WORLD ART PERSONALITIES
ALISON LAPPER
My Body Is Art! It's been empty for 150 years. But this week it was announced that the vacant fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square will be occupied by a 15ft-high nude statue of a pregnant Alison Lapper. She talks to Hadley Freeman about art, disability and notions of beauty
Marc Quinn's sculpture of
Alison Lapper
Photo: PA
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Alison Lapper has never been on a diet. Nor does she ever feel guilty about not going to the gym, not even when she glances through women's magazines. In fact, there is not a single thing about her body that Lapper would change. "If you told me I could have any bit of plastic surgery that I wanted, I wouldn't take it because I'm just fine as I am, thank you very much," she says in a strident voice that occasionally makes her sound as if she is speaking from a platform rather than a personal viewpoint. Lapper, who was born without arms and with shortened legs as a result of the drug thalidomide, will soon be "speaking" from a very large platform indeed. After 150 years of debate, the sculpture for the fourth, hitherto empty, plinth in Trafalgar Square was chosen on Monday; the winning artwork was Marc Quinn's marble statue of Lapper, naked, eight months pregnant and as smooth and exposed as a newborn chick. "I think it's absolutely brilliant," she states firmly from the beach in South Africa where she is on holiday with her young son. "I don't feel the least bit embarrassed about everyone staring at me naked - I wouldn't have done it if I felt like that. I hope it opens their eyes." No quivers at all at the thought of millions of eyes skating over her oversized nude form? Her "nope" is so abrupt it gallops over the question. The sculpture has already caused querulous difficulties for some. The Daily Mail, for example, which had campaigned for a more traditional statue, a memorial to the Queen Mother perhaps, found itself in the awkward position yesterday of having to criticise the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group's (FPCG) choice, without appearing to mock a disabled pregnant woman. It settled on quoting Tory MP Julie Kirkbride, who claimed that "the politically correct lobby has prevailed". Even the Guardian's Jonathan Jones yesterday criticised the work because its "meaning is so forthright, so plain, that it falls short of being art". Both are ultimately saying the same thing: the piece is all message and no art. Lapper, who is an artist herself, unsurprisingly disagrees that this divests the piece of its artistic merit, although she certainly attaches a heavy message to it. "Any critic who says it can't be art should get out more. Art can be whatever you want it to be in this day and age. Disabled artists don't get exhibitions, Saatchi hasn't bought my work, and who knows why? Why aren't there any disabled newsreaders? Anything that we're uncomfortable with we avoid. But now I'm up there, 15ft - you can't avoid me any more. Why shouldn't my body be considered art if Naomi Campbell's is?" But Campbell's body isn't considered to be art. "Oh, yes it is," she bulldozes. "People want things to be boring and safe, and that's why this sculpture is causing an uproar. I love it that people are talking about it."
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Quinn
phoned Lapper about five years ago, after having been given her number by
a mutual friend. He was looking for disabled models to pose for him. "But
when he phoned, I said, 'You won't want me any more because I'm about to
have a baby,' and he said, 'That's even better!'" The only thoughts going
through her mind during the day spent posing nude for him in late winter
1999, she insists, were how uncomfortable she was, sitting upright and
pregnant, as opposed to concerns about modesty or even about the cold. But
she wasn't always quite so confident. It takes a fair bit of prodding
through the determinedly upbeat platitudes, but she will admit that there
have been "some dark moments" in the past. Lapper was raised in care in a
disabled children's home where, she insists, she was "too busy being a
kid" to worry about how she looked. But when she was 16, the "why me?"
thoughts began. "It did become an issue then for me, I guess," she says,
in a quieter voice. 
Photo:
Admiration by Alison Lapper
I'm
not going to pretend I'm not handicapped," she says firmly. "I am going to
focus on my body until people change their attitudes." Yet, surely that
risks reducing her to her disability, and making her a generic figurehead?
"Well, my art is not just about the disability," she says. "It's about how
I feel about my body, how I feel as a mother. I'm not a crusader, it just
seems to have turned out that way. But I am Alison, first and foremost."
Doesn't she worry, perhaps even resent, that her disability is being
turned into a commodity? After all, Quinn only asked her to pose for him
because she is disabled, not because she is Alison. "It's not resentment,
exactly. But, see, I was doing similar kinds of art, but I knew I wouldn't
have been able to afford to do something as grand as this. So would it
have been a different story if I'd done it? Would it have gone on to the
fourth plinth? I don't know. But I have never worried about being seen as
a generic disabled person." If some have questioned Quinn's motives,
Lapper could face a similar charge. She says at one point that the minor
furore over the statue's selection has been "cool - I'm an artist [so] the
more publicity the better. Hopefully people will take me seriously after
this." 
Photo: All woman
by Alison Lapper