millionaire's play things - but their influence on advertising, on mass-produced furniture, on fashion and the language of design was incalculable.

Just look at the Magritte-ish adverts for Shell here, or George Hoyningen-Huene's marvellous photographs for Vogue, where clothes regularly took second place to the glory of an idea. "The world needs more fantasy," said Salvador Dalí. And, like the crowd-pleasers they were, the Surrealists delivered it.