Smithsonian.com

Artist Thomas Schuette’s Fourth Plinth project “Model for Hotel 2007″

I’ve never seen any of the works in person while they were up, but I have a soft spot for the Fourth Plinth of Trafalgar Square all the way over in London. Some critics grouse that the works that adorn the column always fall short in someway, but it gets contemporary art out in public in a very well known venue, so quit the whining.

There have been several sculptures put up since it started in 1999. Mark Wallinger produced a life-size sculpture of a man that ended up looking miniscule in comparison to the height of the plinth. Rachel Whitehead made a cast of the plinth and inverted it on top of the column. Marc Quinn carved a marble bust of the torso of Alison Lapper, an artist born without arms who was pregnant at the time.

The latest evolution comes from Antony Gormley, and is set to take the stage in November. The artist will put a giant soapbox on top of the plinth and allow people to climb up (actually, they’ll get carried up by crane) and chat, rant or rave about whatever they like to the visitors of the square for one uninterrupted hour. The performers chosen must first apply online; so far I haven’t found where, but my hope is that the applications and the project itself will stream live so that those of us on the other side of the pond can finally get a front row viewing.

I was just reading through an article on Chinese contemporary artist Zhang Huan and I couldn’t even finish it, I was so annoyed.

Zhang is quoted about halfway through the piece as saying, “I like very much having so many people around. I am very open-minded to all the ideas from all different people—either a graduate student or a carpenter in the street or even my doorman; everybody can scribble down an idea, a drawing, or whatever, and I can see if I’ll take this or that or if I don’t like that idea at all.”

When did art become creation by committee? When did the artist turn into an arbiter, picking and choosing from other peoples’ ideas like a finicky eater at the buffet table?

Who talks like that? As if everyone else’s ideas are fodder for your appropriation. Someone get this man a publicist.

Who knew head-in-the-clouds artists with strong patriotic sensibilities were out there? They are — and they have been for some time. And I’m not just talking about Jasper John’s canvas homage to the red, white and blue.

Not quite a founding father, but a powdered wig type all the same, Charles Willson Peale blended soldiering and portraiture during the Revolutionary War. One of the Sons of Liberty, he not only fought in the war, he also documented many of its players, including Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark, John Hancock and Alexander Hamilton. George Washington sat more than a half-dozen times for Peale, allowing the artist to create almost 60 portraits of the first president.

In World War II, the U.S. Army recruited artists and designers to fight the Nazis with smoke and mirrors. One of the young soldiers was the eventual abstract expressionist Ellsworth Kelly. During his tour, Kelly helped develop prototypes of fake tanks, jeeps and weaponry made out of rubber, burlap and wood. These were set up in strategic places to convince the Germans that the Allies had more soldiers on the ground than they really did.

Andy Warhol practically stumped for the Democrats. He made a multi-colored print of Richard Nixon in 1972 with the caption “Vote McGovern” underneath the portrait. If only the print had been stamped on campaigning buttons and posters. Things might have turned out differently for George on Election Day. Nixon was certainly not looking like someone I’d let kiss a baby or shake my hand, not with that desiccated greenish-blue tint to his face. And the beady yellow eyes didn’t help matters. And most subliminal of all, the portrait was set against a background of the political hot-button color of pink (gasp!).