Giant blue cockerel roosts at Trafalgar Square

Boris Johnson meets the press after unveiling German artist Katharina Fritsch’s artwork Hahn/Cock at Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in London yesterday.AFP/LondonA huge blue cockerel descended upon London’s Trafalgar Square yesterday, but the artwork has ruffled feathers by putting the symbol of France in a site marking a famous British victory over Napoleon.Standing 4.7 metres tall and coloured a vivid ultramarine, the fibreglass rooster was sculpted by German artist Katharina Fritsch and will watch over the famous square for 18 months. Titled Hahn/Cock, it was officially unveiled by London’s Mayor Boris Johnson.It is the latest artwork to stand on the tourist hotspot’s “Fourth Plinth”. Fritsch, 57, has said she did not know the cockerel was an unofficial French symbol, and that she intended it to represent strength and regeneration. “But it’s a nice humorous side-effect to have something French in a place that celebrates victory over Napoleon,” she told the Guardian newspaper, adding: “He has come back as a cockerel!”Trafalgar Square is named after the victory of the British Royal Navy over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, a key conflict in the Napoleonic Wars. The cockerel will be sited on the other side of the square from Nelson’s Column, a monument commemorating the English naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was killed during the battle. A group of conservationists had tried to get the bird banned from the square, saying it was “totally inappropriate, however fanciful and dramatic it might appear to be”.There are four large stone plinths at each corner of Trafalgar Square, three of which bear statues. The fourth was supposed to hold a statue of a horse commissioned in 1841, but due to insufficient funds it was never completed.