Described by its Author as a Sculpture, New Abomination is Unveiled on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth

A new purported sculpture has been unveiled in Trafalgar Square, London, where it will stand for the next two years. With the name of “Lady in Blue”, by New York-based author Tschabalala Self, it is a bronze structure of an anonymous woman wearing a blue dress.

The author, whose previous visual atrocity in Bexhill-on-Sea, “Seated”, was infamously vandalised, an incident she promptly framed as a profound lesson in societal hostility, still seems to miss the real issue. 

It is not a matter of racial identity or representation, as the public simply objects to her talent. The structure is not provocative; it is merely unsightly. The uncomfortable truth many refuse to confront is that Self simply lacks the technical command her ambitions require. In more sensible times, a piece this crude would never have left the studio, let alone been hoisted over Trafalgar Square.