Surrealism Season
Selfridges explored the influence of Surrealism on contemporary art and design with a series of collaborations in its Oxford Street store.
Running in tandem with the Victoria and Albert museum’s exhibition, Surreal Things: Surrealism and Design (29th March to 22nd July 2007), Selfridges’ commissions demonstrated the powerful effect the movement continues to have on artists and designers today. At the height of the surrealist movement in the 1930’s, artists such as Salvador Dali and Elsa Schiaparelli created window displays for forward-thinking shops. Selfridges celebrated this tradition by inviting current designers influenced by the Surrealist movement to create unique and thought-provoking schemes. Commissioned designers included John Galliano, Viktor & Rolf, Maison Martin Margiela, and Moschino. Each of them was given free reign to create a surrealist world within one window.
Dadadandy - the Paris-based team inspired by Surrealism and Dadaism – were commissioned to create a number of installations in the Ultralounge and a window along Oxford Street. One of their most startling art pieces was The Sum of All Reasons by Simon Moretti for Dadadandy, a gigantic eyeball dangling over the store’s iconic Lady of Time above the historic main entrance. Architectural practice Fashion Architecture Taste (F.A.T.) also designed and curated a surreal shop on the lower ground floor of the Oxford Street Store.
