Tschabalala Self's 'Lady in Blue': Beryl Cook for the Twenty-first Century

Tschabalala Self, Lady in Blue, Trafalgar Square, London

Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth sculptures are supposed to excite comment. There is no point going to the trouble and expense of competition and rotation if they are put up and then ignored. Tschabalala Self's recently installed Lady in Blue has attracted a range of reviews - two stars from the Telegraph, four from the Times - but also a particular and insidious brand of criticism. Opposition to a global majority Everywoman was perhaps sadly only to be expected. Self had previously seen her work Seated daubed in white paint after it was unveiled at Bexhill on Sea in 2023, although the subsequent wave of volunteers who came forward to clean it suggests there was at least as much positivity.

Self's Trafalgar figure is a similarly oversized bronze, strikingly polychromatic, curvaceously cuddly, with a determination to be seen and heard. Much of the - largely male - criticism has indeed centred on her physique, ranging from Waldemar Januszczak's scathing and overtly provocative 'Mammy Two Shoes' (Tom and Jerry) comparison, to Jonathan Jones' four star salivation over 'the lady's generous proportions...fetishistic power...and commanding girth.' In a world which has largely got beyond body shaming, it is beyond tiresome that size, particularly of breasts and buttocks, particularly of a Black woman, seems so obsessed over. There are disturbing echoes of Hottentot Venus sexualised caricatures. 

The second bone of contention is her dynamic 'striding' posture, arms swinging, away from the National Gallery and across the square to the city beyond. Perhaps she is literally leaving the gallery, bringing its art into the world and up to date. Her propulsive pose is not what one might describe as conventionally feminine - the pace is too long, the movement too decisive -yet echoed references to art of the past abound. Umberto Boccioni's 1913 Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, an attempt to convey Futurist dynamism in three dimensions, is assumed male but in reality androgynous. It is at least partly inspired by the female Winged Victory of Samothrace, well over two thousand years old. And what of Vera Mukhina's Soviet workers? Self's smartly dressed city-goer might be read as a playful, plasticky capitalist response, undermining earnestly heroic civic sculpture of a communist bent along with its riposte to the static, plain and dead male dignitaries who surround it in Trafalgar Square. 

Vera Mukhina, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, 1937

Lady in Blue is anchored to artistic tradition as firmly as to the fourth plinth, from the heavyweight choice of bronze (aesthetically unnecessary given the painted surface), to the use of colour itself. We have never quite got over Winckelmann's gaslighting about classical, white purity and painted statues have an end-of-pier tawdriness about them. Here, the blue is deliberate: lapis, the expensive pigment of the Virgin, of heaven itself; the colour of a hundred paintings in the National Gallery. Yet this 'lady' in blue, surely a nod to Chris de Burgh, is neither holy nor virginal. Nor is she titled, like so many of the portraits in the building behind her. 

Patrick West bemusedly complains in the Spectator that Lady in Blue 'inanely celebrates merely being black and being a woman' as if this is a completely incomprehensible idea. Yet, Self is simply reviewing a long cultural legacy through the lens of her own lived experience. As a figurative version of one of Claes Oldenburg's oversized ice-cream cones or a sculptural reinterpretation of a Warhol, her sculpture might be seen as little more than Pop revisited. You might argue it is simplistic, but it is hardly controversial. 

The many platitudinous pronouncements about 'our shared present' and 'collective future' are also missing the point.  Ironically, Self's work was unveiled on Beryl Cook's one hundredth birthday and this summer's critically acclaimed centenary show in Plymouth saw that artist finally recognised as more than just a folksy riff on Carry-On nostalgia. Stylistically, Lady in Blue is the successor to Cook's subversive exuberance, proof that caricature can be affectionate as well as cruel and that serious commentary on class, gender and society can be made with smile. Is it the scale of the sculpture which has tipped critics over the edge, or is it the very beautifully patinated skin colour? Self's work might not be to everyone's taste, but its strident, striding, don't-give-a-shit joyfulness is undeniable. Female bodies do not have to be sexualised. Women are allowed to take up space. And art does not have to be serious.

Reflections (Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum until January 3 2027)

Claude Monet, Bateaux en Hollande, près de Zaandam, 1871, Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea

Reflections takes its cue from the mighty river Severn which runs through Worcester, already referenced on the way into the exhibition by William Calder Marshall's magnificently absurd 1880 sculpture Sabrina Being Thrown into the River Severn. This is a show loosely dedicated to the theme of water, curated by artists Jonathan Wright and Wayne Warren and bringing together works from Worcester's own collection, other public galleries and private collections. You can't fault the commitment of a venue which refuses to be constrained by its tiny two room exhibition space and this is a thrillingly eclectic collection of works ranging from nineteenth century academic populism to contemporary installations, and featuring photography and ceramics as well as painting. Yes, you can argue that cramming such a range of examples into so small a space creates a disjointed bittiness, but that is unkind given the depth of the ambition. What the exhibition does prove beyond doubt is that thematic shows, which are rarely favoured by the big national collections, have an intrinsic interest and across-the-board appeal. There is aesthetically something for everyone and every visitor will have their own appreciation of the theme, whether that is nostalgic fishing, news-worthy floods, environmental concerns of symbolic cleanliness.

