Friday, September 16, 2005

Mutton Dressed As Lamb

I braved the lunchtime drizzle yesterday to see if I could spot any of Trafalgar Square's occupants being challenged by the newly-unveiled sculpture of Alison Lapper by Marc Quinn on the Fourth Plinth.

It strikes me as a piece of conceptual art disguised as something else - Quinn has appropriated both the grace of classic sculpture and the stylisation of fertility fetish figurines in order to reimagine what normally goes by the name of deformity. Other than that there's not much to it. I find it a little absurd that art critic Rachel Campbell-Johnson told the BBC that she found it hard to look at. I tend to find this sort of thing a little patronising. Artists seem able to get away with making cognitive shock the mainstay of their content much more than writers can.

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