The first statue displayed on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square was Jesus Christ.

The 16th is an overweight laquisha.

It is difficult to say exactly when the “9/11” of the art world happened. We could name Duchamp, Picasso, or Dali as the “Bin Laden” of western art, but there would be no agreement on who did the most damage.

One thing most agree on, however, is that over the last 150 years, public art stopped representing transcendent values. There are no longer heroes, saints, rulers, or any shared ideals. It has been a steady diet of woke for decades, and if you are full, it is too bad.

The unveiling of Tschabalala Self’s “Lady in Blue” on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth is not a revealing moment in the history of Western public art. It’s predictably more of the same. Self describes her Lady as a contemporary “everywoman” (sound familiar?) representing London’s present and future, with particular emphasis on equity, representation, and recognition.

But what is it about a fat, nameless black female figure exuding garish sexuality that deserves to be placed on the most prestigious public art pedestal in the world?

For much of Western history, monumental sculpture existed because we believed some things were worthy of public honor. Ancient Greece and Rome commemorated gods, rulers, military heroes, and civic ideals. Christianity inherited and transformed that inheritance. Medieval and Renaissance sculpture placed biblical figures, Christ, the Virgin Mary, apostles, martyrs, and saints in churches and public spaces. Renaissance humanism continued to celebrate human excellence through figures such as David, while civic sculpture recognized virtues like justice, courage, wisdom, and civic responsibility. It all ended in the 19th c.

The Christian contribution to the art world was particularly significant because it supplied a transcendent account of why people possess dignity in the first place. Art could point beyond the individual to God, creation, redemption, sacrifice, virtue, beauty, and truth. Art of the Baroque, for example, was meant to inspire devotion; religious sculpture occupied not only churches but streets, squares, shrines, and other public spaces.

Christian theology, in fact, gives us every reason to insist upon the equal dignity of human beings as bearers of God’s image. The problem begins when representation itself becomes the criterion for deciding what deserves honor. When that happens, the pedestal no longer communicates ideals toward which humanity should aspire, such as truth, beauty, and goodness. That is all gone now. As the Dutch art historian, Hans Rookmaaker, said back in 1970, “Modern art has won the battle.”

Rookmaaker also said the Christian church bears some responsibility. Christians abandoned the cultural institutions that had historically shaped the Western imagination. As Christian patronage and participation receded from the academy and the museums, false philosophies were ready to fill the void. By the twentieth century, modernism had become one of the dominant cultural forces, and modern art was the only *serious* art.

And Self’s Lady in Blue is serious all right; seriously predictable. She wants to remind us that those who control the plinth control the future and those who control the present, control the plinth. And the distortion of reality, expressed by the artist’s deliberate misalignment of the figure’s anatomy and locomotion, is what leftism does best.

It has been over a century since Christians lost the museums, but it is still sad. Western civilization once used its public art to lift the eyes of a people upward. Sculpture could remind citizens of courage, sacrifice, justice, wisdom, beauty, holiness, heroism, or the glory of God. Now, leftists run the museums and relentlessly try to convince the “uneducated” that all those things are relics of the past. If the comments on the press releases are any indication, people with eyes to see still refuse to accept that claim.

What should Christians do? Pray. Think. Create! Make art that honors the dignity of every human being while directing that dignity toward something higher than identity itself. Christianity once helped Western civilization understand that beauty mattered because creation was God’s handiwork, that human greatness mattered because humanity bears God’s image, and that artistic excellence mattered because the world itself is ordered and meaningful.

Until Christians recover the purpose of art and get back into the museums and public squares, the culture will continue to answer the question “What deserves to stand on the pedestal?” according to false, unbiblical assumptions.