Nothing captures the irrational and mystical relationship we have with art better than the continuing dispute over a proposed statue of Margaret Thatcher in her home town Grantham. In the saga's latest twist, Labour councillors have come out in support of erecting the statue as a tourist attraction and historical point of interest, while Conservatives oppose it – apparently out of respect for Baroness Thatcher's own wishes.
Ever since this stone figure was decapitated by a protester in 2002, it has been a bizarre example of how hard it is, in our minds, to separate a portrait from the person it portrays. A statue of Thatcher is not Thatcher? And yet people argue over this representation as if it were somehow an actual person.
Statues undoubtedly carry a charge of honour and nobility: a person rendered in marble or bronze must be good, must be important. The other evening I was looking at the bronze of Nelson Mandela on London's South Bank with my daughter, and this naturally led to a conversation about why he is a great man. On the other hand I don't think either of us believed it actually was Nelson Mandela. Yet the Thatcher statue row strays into a primeval confusion between portrait and person.
The story of Mandela's bust on the South Bank is itself an insight into why people can't keep their cool about Thatcher's image. The portrait of Mandela – who was in prison at the time, his incarceration a worldwide symbol of an unjust racist regime – was commissioned by Ken Livingstone's GLC and unveiled in 1985. When she was asked in parliament if she planned to go and see it, Prime Minister Thatcher replied in one word: "No."
A year later, Mandela's image was torched by far-right vandals. It was later replaced. Meanwhile, Baroness Thatcher in power maintained what now looks like an extraordinarily extreme and indefensible attitude to Mandela and his cause. She refused to back sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime and notoriously considered Nelson Mandela a "terrorist", a classically toxic Tory stance that David Cameron felt the need to apologise for in 2006.
Wait a minute … Now I am getting personal … My aesthetic argument has gone out of the window.
Why indeed should Thatcher have a statue put up of her? Grantham should put up a statue of Mandela instead. In fact, the Conservative party should put up the money for a museum in Britain about the struggle against apartheid.
It's impossible, you see, to be rational about portraits. I can't be either. Now that's ruined my morning, thinking about the Thatcher statue and all the bad history it brings up.
