One Weird Dude

Obnoxious. A hooligan. Enfant terrible of the Czech art world. Provocateur. Artist David Černý's been called a lot of things. Here and there amid the myriad Baroque churches and Art Nouveau hotels, the Renaissance palaces adorned with sgraffito and the Gothic spires, you can find the art (some would say "art") of David Černý.

Černý first made a splash on the Czech psyche in 1991 when he painted pink a Soviet tank that had been declared a National Cultural Monument during the communist era (commemorating the USSR's liberation of Prague). His most recent offense stemmed from the Czech Republic commissioning a sculpture from him to mark the occasion of its presidency of the Council of the European Union. (The Czech officials claim they thought they were commissioning a collaborative piece involving input from 27 artists around the EU.)

From Wikipedia's Entropa entry:

The Council of the EU has a rotary presidency system, whereby the governments of member countries exchange leadership every six months. It is customary for the presiding country to place an exhibit in the Justus Lipsius building, which are normally uncontroversial. France, which held the presidency before the Czech Republic, had simply erected a large balloon in the French national colours.

Entropa was installed at the EU headquarters in Brussels in early 2009. 

From a BBC report on the controversy:

The artwork, called Entropa, shows the EU's 27 members as snap-out plastic parts of the sort used in modeling kits. Each represents a country according to the crudest national stereotypes.

Bulgaria is shown as a Turkish toilet, Romania as Dracula's castle, and the Netherlands is underwater, with just a couple of minarets poking through the waves. But even more controversially, Denmark is made up of Lego building blocks which, from a distance, form an image of the Prophet Mohammed. And Germany is a network of moving autobahns - lit up, they resemble a crooked swastika.

Entropa was removed from the Justus Lipsius building in May 2009 and installed the next month in Centre of Contemporary Art DOX in Prague-Holešovice. It has been at the Techmania Science Center in Plzeň since last September.

I've been collecting pictures of Černý's work around Prague since the fall. Given that these are public installations that have been around for a number of years, it's safe to say that these are among his least controversial pieces. But that doesn't mean they're not irreverent.

Proudy (Streams) 2004. In the courtyard of the Kafka Museum in Malá Strana.

Streams shows two men standing and peeing in an outline of the Czech Republic. When it's working properly, the guys' hips swivel back and forth writing famous quotations from Czech literature with their pee, but the mechanism hasn't been functioning since we've been here.

Which is too bad, because in theory you can also send a text message to the statue which will abandon the quote it's writing and instead spell out your text in the puddle.

So we found our own ways to have fun with it.

Streams probably isn't that shocking for the locals as public urination is No Big Deal here, which was rather surprising when we first arrived. But we've gotten over it and allow the boys to take full advantage of trees and bushes. Karl and I still opt for the WC.

Quo Vadis (Where Are You Going) 1991. In the garden of the German Embassy in Malá Strana

A Trabant (an East German car) on legs stands as a monument to the thousands of East Germans who fled the communist regime prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and camped out in then West German embassy garden seeking political asylum.

Embryo 1996. On the Theatre on the Balustrade in Anenské náměstí.

In the early 1960s, Václav Havel worked as a stage hand and then dramaturg and playwright at Theatre on the Balustrade, which became the center of Czech form of absurd theater.

I don't know what the commentary is on this piece. Is it a nod to Havel, the playwright-dissident who became president of Czechoslovakia following the fall of communism? Does it represent the embryonic stage of nationhood which was finally birthed in 1989? Or is it just a fetus coming down a drainpipe?

I imagine David Černý would welcome any and all interpretations.

Embryo is illuminated, so it glows in the dark.

Viselec (Hanging Out) 1997. Above Husova Street.

A vaguely Freudian-looking fellow hangs over Husova Street in Old Town. The police fielded numerous calls of concern when it first went up.

A couple more angles on a sunnier day.

St. Wenceslas statue looks out over Wenceslas Square (not my picture)

This iconic statue of the patron saint of the Czech lands has surveyed his domain for almost a century. It stands at the south end of Wenceslas Square in front of the National Museum. We have pictures of Ben, Garrett and Flat Stanley in front of it here.

Kůn (Horse) 1999. In Lucerna Palace off Wenceslas Square.

Černý created this parody of the statue. Wenceslas is the anglicized name for Václav. This sculpture hangs in the Lucerna Palace arcade, a building that Havel's grandfather built and it is still partially owned by Havel's family.

I mention the Havel connection only because it's been suggested that the Václav riding this dead horse is not Havel but current Czech president Václav Klaus. These guys aren't exactly political foes, but they definitely have their differing followings, kind of a Good Václav/Bad Václav sentiment. Most folks here tend to have an unswerving view of which is which. And Černý is squarely in the (Good Václav) Havel camp.

The Žižkov TV Tower was built late in the communist era. It's the tallest building in the Czech Republic. But what are those things on it, ants?

Oh. No, not ants. That's a baby crawling up the TV tower. Just how big are those things?

Here, for scale, we have Garrett and Grandpa Seeley hanging with a baby on Kampa Island.

Miminka (Babies) 2000. Žižkov TV Tower in the Žižkov neighborhood.

There's one more Černý sculpture I really want to get to, and if I do I'll definitely post a picture of it. In the meantime, this is probably enough oddity for one post.