A model of Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant
Guardian readers, up to date as ever with significant cultural developments, will be less surprised than some. But today's arrival on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth of Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant is likely to startle even the cognoscenti - already familiar with the iconic nude image of the disabled artist Alison Lapper from coverage here and having seen Quinn's other amputee sculptures at the White Cube gallery - with its sheer scale.
Atop its central London station in the shadow of Nelson's Column, Alison Lapper Pregnant stands 3.55 metres (nearly 12 foot) tall, some three times the height of its model, and very considerably heavier - clocking in at 11.5 tonnes of Tuscan marble which a team of four craftsmen spent 10 months carving into the image of the startlingly beautiful but very unorthodox-looking model.
The sculpture's Venus de Milo-esque pose, its scale and its costly materials are all deliberately heroic - as is the company it is keeping on Trafalgar Square, where the other statuary is of military icons like Sir Henry Havelock and Sir Charles Napier. Nelson himself was of course partially disabled, but since he lost his arm in battle, and the missing limb is hidden in his naval uniform, it is perceived very differently to Alison Lapper's defiant self-exposure.
It remains to be seen how Quinn's challenge to traditional ideas of heroism and beauty will go down with the public. Quinn has said he hopes people will warm to it over time - and the track record of initially controversial pieces of public sculpture like Antony Gormley's Angel of the North suggests that if it is greeted with scepticism and scorn, removing it after its 18-month tenure in Trafalgar Square may be met with even more opposition.