The exhibition starts with a misleading and slightly humorous teaser: William Etty is at the kitsch end of Victorian art and his two boating cherubs here are saccharinely cutesy. Enter the gallery space and the show proper dives into nineteenth century naturalism as seen through the academic eyes of Benjamin Williams Leader, local lad and wildly popular in his day, and proto-Impressionists like Jean Baptiste Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny. Worcester have secured a number of National Gallery loans for this exhibitions, alongside an early Monet from Glynn Vivian in Swansea. The wall of watery landscapes tells a great story of the development of landscape from the 1850s, although one perhaps misses a full blown Impressionist example. 

Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, A Flood, c.1870-5, National Gallery, London

The opposite wall takes the story into the twentieth century with a collection of British works, starting with the gallery's very own blockbuster: Alexander Stanhope Forbes' Chadding on Mount's Bay is consistently their most popular painting and it is easy to see why with its combination of narrative complexity and breezily sunny nostalgia. From there you have a  who's who of post-War British art: Patrick Heron, David Hockney, Wilhelmina Barnes Graham. Apart from introductory wall texts, the labelling is minimal and the theme is getting swamped by the art. This is not a criticism: Derek Jarman's luscious blue print could be summer sky as much as ocean but either way you want to drown in it. There is a terrible poignancy to Hockney's swimming pool, teaming with ripples which look like newly hatched tadpoles joyfully setting out on the start of their life. 

The second smaller room is a smorgasbord of objects and images, chosen by the artist-curators and including their own work. There is a panel of flood photographs; a glowing neon light installation; textual art; ceramics and I could easily have enjoyed a soundscape as well. The effect is thought-provoking rather than artistically coherent but acts as a palette-cleanser between the two more conventional displays. It provides the subtext to the exhibition title - this is not just about reflections on water but an invitation to make time for your own reflections, wherever they may take you. Once again, Worcester Art Gallery has punched above its weight and provided a small gem of a show.

Andy Warhol Art Star (Wolverhampton Art Gallery until October 4 2026)

Andy Warhol, Campbells Soup, 1968, Wolverhampton Art Gallery (©Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts)

Andy Warhol is too famous. Everyone thinks they know his work, and him, to the point that it is very easy to simply stop looking and engaging. To this end, I nearly did not bother to go to Wolverhampton Art Gallery, to see that I thought would be an exhibition of second-string prints. This is a cautionary tale which proves that art, all art, is best viewed in person and if you ever get the chance to go and look for yourself, grab it. Artist Rooms is a wonderful initiative from Tate and National Galleries Scotland which allows regional collections to access a stock of prints and drawings and in this case they are working with a collection which is renowned for its own, mainly British, Pop Art holdings. The resulting exhibition is bigger, fresher and more enlightening than I had possibly imagined.

Wolverhampton provides an excellent home-grown, warm-up act with a separate display of their own Pop holdings. From a clever rejigging of Cubism by Roy Lichtenstein, to a classic Bridget Riley and the psychedelically bright Longue March, this room is the Sixties objectified. The display area, dark walled and less cool than severely air conditioned, is too dingy to really showcase the vibrancy of the works but they twist and shout regardless. Pop is often dismissed as bubblegum art, unthinking and as disposable as the culture it was commenting on, yet nothing could be further from the truth. From the luridly violent slashes across Allan Jones' table-dancing dummy to Jim Rosenquist's anti-war F-111 these works have complexity as well as colour. And there is a subliminal boast from the Wolverhampton curators too: they have their own Warhol of Jackie Kennedy included here. Artist Rooms loans are a bonus, not a necessity.

Andy Warhol, Liz, 1965, National Galleries of Scotland (©Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts)

In fact, the gallery's second Warhol - Campbells Soup - opens the Artists Rooms display, part of a run of advert-inspired prints which lull you into thinking you know what you are about to get. Look again and the flash brashness of the billboard is undercut by the fragile ephemerality of the print paper and the handmade glitches. Almost immediately, the tone shifts further with a series of Warhol film posters, a combination of seventies post-hippy glamour and unsettling sleaze. Warhol's difficult relationship with feminism - his shooting by an activist is repeatedly referenced - and women in general, cuts through much of the show. But the unease is broader and permeates most of the exhibits, in the monumentalised pistols and electric chair repeats.  It is at its most acute in the angsty, faux-disguised self-portraits of a man who seems to both seek out and cower from his fame.

Scale and colour are repeated, some might argue overused, tropes but one might say the same about a lot of artists throughout history. Here the scale is supersized Americana, the colour the simplified blocks of machine printing and the impact is undeniable. Marilyn's frozen smile in lurid negatives, so familiar yet still able to pack a punch - endless manipulation, endlessly unnatural, all surface because no one was interested in the depth. Sometimes the message is delivered with brutal crudeness - Mao undercut by lipstick, Ali with stand-out colour fists, but these big screen prints have subtlety too - slowly disintegrating before our eyes as the ink bleeds and the shadows close in. Equally, there are drawings, delicately elegant nameless young men sniffing flowers like fin de siecle dandies, Mick Jagger so androgynous you have to look twice, Robert Mapplethorpe caught rabbit-like in the headlights. A wonderful, poignant image of a young Hockney was traced from a projection on a wall, a method which captures his mercurial enthusiasm for innovation as much as the physical likeness. 

The scale ramps up further in the last two rooms. Abstracted camouflage wallpaper doing exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to. Missile bases and paratrooper boots stripped back to monochrome, chillingly cartoonish. The Cold War is as ever present as seediness in the flipside of the American Dream. Big Brother is always on your shoulder. The exhibition's title suggests a bit of frivolity, but maybe the curators intend Art Star to be as double-edged as most of the works on show. If you thought you knew Andy Warhol, go to Wolverhampton and think again.