What are we to make of the Trafalgar Square “fourth plinth”art project?
The Trafalgar Square “fourth plinth” project could hardly have got off to a better start. It was briefly — and obligingly — hijacked before its opening by an anti-smoking campaigner. His stunt set the tone. This project is supposed to offer a forum to the people of Britain, to let them speak of their concerns and interests, their everyday lives or their fantasies. Antony Gormley, the artist and orchestrator, is essentially following a long tradition with this work. He is making a fundamentally descriptive piece. It sets out to portray a nation in much the same way as artists such as Reynolds or Gainsborough, Constable or Turner once did. Except where in the 18th or 19th centuries it was the ruling elite and the lovely landscapes they owned that summed up the essence of Britain, in our modern and rather more democratic era the ruling class is less important than the cross-section, the rolling acres less significant than their occupants. And so, in a restlessly innovative artistic age, a
