A new statue unveiled Thursday morning in London’s Trafalgar Square is getting quite a rousing reception.
Here it is everyone – the new #fourthplinth commission. And it’s #reallygood! @davidshrigley pic.twitter.com/PiPs36QFiD
— London Gov (@LDN_gov) September 29, 2016
Artist David Shrigley’s “Real Good” is a “seven-metre high hand giving a thumbs up,” according to the statue’s plaque. Cast in bronze, with a comically oversized thumb, it offers bleak, striking commentary on blind optimism, the very nature of public art, and post-Brexit Britain.
Here’s how Jonathan Jones masterfully described it in the Guardian:
“Like the giant thumbs of the hitchhiker in Tom Robbins’s novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues or the enormous green thumb of the psychotic cockney Hitcher played by Noel Fielding in The Mighty Boosh, this thumb is seriously out of scale. It is also strangely thin, more like a finger flipped up by a pissed-off American than a jolly British symbol that everything is Really Good.”
Of course, most people can’t get over how much it resembles an erect penis stretching for the sky. To fuck it? Well, maybe.
Love London, love the Mayor, love this rude, giant fuck-you to the bad times. Love that it looks like a penis. #fourthplinth pic.twitter.com/EUV8prLrqg
— Phoebe Gardiner (@pheebsgeebs) September 29, 2016
Anyone else a little turned on by the #fourthplinth or is it just me!! 😂🙈
— Vᴇʀɪᴛʏ ᴊᴀɴᴇ 🌸🦊✨ (@_VJ77) September 29, 2016
https://twitter.com/jessiecath/status/781425241297936384
Surely photos of the new #FourthPlinth sculpture 👍 could look rather less positive from a different angle. 👋🍆#mindinthegutter #filthplinth
— Dan Brown (@PuzzlerT) September 29, 2016
https://twitter.com/SylviaClaireR/status/781458816437190658
I am v on board with the #positive message but secretly the huge long thumb gives me the creeps #fourthplinth pic.twitter.com/L9dq9tCFi9
— James Waddell (@james_waddell) September 29, 2016
#fourthplinth #reallygood splutter choke,do not look at this if drinking coffee, well it certainly made me #smile so guess it worked 😬😂🇬🇧👍🏻 https://t.co/nlv4Qs1HI8
— The Fiddler & the Cat 🎵🎶🎻🎵🎶 (@Violinbeau) September 29, 2016
I give it a thumb’s up. Way up.
