Not so seriously surreal

Remove the philosophical underpinning of surrealism, and what you are left with is no longer surrealism but kitsch. The turning point for this development was arguably the Ballet Russes's 1926 production of Romeo And Juliet, for which Max Ernst and Joan Miru had contributed set designs.

Appalled that Ernst and Miru had compromised their artistic integrity for such a work of apparent frippery, two of surrealism's chief intellectuals, Andre Breton and Louis Aragon, noisily disrupted the production and distributed leaflets stating that it was 'inadmissible that ideas should be at the behest of money'. A fuming Breton must have rued the day he once called Miru 'the most surrealist of us all'.

The purists knew they were fighting a losing battle, of course. And as Freudian psychoanalysis and Marxist ideology gave way to consumerism and Vogue magazine shoots, so Andre Masson's experiments in automatic writing - where you literally wrote, very quickly, whatever came into your mind in order to free up the subconscious - gave way to Dali's Mae West Lips sofa and Man Ray's nail-studded iron to his photographs of fashion models in evening gowns and Elsa Schiaparelli's haute couture range.

You can see these pieces, as well as the words of the protesting leaflet printed out in full, at the V&A's Surreal Things show. But the exhibition never really goes much deeper into the chasm that separated surrealism, as it was originally conceived, with what later followed when it was embraced by the commercial world.

A small section is devoted to some seminal early works, including Duchamp's 1914 Bottle Rack, but the stars of the show are Dali and Schiaparelli, the so-called 'forgotten surrealist' whose glamorous dresses now look very tame compared to what we see on the catwalks today.

Fine art isn't neglected altogether, however, since the exhibition has included paintings by Miru, Rene Magritte and British surrealist Leonora Carrington. Yet painting is firmly put in its place.

The late surrealist designer Frederick Kiesler's strange gallery design commands your attention right away, simply because you can hear it before you see it. Made for Peggy Guggenheim's New York gallery Art Of This Century, Kiesler came up with a dark tunnel in which the lights periodically went out and the sound of a train could be heard at intervals.

The paintings themselves, relieved of their frames, project rather than hang from the curved, woodpanelled walls. Pretty much impossible to see, the paintings form more of a backdrop rather than centrepieces in their own right. Though a witty riposte to modernism's austere White Cube, as a design for a gallery, one really can't take it seriously.

There are, however, some wonderful examples of later surrealist-inspired furniture, particularly Carlo Mollino's sinuous tables and chairs, whose whiplash curves hint at surrealism's interest in fetishistic objects - so at least you'll find a few bright gems among all that is silly and vulgar about this exhibition.

Until July 22, Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, E1, daily 10am to 5.45pm (Fri to 10pm), £9, £5 to £7 concs. Tel: 020 7942 2000. Tube: South Kensington

Surreal Things: Surrealism And Design
Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road, SW7 2RL