THE STORY OF DALI'S LIPS SOFA (IT WAS BASED ON MAE WEST'S PUCKER)

The ultimate artist, Salvador Dalí was also a designer who created various objects and furniture.

Dalí thought art should permeate all aspects of life and became interested in furniture after meeting, famous french designer and decorator, Jean Michel Franck. Around ’34-’35, Dalí used a photo of the actress Mae West, to create a painting called:

“The Face of Mae West which may be used as a surrealistic apartment”

In the painting (above) the face became the room and each facial feature an element: the nose became a fireplace, the eyes were pictures and the lips, a sofa…

This was the inspiration for what became the 3D Mae West Lips Sofa upholstered in “shocking pink” fabric, by designer Elsa Schiaparelli, which was the same color as the lipstick wore by Ms. West.

René Magritte, 1937, Portrait of Edward James

Dalí conceived this with Edward James in 1936 and had a pair of them executed in 1938. James gets second billing because he was really the money man. Born into great wealth, he was a big benefactor of the surrealists. He sponsored Dalí for all of 1938 and James’ collection was one of the finest of surrealist work in private hands. He also provided practical help (like getting sofas made.) He allowed surrealist René Magritte to stay in his London house to paint around this same time.

As well as Dalí and Magritte, his collection included works by the greats like Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Klee, Pavel Tchelitchew, Pablo Picasso, Giacometti, Max Ernst and Paul Delvaux, among others. Most of the collection was sold at Christie’s two years after his death in 1986.

Conceived by Salvador Dalí and Edward James and executed by Green & Abbott in 1938 as one of a pair of Lips Sofas for the dining room at Monkton House. It sold at auction last year at Christie’s in London for $650,000

The pair of lips sofas in the dining room of James' estate, Monkton House

Dali & James discussing, "Dream of Venus" for the New York World's Fair, 1939

WHAT IF DISNEY & DALI COLLABORATED ON A FILM? THEY DID – WATCH.

In 1945 Walt Disney hired Salvador Dali to design a surreal animated short to be part of a packaged film in the vein of Fantasia. Disney chose Ray Gilbert & Armando Dominguez's ballad 'Destino' because of the title —the Spanish word for “destiny”. 

Dalí split his time between Pebble Beach, California, and Disney Studios in Burbank, California, working side-by-side with the studios’ John Hench on the collaboration. But over time it was clear there were big differences in the two men’s approach of storytelling. Dalí described the story in an article in the Los Angeles Times on April 7, 1946, 

“A magical exposition of life in the labyrinth of time…”

Disney described it as, 

“A simple love story—boy meets girl.”

Character and personalities were the most important elements of Disney’s traditional stories, while Dalí saw them unfold like dreams, with characters wrapped in symbolism. Less than a year after they started, work stopped on their collaboration.

Despite its disappointing end, Disney and Dalí remained friends. The walls of Disney’s Palm Springs home were hung with Dalí’s paintings. After welcoming Dalí and his wife Gala into his home, Disney and his wife Lillian traveled to Spain to visit them in 1957.

More than fifty years after Destino‘s inception, it was completed from existing drawings and story boards. Here’s the incredible result. 

Plug in your speakers or headphones, go full-screen and watch.

HORST AT THE V&A

Last week, the V&A Museum in London launched a retrospective of the work of the legendary photographer Horst P. Horst. (1906-99) In an extraordinary career spanning 60 years, his photographs appeared on the pages of Vogue and House & Garden under the singular byline; “Horst”. He was such a versatile and multifaceted photographer that there are 10 sections in this exhibit; Haute Couture, Surrealism, Stage & Screen, Travel Patterns From Nature, The Studio, Fashion In Color, Living In Style, Nudes and Platinum Prints. SO prolific was he, that even with 400 images in the exhibition, the curators say they could have easily produced five shows of the same size. Every one of his 94 Vogue covers is on view — but his work wasn’t only about fashion. He shot everything from male nudes (several of which have been lent by Elton John and David Furnish) to interior design and gardens, which he began to specialize in under the editorship of Diana Vreeland.

"Fashion is an expression of the times. Elegance is something else again."  – Horst, 1984

Horst was part of an artistic, collaborative crowd that in turn fueled his work. He was friends with Schiaparelli and Dalí and the Surrealist movement inspired him to put his own creative spin on simplest jobs. Asked to make an image for a Vogue nail-polish story, for example, he arranged models and mannequins’s hands for a picture that transcends mere illustration. His fashion work represented an creative departure from what had come before, and he could be a source of frustration for editors who just wanted him to show the clothes. I’m very familiar with his photographs, having worked for Vogue, House & Garden and Vanity Fair (we hired him at VF when his third act was in full-swing in the mid 80s), but I’ll admit that the true scope of his career somewhat eluded me. Avedon & Penn are often thought of as THE two primary 20th century magazine photographers, but with this exhibit, Horst is nudging them over to secure a permanent place in the pantheon. The exhibition runs through January 4, 2015 at the V&A.

Muriel Maxwell, Vogue, 1939 (Imagine. This is the year Gone With the Wind & The Wizard of Oz came out)

94 of Horst's Vogue covers are on display, like this one from 1941

Ask to shoot nail polish for a Vogue story, this surreal image is what Horst produced in 1941

Salvador Dalí’s costumes for Leonid Massine’s ballet Bacchanale, 1939

Mainbocher Corset, Paris, 1939

Marlene Dietrich, New York, 1942

Baroness Pauline de Rothschild at her apartment in Paris, 1969

View of ruins at the palace of Persepolis, Persia, 1949

Photographic Collage, about 1945

Round the Clock, New York, 1987

Male Nude, 1952

Dinner suit and headdress by Schiaparelli, 1947