Confessions of a part-time girl

The Fourth Pillar
10:57 a.m. -- 2009-02-28

We live in a four-pillared world. Despite the fact that tripods are more inherently stable, chairs have four legs and cars have four wheels. There are four pillars to Methodism, too. (Conversely, the Masons belief system includes three pillars... Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Let's not go there.)

The square (a term of derision in the sixties) is fundamental to our language, and our way of thinking. We 'square things' when we make them right. Time and again, the word is associated with fairness and dependability. And when we plan public spaces, we build squares.

Trafalgar square in London has four plinths for statues. And naturally enough, given our peculiarly British talent for the accidentally ridiculous... they are home to three statues: Sir Chuck Napier, Sir Hank Havelock and King George IV - but I�m sure you already knew that.

The fourth pillar remains conspicuously empty. But give us time! It's only been in place since 1841, and one and two thirds centuries isn't very long to decide who to commemorate. Not if you do it British-style and form a committee. Personally, I liked the idea that Air Chief Marshall Park should be commemorated there, since it was he and his people who defended London and South East England so ably in 1940, forestalling the Nazi invasion. But the plinth remains empty.

It had been used for nothing except pigeon crap for a century and a half when in 1999, the Royal Society of Arts got permission to use it for a succession of temporary, contemporary installations.

You may already know how I feel about modern art. I have few kind words to say about a movement that seems to excel at nothing but disappearing into the depths of its own collective colon. For example, Rachel Whiteread�s 2001 installation, �Monument� was a transparent copy of the plinth itself, cast in resin and sat atop the real one.

Yeah. Right.

The trouble with Modern Art is that nagging feeling of �Yeah, but that�s not clever. I could have done that...� Or at least, I could have directed a team of people to cast eleven tonnes of resin, and crane it into place. And after all, if only the idea is input by the artist, why don�t we just enjoy ideas for modern art, by reading them on pub beermats? (This month: Tracy Emin. Collect the whole set.)

Actually I quite like Tracy Emin. Because she looks like a transvestite.

The thing is... a lot of people are about to have their �I could do better� put to the test. The next installation to appear on the fourth pillar closely follows the present-day convention among modern artists, that they shouldn�t do anything so crass as to actually touch art materials themselves. Instead, for 100 days beginning on July 6th, Anthony Gormley�s One and Other will see 2,400 members of the public each having one hour on top of the pillar, to do... whatever they want.

Which reminds me of something a playwright called Bill Wagglestick once wrote:

�Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.�

. . .

So, of course, I jumped at the chance.

I visited the website and registered my interest in strutting and fretting for an hour... but if I�m fortunate enough to be one of those chosen to perform, I�ll have to do some planning. Various things spring to mind. For one, I think I�d have to spray myself all over with bronze paint. The neighbours - two generals and a king - are all bronze.

But what does one actually do for an hour? I�m sure that many people who have volunteered for this strange task will be stage school brats, aspiring �celebrities� and wannabe pop idols. And perhaps that�s OK; it�s not a snapshot of real British life - it�s a cross-section taken entirely from people who want to do something like this.

Some �winners� will find that they have a 3am slot, and they�ll spend the hour dodging kebabs thrown by drunk revellers, but others will find tens of thousands of tourists looking at them. I registered so that I�d have a chance to take another pop at the Cult of $ci�nto�og�. In fact, I know that dozens of people share my motivation, and I�m sure that some of us will get lucky.

See you there!

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