One must make sacrifices for art

The Diary was walking along London’s Regent Street this week when a particularly bizarre marketing ploy caught our attention.

Stylish menswear company Hugo Boss has put an arresting piece of abstract art in the window of its flagship store. Multimedia artist Laurie Anderson has projected images of her own face onto the shop dummies, combined with a soundtrack of chatting, screaming, squeaking and wailing. The frightening result has been dubbed “Zero the Counter”, and will be on display until June 15.

The Diary was suitably impressed by this spooky tableau, along with several dozen shoppers who stopped to watch the show. Shame that it put them off going inside and buying any clothes, of course. But then, as Emperor Nero once said: “Qualis artifex pereo” (one must make sacrifices for one’s art).