Business Week‘s Helen Waters offers some insight into Anthony Gormley’s Fourth Plinth project–One&Other–by making reference to Marina Abramovic’s Guggenheim Museum performance piece. Curiously, she also tries to locate both within the redefinition of brands within a mass media that is a two-way street:

Gormley has given the platform to 2400 interested parties, who are entirely free to do whatever they want in their hour (as long as it’s legal.) In doing so, he’s shining a spotlight on the genetic make up of an entire country (while picked at random, the occupants represent a cross-section of British society.) It feels like a perfect metaphor for an age in which the playing field is level and companies and brands need to take part in a conversation with their consumers. It’s inclusive, it’s accepting, it’s provocative, it’s bound to be a bit boring or stupid at times, but it contains precisely the qualities that all companies should be looking to embrace.Continue Reading

A chance link sent us back in time to 2005 and Marc Quinn’s first Fourth Plinth Project effort called “Alison Lapper Pregnant.” Quinn was caught up in several ideas ranging from the phallic nature of Nelson’s column at the center of Trafalgar Square to ideas about heroism in our own age:

‘In the past, heroes such as Nelson conquered the outside world. Now it seems to me they conquer their own circumstances and the prejudices of others, and I believe that Alison’s portrait will symbolise this.

‘I’m not physically disabled myself but from working with disabled sitters I realised how hidden different bodies are in public life and media. Her pregnancy also makes this a monument to the possibilities of the future.’

Fourth Plinth: Marc Quinn (London.Gov.uk)

British art critic Martin Gayford joins the chorus of those uninspired by Antony Gormley’s display of the British public to the nation:

Witless? Pointless? It was both of those. What can you expect if you ask members of the public selected by chance to stand in a prominent spot and be entertaining? The result has all the charm of those knobbly-knees competitions that used to be put on at holiday camps, without the professional pizzazz. As a “living portrait of the U.K.,” it’s depressing.Continue Reading

Antony Gormley explains his work One & Only in the Times of London as a dialogue between the chaotic street and the calm of the National Gallery:

I think there is a lovely conversation between that old idea of art — about precious objects, patronage, history — and the contemporary. With One & Other, what you have in front of the gallery are the waves of real life washing against history. […]Continue Reading