Window displays as a case study from the beginnings of photography to the Bauhaus architects; mannequins as an obsession of the Surrealists; mass commodities as the focus of Pop art: The fascination with surface and with the excesses of the world of consumer goods can be traced in art from the turn of the last century to the present. At the same time, critical thought has never ceased its warnings against the seductions of consumerism. The directors of the Schirn Kunsthalle and the Tate Liverpool, Max Hollein and Christoph Grunenberg, respectively, collaborated to pack this conflict into a single