When London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, unveiled Trafalgar Square’s latest Fourth Plinth sculpture yesterday he had a major challenge on this hands. The sculpture is called Hahn/Cock, (“hahn” means cock in German). Johnson is famous for his faux pas, and the crowd was expecting double entendres by the bucketload. They got none. Johnson introduced German artist Katharina Fritsch’s vast cockerel, which is a feminist comment on the many statues of men that stand proudly in Trafalgar Square, without so much as uttering its name. Instead, he called it a “big, blue…bird.” Bravo, Boris.
This morning, when I stopped by Trafalgar Square, which celebrates Britain’s victory over the French in the Battle of Trafalgar (the fact that the cockerel is France’s national symbol is unrelated to Fritsch’s work, apparently), the striking sculpture was eliciting wide grins from the passing public, and a few sniggers. Hahn/Cock will survey Trafalgar Square for the next 18 months, before another work of art comes to roost on the plinth.
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