What is art, and can you make it exposed on a plinth?

Hands up who's been following artist Anthony Gormley's living sculptures venture on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London?



I've been keeping tabs on it sporadically, usually by walking past every other day and having an interested glance up to see who's up there and what they're doing, or by stories that inevitably come out of it - such as the guy who was ordered to put some clothes on after getting naked for Trafalgar Square to see...

In itself, the issue of whether nakedness can be accepted as a form of art opens up a whole other can of worms in the perpetual "What is art?" debate, so I'll leave that aside to comment on the more general concept of using the plinth as a showcase of living art.

For me, what Gormley has set out with this concept is unique, innovative and immensely creative, which I would imagine are required criteria for getting to demonstrate your work on the plinth. Gormley, then, is an artist in my book. His subjects up there are, I feel at least, less so. I have by no means been keeping a 24/7 plinth watch (I'll leave that to @PlinthWatch... clue's in the name), but whenever I have been past it I have always felt rather underwhelmed, bordering on disappointed, by what's up there.

That sounds very negative, I know, (especially to Mr. Naked Plinth Man) but I don't mean it to be at all. (I really don't, Mr. Naked Plinth Man!) I just feel the experiment shows that the intrinsic interest and, in many ways, beauty that humans have is best demonstraetd through their interactions with other humans. Talking, laughing, all that reacting to others and interacting with others that we do every day... In fact, most of the things that make us interesting and artistic are, I feel, closely tied in with being around other people and things. We're human, we live in society: it doesn't seem wildly outrageous that this is how we've managed to spend a few millennia on earth.

Take all that away and isolate an individual on a plinth and I feel that you almost get the opposite effect to what was probably intended. Everything around us that, without us realising it, makes us create and perceive things in the world, is just removed for those guys up on the fourth plinth.

But that's just my $0.02 - everyone has a different view on what art is. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.