The first piece to greet me in the What We Call Love: From Surrealism to Now exhibition was A Couple with their Heads Full of Clouds. My first exposure to Dali was that poster in one of the classrooms in my convent boarding school and, frankly, it freaked me out and marked the beginning of a long wariness of Dali, so I approached this one with some apprehension. But I needn’t have. It is as full of hope and space and grace as Swans Reflecting Elephants is, to me, anyway, ominous.

Picasso was there too. And Duchamp. And Yoko Ono. Mirrors featured in at least two of the exhibits, there’s erotica – naturally, and blood, and books.

I was most struck by the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois, and Dorothy Cross, whose Lover Snakes elicited equal measures of fascination and repugnance.

 

The exhibition runs until the 7th of February, and it’s accompanied by a very covetable book/catalogue, What we call love.