Look away now ... a 'breathing' eye hangs outside Selfridges designed by Dadadandy. Photograph: Geoff Caddick/PA
Another season, another cultural gimmick in Selfridges. Oxford Street's very own shopping goliath has done the punk thing, the Vegas thing and even the Brazilian thing. Now we have surrealism at Selfridges.
Pleasing alliteration aside, it begs the question: why? Do we want art cluttering the walls of our high temple of retail heaven? Besides, what possible art exhibit could be as compelling as a prolonged and intimate gaze at Marc Jacobs' latest reworking of his modern-classic the Stam bag?
Don't get me wrong. I'm quite partial to some art now and again. But, I'm a shopping purist at heart and this cross-cultural pollination bothers me. Similarly, I'm annoyed by Carston Holler's slides in the Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern. I know the complicated pram set love them, but why can't they just drive to Alton Towers?
For me the perfect couple of hours spent in Selfridges goes something like this: enter through the side door nearest the designer bag section, stroke and admire. Ride the escalator past menswear, alight on the second floor, spend some time in Miu Miu and Marc by Marc Jacobs before breezing through to the superbrand area for 20 perfect sadistic minutes spent among the outrageously priced but beautifully stocked rails in Balenciaga.
There's no time for art. Or at least, no time to actually look at it. My feeling is that Surrealism in Selfridges will inevitably be much like those weekly stories about women in Afghanistan on the pages of Grazia. It's all very well that they're there, but really who doesn't skip straight past them to get to the story about whether Kate Moss really has lost the plot?
