Dream of Venus

BusterKeaton, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell and Alberto Giacometti all made play a component of the surreal house. Dali took this playfulness one step further, creating an amusement hall that was the first and perhaps only—until now, that is –dwelling actually conceived as a surrealist house. His dream of Venus pavilion for the New York World’s Fair of 1939 has long been overlooked; indeed for many years it was written off as being in the worst possible taste. Only recently recuperate in the post-Warholian era of excess and transgression, Dali’s funhouse transforms systematic confusion into carnival.