Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Trafalger Square and the Big Blue Cock....

Our second day in London we really saw a lot.  After touring Westminster we walked down the street to Trafalgar Square walking past the Queen's horse guard...this day it was the Life Guards...
 

...and various pubs.  What I like about the pubs in London is that the majority of them have tons of flowers on the outside. I  haven't been able to find the reason why...but you can always tell if there is a pub down the street...you see the flowers first.


The square commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar which was a British navel victory during the Napoleonic wars over France in 1805.  It was packed with people, statues, fountains....




and a BIG BLUE COCK....


This thing was huge.  Surrounded by all this history and then there is this big-ass blue cock.  I had to go over an read what the plaque said...the significance of this thing.  It is called "Hahn/Cock" and it's a giant blue cockerel by the German artist Katharina Fritsch

From Wikipedia.....The artist notes that the surrounding area has a strongly male character, with numerous statues of "male persons standing on pedestals" and the male-dominated culture that goes with London's status as a business center. The statue is intended to be a humorous counterbalance, contrasting with the very formal equestrian statues on the square's other three plinths.  It was unveiled on 25 July 2013 by Mayor of London Boris Johnson. He pointed out the irony that the cockerel, an unofficial national emblem of France, was standing in a square commemorating a famous British victory over the French.  Fritsch and Johnson have both noted the sexual double entendre in the work's name – hahn in German has the same double meaning as "cock" in English – and the artist admits that it is consciously intended as a play on words.

A big blue cock is a first for me...LMAO.

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