After the success of Antony Gormley's 'One and Another' when members of the public had one hour slots on the plinth, followed by the well-received of 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle by Shinko Yinobare', 6 options were proposed for the plinth and the winner was chosen by votes – a boy on a rocking horse. I wasn't impressed.
But I wasn't very moved by with any of the 6 choices, each one having, to my mind, something 'wrong' with it. I thought (and still do) that he boy on the rocking horse looked plastic and half-finished; the battenburg cake bricks were the wrong proportion; the musical cash machine also sat oddly on the plinth, and the UK land mass looked like a half-cocked (!) attempt at a reasonably good idea. But the over-decorated statue of Field Marshall Sir George White does intrigue me as I would have liked to have seen how all that embellishment would have been achieved at actual size.
And now we are to get the runner-up – a big blue cock!
Katharina Fritsch's cockerel is supposed to represent regeneration, awakening and strength. Er... how? Can somebody please explain how a noisy farmyard bird represents regeneration any more than, say, an egg? And how does it tie in with London and, specifically, Trafalgar Square? Answers please.
Here are some more cocks in and on various erections in London:
Anything to do with the fact that the cockerel is the unofficial symbol of the French nation (as opposed to Marianne, who represents the state) and they're desperate to steal back some of Nelson's glory.......probably not but I can't think of any other reason for it being there.
ReplyDeleteI do (marginally) prefer it to the rocking horse, although that is a bit like saying I prefer Mussolini to Hitler! Oh well, moving on.
big cocks - jane's favorite subject!?
ReplyDelete