Cocky!

Click HERE to read the Guardian article on which the text below is based!
Click HERE to view a BBC News report!

Click HERE to go to the official website on the Fourth Plinth!

Another Fourth Plinth Cock-up?

In its fifteen year history as a site for temporary contemporary sculptures, the Fourth Plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square has been the cause of much fuss and bother. The empty plinth in front of the National Gallery has hosted, among others: the marble sculpture of a disabled woman, a mock equestrian sculpture, and the members of the public themselves who, for an hour each, were able to become living statues.

Katharina Fritsch's sculpture of a big blue cockerel has also ruffled feathers. Some have said it is nothing but a feeble distraction, totally inappropriate in a square which honours Britain's greatest naval victory of the Napoleonic wars (the cockerel is the national symbol of France!). The Düsseldorf-based artist’s unnerving sculptures seem indeed to arrive from another world. There is no logic about her elephants, outsized apples, mice, and men in bright suits; her creatures are fanciful and dramatic and unrelated to their contexts. But is art not also meant to disrupt?

In the end, though, it's just a weird, oversized, royal blue barnyard bird, and it's been cheering us all up!

Questions/to do:

1. Translate the text above.
2. Do you agree that art is "meant to disrupt"?
3. What should the purpose of a public sculpture be?
4. What do you think of Fritsch's art?
5. Describe your favourite Fourth Plinth shortlisted sculpture, and say why you like it so much.
6. Take part in the vote!

Assignement:

1. Get the children from a Primary school to vote on their favourite Fourth Plinth shortlisted sculpture.
2. Run a workshop for the Primary school children: they have to imagine their own sculpture for the Fourth Plinth (they have to draw it on an A3 piece of paper).