Trafalgar Square sits in the center of London, just north of the Palace of Westminster. It was christened to celebrate Horatio Lord Nelson’s annihilation of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Spain’s Cape Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars. Nelson’s victory cemented British naval Dominance, which in turn launched the Pax Britannica. Nelson’s Column stands in the center of the square, 170 feet high and topped by a statue of the man himself.
Around Nelson’s Columns are four plinths for four monumental statues. The first holds a statue of George IV; the second, General Charles Napier, and the third, General Henry Havelock. Napier and Havelock were both distinguished officers in British India: Havelock was famous for his command during the Siege of Lucknow; Napier, for his capture of Sindh, and for allegedly reporting his conquest with the single word message, “Peccavi,” meaning “I have sinned.” The fourth plinth is empty.
Originally, the fourth plinth was intended to support a statue of William IV, but statues are expensive, and the project ran out of money. So, for 150 years, the empty fourth plinth was a curiosity—until 1998, when the Royal Society of Arts had the disastrous idea of using it to display contemporary art. The RSA erected three statues in succession: a life-sized statue of Christ with a crown of barbed wire, a statue of a head being crushed by the roots of a tree, and a life-sized, upside-down statue of the plinth itself, made out of transparent resin (that was uglier than it sounds).
After that, for four years, the plinth reverted from eyesore to dignified novelty. Unfortunately, in 2005, the mayor of London’s “culture team” revived the contemporary art policy. The mayor in question was Ken Livingstone, a man who defended the IRA and said that Hitler was an early Zionist. Livingstone not only revived the contemporary art policy, he suggested evicting the statues of Napier and Havelock, saying “I have not a clue who [Napier and Havelock] are or what they did.” He added “we could move the two generals that no one has ever heard of by the river.”
(Havelock’s plinth quotes an address he made to his troops in 1857: “Soldiers! Your labours, your privations, your sufferings and your valour will not be forgotten by a grateful country.” It’s hard not to shudder at the irony. )
Livingstone’s eviction plan was never carried out, but in 2005, the fourth plinth started displaying contemporary art again. The first statue was a 12-foot tall nude portrait of a woman whose arms and legs had been deformed by a birth defect. It sat on the fourth plinth for a little more than two years. It was followed by some undistinguished stacks of colored glass, and then, by an empty platform upon which anyone who wished was allowed to do whatever he wanted for an hour. The idea was to counterpoise the “military, valedictory and male” statues of Trafalgar Square with “diversity” and “vulnerability.”
After the empty platform came “Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle”; an ugly statue of Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory, in a bottle. Then came a 13-foot tall statue of a boy on a rocking horse. Then a 16-foot tall statue of a rooster painted blue—which symbolized “regeneration, awaking and strength.” Then came “Gift Horse,” a statue of a horse skeleton with a giant strip of stock-ticker-tape tied to its leg. No one seems sure how tall the dead horse was, but it was followed by a 23 foot tall statue of a “thumbs-up.”
The thumbs-up was the most recent plinth piece. This week, finalists for the next statue were revealed. One, of an empty robe standing by itself, is surprisingly attractive. The other four are awful. And the empty robe is evidently some sort of attack on the British Empire, which doesn’t strike me as very Trafalgar-ey.
Of course, it’s up to the British to decide what they want in their square. Far be it from me to suggest otherwise. I would, however, like to say something about contemporary art: by and large, it’s ugly and everyone hates it. By and large, works of contemporary art are fêted not for their beauty, but for their obvious ugliness—ugliness so obvious that anyone who claims to see beauty therein is able to bathe himself in smugness. That’s fine for modern art museums where attendance is strictly voluntary, but someone needs to ask city governments stop inflicting the ego-trips of public intellectuals on the unwashed masses.
Put up a statue of Lady Thatcher.
