{"id":813,"date":"2011-01-14T16:48:48","date_gmt":"2011-01-14T16:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=813"},"modified":"2011-01-14T16:48:48","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T16:48:48","slug":"the-german-fourth-plinth-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=813","title":{"rendered":"The German Fourth Plinth 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s me for various complicated, meandering reasons, writing a novel about a German artist in London, which seems a bit esoteric but, come 2013, almost every visitor to London is going to see a memorable work by a German artist &#8212; in the form of a huge blue cock. German sculptor <a title=\"Katherina Fritsch\" href=\"http:\/\/www.matthewmarks.com\/artists\/katharina-fritsch\/\" target=\"_blank\">Katherina Fritsch <\/a>has been chosen to fill the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square for the whole year &#8212; see photo below from the Fourth Plinth website.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 272px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.london.gov.uk\/fourthplinth\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Katharina Fritsch's Blue Cockerel\" src=\"http:\/\/www.london.gov.uk\/fourthplinth\/sites\/default\/files\/IMG_7810x475.gif\" alt=\"Katharina Fritsch's Blue Cockerel\" width=\"272\" height=\"412\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Katharina Fritsch&#39;s Blue Cockerel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It seems there&#8217;s something of a Zeitgeist at the moment for finding out more about Germany. One of the biggest selling non-fiction books at the moment is <a title=\"Guardian review of Germania\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/books\/2010\/feb\/27\/germania-personal-history-simon-winder\" target=\"_blank\">Simon Winder&#8217;s <em>Germania<\/em><\/a>, which I&#8217;ve bought but only dipped into &#8212; hopefully I can blog about it when I&#8217;ve finished it. In the introduction to the book, he suggests that it&#8217;s only now, with the passage of more than sixty years since the last war, that preconceptions and prejudices are being dropped and the rest of the world now realises that, unlike, say, France or Italy, that Germany is relatively little known.<\/p>\n<p>In fact the most read and commented on post on this blog recently has been the one on the BBC4 Germany series where I comment on the Al Murray documentary and the art and walking programmes.<\/p>\n<p>So, bizarrely enough and certainly without any specific intention, I might have stumbled on to some themes in the novel that people are suddenly getting more interested in. I&#8217;d better hurry up and finish writing the thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s me for various complicated, meandering reasons, writing a novel about a German artist in London, which seems a bit esoteric but, come 2013, almost every visitor to London is going to see a memorable work by a German artist &#8212; in the form of a huge blue cock. German sculptor Katherina Fritsch has been &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/?p=813\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The German Fourth Plinth 2013&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[424],"tags":[135,35,559,560,131,562,1260,561],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-influences-2","tag-artists","tag-backstory","tag-fourth-plinth","tag-germania","tag-germany","tag-katherina-fritsch","tag-research","tag-zeitgeist"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":814,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813\/revisions\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macnovel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}