Dalí and Duchamp's Friendship Explored in London Exhibition

The Royal Academy of Arts in London presents 'Dalí/Duchamp', a major exhibition examining the long friendship and mutual influence between Salvador Dalí and Marcel Duchamp, curated by Dawn Ades and William Jeffett. Running from October 7, 2017 to January 3, 2018, the show features over 80 works including paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, films, and letters. The exhibition is structured in three sections: 'Identity' explores their personalities and careers; 'The Body and the Object' focuses on their shared interest in eroticism, influenced by Freud's studies; and 'Experimenting with Reality' analyzes their playful manipulation of perspective in response to new theories of time, space, energy, matter, and gravity. A highlight is a previously unpublished manuscript from the Dalí Foundation in Figueres, described by co-curator Dawn Ades as a 'extraordinary mixture of very explicit and highly symbolic material', in which Dalí recounts his 'nutritive perversions' during a 1933 picnic on a Catalan beach with Gala and Duchamp. The exhibition includes a warning that some works contain adult content. The show aims to reveal the intellectual and aesthetic dialogue between these two pioneers—Dalí as a pioneer of lysergic atmospheres and Duchamp as the inventor of the readymade—whose artistic paths were closer than they appear, united by skepticism and a shared interest in eroticism.