Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Art is provocation

David Černý is a bad boy of Czech art. He writes, "Provocation is the amplified reason why the art exists. What's supposed to be called art and not design has to have something behind it. It has to have a message, whatever. It can have a static message, but it has to have a message. It's not a chair." He has done a number of sculptures around Prague, as well as internationally, but he has stirred up a lot of controversy. Oddly enough, though he has had his art work banned in several countries and irritated many, the only piece of art that landed him in jail was the pink tank because they said he had "defaced public property." Here is a selection of his work around Prague.

Babies: these guys are also climbing up the side of a tv tower which was voted by a tourism survey as the second ugliest building in the world.




The Pink Tank for which he was arrested. It now has its own barge out in the middle of the Vlatava River where tourists in little pedal boats can crash into it to the hilarious delight of the observers on Národní Bridge.



Hanging man: this is Sigmund Freud, hanging out. Černý said this represents the choice we all need to make, which is to hang on or let go.



Peeing men: this is outside the Kafka Museum, as noted in an earlier post. I later learned that you can instant message the statues to pee quotes into the pool.




Wenceslas on a dead horse: this is hanging in a cinema and makes fun of the patriotic sculpture of Good King Wenceslas out in the middle of Wenceslas Square so I include the statue for your comparison.







The pointed guns: this is a sculpture of four pistols all pointed at each other, and it is hanging in a small museum off Karlova street, but we forgot to photograph it. Drat.

I really enjoy these sculptures because while they are strong political statements, they are funny. It's like Jon Stewart: you get the bad news, but in such a way that one feels like one can bear it and not have to jump off a bridge because there is no hope.

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3 comments:

Jody Ballah said...

My students and I had a similar experience at le Musée de Beaux Arts in Québec this past week. We went from a room with classic paintings in the styles of the old masters with dark, rich and studied poses and absence natural light into the impressionist era where Canadian painters took their cues from the French and American painters of this time. I could see the students' demeanor change as we crossed this threshold. Then, we visited le Salon de Riopelle which was surrealism par excellence - a more confused reaction this time!

Priscilla said...

Art is real. It's current existence that is surreal. I think I've really fallen into a K rabbit hole as Alice did. This blog is just provocative like a Gothic lit class.

Ericka Leighton said...

I would absolutely love to take a contemporary art class (or any critical art class for that matter) with you! I recently took a contemporary art class where we read "The Lives of the Artists", adjoined with lectures of the artists. I think I was more interested in seeing how people responded to the artists and how those observations were guided by their own epistemic views of art, which seemed to be a struggle between objectivity and subjectivity. However, I did find it to be a bit odd that relational aesthetics was never mentioned in the class.