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Thursday 4 December 2008

How the West was won

Alexander Stoddart unravels the relationship between art and politics

There is a corner of a foreign (at least to a Scot) square that is forever Bedlam. It is, to my mind, absolutely certain that the several public outrages on that unfortunate empty plinth in Trafalgar Square are committed principally in reference to the monumental statuary from the 19th century that stands in such solemnity while this Punch and Judy show carries on. The authorities that plan it, and the ‘artists’ who carry it out, have not the slightest interest in the politics of the Trafalgar Square sculpture scheme, being, like all contemporists, thoroughly ignorant of history and quite unaware of the existence of the Mariner King, William IV, whose equestrian statue is the natural choice permanently to quell the riot on that unhappy spot. No, it is all in the formal qualities of the statues around that this allergic reaction originates. Look into this, and you will discover something secret and revealing. Proper, old-fashioned-looking statues have stillness, which grates on the nerves of the naturally clamorous. Then they have great scale with which to emphasise that calmness. Observe how the eyes of these statues never follow you about: they ignore you. This offends left-wingers, who are always craving attention. And the statues are far away, in the sky. Why are they not down here, with us, on our level?

I know mere association is not the cause of this kind of aversion, since I have observed certain modernist architects display very odd behaviour just at the very mention of an Ionic column. The panic is visceral, and independent of knowledge. Perhaps, then, it is the case that, in the official arts of the last century, the West was wakened out of its semi-slumber (always guaranteed by the Hypnotic traditional arts) to face a dazzling and perfectly ghastly Nietzschean High Noontide of modernist art, from whose philistinism we and all other decent, homely, conservative types naturally flee. Surely it’s nearly bedtime again? Maybe James MacMillan will write us a lullaby.

Alexander Stoddart’s statue of Adam Smith will be unveiled on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh by the Nobel-prize-winning economist Professor Vernon Smith at noon on 4 July.

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