Mal<p><a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/PublicArt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PublicArt</span></a>. This is the best term for it, not statues or street art, because the public is involved, so you know you gotta think about the public response - intended and incidental - as well as the artist's intention.</p><p>Older public art is particularly interesting because of change. Mostly - but not always - the artist's intentions don't change over time, but the public's reaction certainly does.</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/TrafalgarSquare" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TrafalgarSquare</span></a> is a good example. It was built 180 years ago or so. Later than you might think, but earlier than I expected. It commemorates a naval battle of the <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/NapoleonicWars" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NapoleonicWars</span></a>, but it wasn't originally going to - they were going to call it <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/WilliamIV" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WilliamIV</span></a> Square or something. The theme changed from <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/royalism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>royalism</span></a> to <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/militarism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>militarism</span></a>, but that change isn't visible in the statues.</p><p>After 1815 and before about 1880, the <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/BritishEmpire" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>BritishEmpire</span></a> was mainly <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/India" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>India</span></a>, the <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/WestIndies" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WestIndies</span></a>, <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Ireland" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Ireland</span></a>, and an archipelago of <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/navy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>navy</span></a> bases dotted around the world. The <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/UnitedKingdom" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>UnitedKingdom</span></a> was figuring out how to deal with its <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/democratic" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>democratic</span></a> deficit, so there were a series of reactionary governments that paradoxically passed <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/ReformBills" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ReformBills</span></a> to extend the franchise. There were <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/labour" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>labour</span></a> riots, and an <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/industrial" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>industrial</span></a> boom, and huge cities - particularly <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/London" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>London</span></a>, but also <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Manchester" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Manchester</span></a>, <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Birmingham" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Birmingham</span></a>, <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Liverpool" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Liverpool</span></a>, <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Belfast" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Belfast</span></a> - growing like galloping weeds over the countryside. This was <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Dickens" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Dickens</span></a> 's England. This was the time of <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/TheMakingOfTheEnglishWorkingClass" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TheMakingOfTheEnglishWorkingClass</span></a>.</p><p>So what did they mean at the time by building Trafalgar Square? It has <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/propaganda" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>propaganda</span></a> value. Lord <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Nelson" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Nelson</span></a> was a controversial figure in his own time, but I can imagine the Duke of <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Wellington" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Wellington</span></a> trying to link his own political fortunes to a safely-dead hero in the 1830s. The square was built with <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/parliamentary" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>parliamentary</span></a> approval and funding, and with quite a lot of public subscription too - though what a 'public' means in that context isn't obvious. Probably wealthy <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/industrialists" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>industrialists</span></a>, the <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/techbros" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>techbros</span></a> of the age, but I'm guessing.</p><p>Since it was built, more - but much smaller - naval commemorations have been added. So its original goals weren't forgotten, but extended - artist intentionality changing over time.</p><p>The <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Suffragettes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Suffragettes</span></a> used Trafalgar Square extensively for protests. I think we can reasonably link their use of the square to the original political use of the square. It was built in an era of Reform Bills that didn't reform the vote for <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/women" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>women</span></a>. They could hardly do better than to make their protest clear in a space which modeled the thing they were protesting about - a powerful, militarist, partly-democratic England that didn't include women.</p><p><a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Labour" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Labour</span></a> also used Trafalgar Square for protests. One of my favourite photos is of <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/KeirHardy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>KeirHardy</span></a> - the Keir who the current prime minister is named for - speaking from the base of <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/NelsonsColumn" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NelsonsColumn</span></a> in 1908. You have to know about it, but Trafalgar Square is a labour monument.</p><p>And to this day, Trafalgar Square is a traditional rally point for demonstrations and protests. No important London protest or demo happens without going through Trafalgar Square.</p><p>This use of their commemorative art would be totally alien to people who funded its construction. They're more likely to have been the backers of the <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/PeterlooMassacre" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>PeterlooMassacre</span></a>.</p><p>The square was famously sandbagged during the Second World War, to preserve it from being damaged, and I gather many Londoners at the time considered that to be symbolic of resistance and survival. So the art became invisible to the public, but people were still aware of it.</p><p>These days, Trafalgar Square is a landmark of London, in many ways as iconic and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. That might please its builders, but probably wasn't what they expected. It's also a rendezvous point, with its tube station and its buses. A gathering place. It hosts incidental modern art on the famous empty plinth. </p><p>Public art is inspirational. This is just Trafalgar Square - all the things I've seen give me the shivers when I think about how much embattled history is locked up in stone and bronze, under which people eat sandwiches, kiss lovers, wave placards, make speeches, and which get periodic paint douses, get stood on, relabeled and reinterpreted, dressed up and eventually pulled down.</p><p>Another time I'll write about other public art I've seen. <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/StPetersburg" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>StPetersburg</span></a> and <a href="https://mastodon.africa/tags/Moscow" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Moscow</span></a> are rather heavy on such art, but there is so much important stuff to say about it.</p>