Katharina Fritsch's big blue "Hahn/Cock" in Trafalgar Square is rather impressive. #tw pic.twitter.com/YMGS5pNnGW

— Wayne Ford (@wayneford) July 26, 2013

Alastair Cooke sizes up Fritsch’s piece:

The colour of the rooster, reminiscent of the iridescent, otherworldly pigment patented by the French artist Yves Klein, offers a surreal, comical contrast to the drab bronze statuary and buttoned-up grey facades of the grand buildings nearby. More importantly, the double entendre of its title is fully intended: with his stiff, punk-like coxcomb and jowly wattle, this puffed-up cockerel is meant to appear pompous and ridiculous. I particularly enjoyed his magnificently rumpled tail feathers. There’s something deliberately deflating about the manner in which they droop, so that the cockerel has the bleary aura of a whoring-and-roistering old rogue, worse the wear from drink, still strutting despite being unable to perform in the bedroom.

Here, then, is a sally by a female artist against the many vainglorious monuments commemorating self-important men that have been erected all over the world.