Alice in Wonderland Revisited

Lewis Carroll's timeless novels, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, have fascinated and inspired many generations of artists since the first novel was published over 150 years ago. Alice in Wonderland at Tate Liverpool is the first exhibition to provide a comprehensive historical exploration of how the stories have influenced the visual arts, providing insight into the creation of the novels, the adoption of the text as an inspiration for artists and the revision of its key themes by artists up to present day.

Carroll's stories were soon adopted by artists. Surrealist artists from the 1930s onwards were drawn towards this fantastical world where natural laws were suspended. From the 1960s through the 1970s, conceptual artists took Alice as foil for exploring our relationship to perception and reality, and the stories inspired responses in both Pop and Psychedelic art.

There will be the opportunity to see the original drawings by Sir John Tenniel, Salvador Dali's series of twelve Alice in Wonderland illustrations, work by Max Ernst, Rene Magritte, Dorothea Tanning and many more...

A journey through 150 years of one of the most imaginative sources of inspiration ever: Alice in Wonderland.

Alice Pleasance Liddell, Summer 1858

©National Portrait Gallery, London

Salvador Dali, The Pool of Tears, Alice in Wonderland 1969

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)

Salvador Dali

The Rabbit Sends A Little Bill, Alice in Wonderland 1969

Annelies Strba, Nyima 445, 2009

©Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London

Magic Lantern Slide

©University of Exeter

John Wesley, (Untitled) Falling Alice, 1963

©Fredericks & Freiser, New York

John Wesley, Humpty Dumpty, 1963

©Fredericks & Freiser, New York

Kiki Smith, Pool of Tears (After Lewis Carroll), 2000

©Courtesy of ULAE, Inc

Max Ernst, Alice 1941

©2011 The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence

Courtesy Tate Liverpool, UK

Alice in Wonderland

November 4, 2011 - January 29, 2012
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