Fourth Plinth: A massive cock-up

Like Ann Widdecombe and Twiglets, the Fourth Plinth is one of those things the British public have unexpectedly taken to their hearts. In the final months of last year, the Fourth Plinth commissioning panel invited the public to help choose which two sculptures will sit atop the plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2012 and 2013, respectively. 17,000 people commented on the eclectic shortlist, with responses ranging from enthusiastic (“Love this idea! I think it reflects the best of British. Good, solid, hard working, with a fabulously eccentric sense of humor”) to deranged (“this is poorpostarus i cannot believe such fools are righting rude comments they should be arrested FUCK THEM”).

I was one of those 17,000 people who commented. Indeed I may have been two of them, given that I commented both online and at the exhibition of the shortlisted entries. (After some consideration, I changed my vote.) Either way, my wishes were roundly ignored, and the panel have decided to honour two of the least appealing entries.



2012 will be the year of Powerless Structures, Fig. 101. This brass sculpture, by Scandinavian duo Elmgreen & Dragset, portrays an asexual child on a rocking horse. At first glance it looks kitsch and crashingly cloying. A more sustained look at the sculpture seems to confirm first impressions. Structures metaphorically challenges the other sculptures in the square, with the sweet little child representing a beacon of insipid innocence facing off against the nasty military types on top of the other plinth. The child is on a horse and so is one of the military men. But the child’s horse is a rocking horse! It’s subversive, you see.

In 2013 the rocking horse will be booted off the plinth by an enormous bright blue cockerel. Hahn / Cockby German artist Katharina Fritsch is a lot more fun than Structures. According to the blurb about the piece, “its unnatural scale and bold colour, brings a sense of hallucination and uncertainty to the genteel Georgian architecture of Trafalgar Square.” I’m all for hallucination and uncertainty in genteel surroundings (take that, you Georgian losers!), but I can’t help feel the Cock’s charm will wear off rather quickly.

A better choice would have been Hew Locke’s sculpture, Sikandar. The piece, a Victorian statue literally weighed down with jewels, ornaments, masks and other spoils of conquest, would have made an extraordinary sight. Like Structures, Locke’s work seems to undermine the imperial pomposity of the other statues on the square, and like Hahn / Cock, it is immediately striking. But more than either of the winning pieces, Locke’s intricate and colourful work would have repaid repeat viewings, fully justifying its 18-month tenancy in the Square. The work raises questions about the weight of history and the decline and fall of empires, and above all possesses the kind of messy, hodge-podge beauty lacking in the other shortlisted statues.

But, alas, Locke was out of luck. And perhaps it is for the best. After all, if the British public can warm to Ann Widdecombe, then why not to a 14ft blue cock standing proudly alongside Nelson's Column?