Art: Phantom

In London’s New Burlington Galleries, surrealist artists from 14 countries held their first British exhibition. Londoners gaped at The Last Voyage of Captain Cook, a wire globe enclosing a striped female torso. Object Made by a Madman was a basket containing scraps of glass, scissor blades. Beside it hung a pair of white dancing slippers, their heels encased in paper cutlet frills, a waiter’s jacket strung with liqueur glasses half filled with creme de menthe. Tory visitors bristled at The Minotaure, a portrait of the late, great Lord Kitchener of Khartum with a tiny, sad-faced child clinging to his chin.

Highlight of the exhibition was Artist Salvador Dali’s living design, Phantom of Sex Appeal, for which Artist Sheila Legge solemnly glided through the crowded, stuffy gallery in a tight white satin gown, her head in a wire cage covered with pink paper rosebuds, a facsimile female leg in her hand. She had substituted the leg for a pork chop prescribed by Artist Dali.

“That get-up,” a bystander whispered, “must be very hot.” “Very,” admitted Phantom Legge.