I really take offence at Westfield Shopping Centre. I’m not one of those guys who never goes into a shopping mall, but I can’t see how a giant bad-ass block of shops is going to help the less-privileged areas of London better than, say, some kind of well-thought out residential area. Still, sign of the times I guess.
The above picture is a Corot, I think. Back when people first got into the idea of looking at the landscape, as opposed to just thinking of it as an inconvenient location between point A and point B, he was one of the first artists to get out into the fresh air and paint the landscape as he saw it. I doubt that he’d want to hang out in shopping malls and paint them instead. Maybe if the shop assistants were the hot Italian women he liked to look at? No – thinking about it, he’d probably end up with a restraining order. I guess this is the view from as close as Corot would be able to get to the mall.
