The Dean Gallery
Address Belford Road

We were totally gobsmacked by this exhibition. According to the gallery blurb Dali was very mixed-up about his sexuality. This, we are told, had its roots in his childhood, and is borne out by much of the subject matter of his paintings.

Take The Grasshopper - in this overtly phallic picture where an oversized insect seems to be trying to hump a grand piano! Skull sodomising a Grand Piano is another bizarre painting where once again the grand piano is being got at! In fact, musical instruments appear in many of his pictures - "Three Young Surrealist Women holding in their arms the Skins of an Orchestra." Here we have melted instruments, including a now flattened piano. (Surprise!}

His optical illusions are brilliant. In Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach a face and fruit bowl are encapsulated in the form of an hallucinatory dog - a bolt for one eye of the face, a small child for the other - brilliantly conceived - and yes, it was a bit like find the hidden image, but if you stand well back and squint, it's easy!

We squeezed through a group of Americans talking animatedly in front of one painting, which turned out to be Study for the Image Disappears. This is a picture of a woman, head slightly blurred, with (squinting again) the ghostly face of Abe Lincoln appearing from her body.

One of the most arresting paintings is the Ascension, which depicts Christ's ascension to heaven in a most dramatic manner. Light seems to shine out of the picture. The Eye was one of five paintings Dali painted in connection with Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound. A huge eye, it appears as if it is flying in to land.

This was such a stimulating exhibition, that in spite of our aching feet, we stayed for a full two hours.

Runs until lst October.
Admission £6 per Adult £3 Concessions.

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