Save Trafalgar Square
November 5 2012
Picture: BG
The Art Newspaper is running a story that needs to be read by Mayor Boris Johnson:
Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery in London, has criticised the contemporary works that temporarily occupy the empty plinth in front of the gallery in Trafalgar Square as “antagonistic to the architectural character of the square”, turning the plinth into “a stage, which can be used ironically, farcically [and] inappropriately”.
In an interview with The Art Newspaper, Penny expressed his “grave concerns” about the square in general, particularly the “tawdry tents and hoardings for advertising” that regularly “conceal” the gallery from view.
Regular readers will not be surprised to hear that I agree with Penny. Trafalgar Square should be one of London's majestic centrepieces, but it's so often disfigured by random concerts and PR events that I often wish it was still isolated by traffic on all sides, as it used to be. At least then the director of the National Gallery didn't have to put up with all those mega-phone touting buskers outside his office.
But Penny is not so sound on the subject of the fourt plinth:
Penny outlined his alternative ideas for the square, proposing that the two northern plinths in front of the gallery should have two “well-matched contemporary works” and that Francis Chantrey’s equestrian statue of George IV be placed on a pedestal within the steps leading up to the gallery from the square.
The fourth plinth has been left empty because it will one day have a statue of the Queen on it, probably an equestrian one, to match that of George IV (and also to reflect HM's love of horses). I had always assumed that this was widely known among the arts establishment, but evidently not.
Update - a reader writes:
Yes, I understood that was the Fourth Plinth Plan as well, HM c.1970 on Burmese. I hope it doesn't fall through the gaps.
London does parks brilliantly, but not squares, like the brand new same old Leicester Square.
Maybe tawdry huckstering is just the London way, like the piazza at Covent Garden.
