BY PAVITRA SHAH
Right. Let us dispense with the pleasantries. Trafalgar Square—Nelson’s column, the lions, the fountains, the National Gallery—has just been graced with what can only be described as a giant, blue, bronze participation trophy. Lady In Blue, by New York artist Tschabalala Self, is the sixteenth artwork to squat on the Fourth Plinth since 1998. It is also, without question, the most tediously, grindingly, soul-sappingly boring thing to happen to that corner of London since someone decided the pigeons needed feeding regulations.
Behold: a chubby woman. In a blue dress. Walking. That’s it. That’s the artwork. She has no face worth mentioning, no distinguishing features, no discernible personality. She is, we are told, an “everywoman,” which in the lexicon of contemporary art criticism means “a woman so aggressively generic that she could be anyone, which is precisely why she is no one.” She is the human equivalent of a stock photo. She is the “woman laughing alone with salad” of public sculpture. She is a placeholder, a mannequin, a shop dummy with delusions of grandeur, who has scoffed far too many biscuits.
And the grand claims made on her behalf! Brace yourself. She is “not an idol to venerate or a historic figurehead to commemorate.” Well, thank God for that. For a moment I feared we were erecting a statue to someone interesting. She is “a woman walking forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose.” She is “a Londoner, who represents the city’s spirit.”
One wonders which part of London’s spirit she represents—the part that charges you £6.50 for a flat white and then asks if you want oat milk, presumably.
Ekow Eshun, chair of the commissioning group, intones that the work “transforms the everyday into the monumental.” No, Ekow. It transforms the monumental into the everyday. It takes one of the most prestigious public art platforms in the world—a site that has hosted work by Mark Wallinger, Antony Gormley, Katharina Fritsch, and Yinka Shonibare—and fills it with something you could comfortably ignore on a drive past a retail park in Slough. It is the artistic equivalent of redecorating the Sistine Chapel with magnolia emulsion.
The material, we are breathlessly informed, is bronze patinated with “a pigment refined from Lapis Lazuli, a semi-precious stone that has been used by artists for millennia.” Millennia! You know who else used lapis lazuli? The ancient Egyptians. The medieval illuminators. Renaissance masters. And now, apparently, a woman who has made a statue of a woman in a blue dress. The lapis lazuli is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting here. It is like serving a Findus crispy pancake on a gold plate and expecting a Michelin star.
Justine Simons, deputy mayor for culture, calls it “a striking addition to a historic part of the city.” Striking in the sense that a beige cardigan is striking, perhaps. Striking in the sense that a parked Vauxhall Corsa is striking. Striking in the sense that you might strike your own forehead with the palm of your hand and wonder why on earth anyone thought this was a good idea.
Let us be clear about what has happened here. The Fourth Plinth was once a genuinely radical proposition: a space where art could provoke, unsettle, delight, or infuriate. Gormley’s One & Other was a brilliant democratic experiment. Wallinger’s Ecce Homo was a quietly devastating meditation on power and vulnerability. Fritsch’s giant blue cockerel was a gleeful two-fingered salute to pomposity. Margolles’s Mil Veces un Instante, which this new work replaces, memorialised victims of violence in a way that was both formally striking and morally serious. And now we have… a woman in a blue dress. Walking. With ambition and purpose. Christ alive.
The problem is not that Lady In Blue is offensive. The problem is that it is not offensive enough. It is not anything enough. It is the visual equivalent of a diversity training seminar: well-intentioned, carefully worded, and utterly incapable of making anyone feel anything other than mild embarrassment. It will offend no one. It will challenge no one. It will provoke no letters to The Times, no heated debates on Question Time, no demands for its removal. It will simply stand there, blue and bronze and bland, until they cart it off to make room for the next instalment of institutional cowardice.
One imagines the commissioning meeting. Someone said: “We need a woman. A contemporary woman. An everywoman.” Someone else said: “Yes, but not a specific woman, because that might be controversial.” A third person said: “What about a woman walking?” Everyone nodded sagely. “Walking forward. Into the future. With purpose.” More nodding. “And make her blue. Blue is a nice colour. Not too aggressive. Not too sexual. Not too anything, really.” And so, a monument to nothing was born.
The artist, we are told, was born in New York in 1990. She works across painting, printmaking, and sculpture. She held her first institutional exhibition in London. She is, by all accounts, a perfectly competent artist. But competence is not the same as vision, and Lady In Blue has all the visionary fire of a council recycling leaflet. It is art designed by committee, for a committee, to be admired by committees. It is the aesthetic equivalent of a mission statement. It is a statue that says nothing, means nothing, and will be remembered by no one.
Trafalgar Square already has its monuments to power and privilege. What it did not need was another monument—this one to the arts establishment’s own self-image as brave, progressive, and daring, when in truth it is none of those things. Lady In Blue is not an everywoman. She is a nowhere woman, going nowhere in particular, and we are all the poorer for being asked to pretend otherwise.
Bring back the cockerel. At least it had the decency to be ridiculous. One can never get enough cock.
Pavi Shah is an artist and designer based in London.