At a time of economic meltdown, galloping unemployment, social unrest and growing chaos around the world it is always pleasant to see that art can play its part in making things just that little bit worse.
I have been reading about the latest piece of Euro Art Work to be unveiled in Brussels. This is ‘Entropia’ by David Cerny which has been installed in the foyer of the European Council in Brussels to mark the Czech assumption of the EU Presidency.
This eight tonne sculpture takes the form of a massive rectangle of blue tubing from which (rather in the manner of the plastic parts of an Airfix model kit) arty representations of the individual member countries are fixed.
The ‘explanatory’ catalogue for the installation issued by the Czechs has been hurriedly withdrawn (though it is still available on line if you know where to look) and apologies have been issued right, left and centre for the real and perceived insults that the sculpture has been seen to offer.
Cerny, the artist, has told infuriated observers that it was all meant as a bit of a joke. It turns out that the Czech government has thought that they were commissioning a range of artists from individual EU states but in fact it was an elaborate hoax by Cerny. He and a few collaborators made all the bits and wrote the ludicrous catalogue as well.
When you consider the play on stereotypes by which each country outline is represented you wonder just how Cerny got away with it until it was installed and too late.
Sweden is represented by an IKEA flatpack; Bulgaria by a Turkish toilet;
Ireland by fur covered bagpipes; Romania by a kitsch looking Dracula fairground attraction; Spain by a lump of concrete and Britain – well, Britain isn’t there. This is supposed to be a visual representation of the scepticism about membership of the EU for which we are notorious! The description of the artistic motivation for the lack of anything in the installation representing Britain could be reprinted verbatim in Pseuds’ Corner in Private Eye. I might add that the element representing the Czech nation consists of an LED strip relaying quotations from the speeches of their disturbed leader!
I do urge you to find the catalogue and giggle your way through the pretentious artistic psycho babble with which it is filled and have a look at the individual elements of the countries. After looking at them you might begin to wonder if the EU hasn’t been given a more uncomfortably accurate depiction of the heterogeneous rag bag of absurdly pompous countries that make up the organization than any ponderous academic study emerging through the filter of civil servants and national prejudice could possibly do!
As in the best traditions of a Brueghel painting there are so many little details which tantalize and titillate: the sexually suggestive footballers of Italy; the drowned minarets of Holland;
the endlessly circulating cars of Germany; the group of priests mimicking the Iwo Jima flag raising but with the Rainbow flag of the Gay movement for Poland – it goes on and on and you can imagine national representatives howling with rage!
The fact that Cerny has managed to get his installation up and running (there are moving, flashing and sounding parts) is a triumph. Elaborate hoax and naughtily irreverent it might well be but such a scintillating example of wicked humour in the heart of serious Europe is worth its weight in gold. And to cap it all Cerny said that he was influenced by Monty Python's Flying Circus in producing this work of art! Who needs a representation of the country when the idea behind it all is so gloriously British!
The recriminations, explanations, accusations and condemnations which this installation has and will provoke must all, surely, be regarded as a continuing part of the work itself. Just as with Christo’s ‘wrapping’ projects (my particular favourite was the ‘Curtain across the valley’) the ‘art’ is as much in the efforts to get the work done (Christo actually got a bank to finance the curtain) as in the actual object itself (the curtain only survived for a very short time.) In the best sense of the word the object becomes a sequence of events in which we can all participate.
If nothing else it will allow us to chuckle at the way that a resourceful joker got his hands on substantial public funds and managed through sheer face to erect a symbol of punctured pretension in a symbol of stuffy seriousness.
I like it. A lot.
Tomorrow, after my second Spanish lesson of the week - (No! For the love of God! Not more verbs!) – I return to The School of My Brief Sojourn to take advantage of the offer of help to get my qualifications sorted out. The trick in these instances of approaching Spanish bureaucracy is to get all possible documents together to forestall any nit picking on the part of the officials. The man who has kindly offered to help has arranged numbers of these accreditations and so I should be in a safe pair of hands.
The only distasteful aspect of the process is that I might have to go to a notario (for whose existence I can see no possible justification) and spend quantities of money for those ciphers to tell me that the documents I am showing are indeed documents. I will need to keep my temper as I pay a fee for no reason whatsoever to people whose only qualifications for their ‘legal’ jobs are that they know how to put ‘official’ stamps on a piece of paper. My fervent hope (a teacher’s prayer) is that they will be subject to nights of sleepless anxiety for the grasping futility of their existence.
One can only hope!
I have been reading about the latest piece of Euro Art Work to be unveiled in Brussels. This is ‘Entropia’ by David Cerny which has been installed in the foyer of the European Council in Brussels to mark the Czech assumption of the EU Presidency.
This eight tonne sculpture takes the form of a massive rectangle of blue tubing from which (rather in the manner of the plastic parts of an Airfix model kit) arty representations of the individual member countries are fixed.
The ‘explanatory’ catalogue for the installation issued by the Czechs has been hurriedly withdrawn (though it is still available on line if you know where to look) and apologies have been issued right, left and centre for the real and perceived insults that the sculpture has been seen to offer.
Cerny, the artist, has told infuriated observers that it was all meant as a bit of a joke. It turns out that the Czech government has thought that they were commissioning a range of artists from individual EU states but in fact it was an elaborate hoax by Cerny. He and a few collaborators made all the bits and wrote the ludicrous catalogue as well.
When you consider the play on stereotypes by which each country outline is represented you wonder just how Cerny got away with it until it was installed and too late.
Sweden is represented by an IKEA flatpack; Bulgaria by a Turkish toilet;
Ireland by fur covered bagpipes; Romania by a kitsch looking Dracula fairground attraction; Spain by a lump of concrete and Britain – well, Britain isn’t there. This is supposed to be a visual representation of the scepticism about membership of the EU for which we are notorious! The description of the artistic motivation for the lack of anything in the installation representing Britain could be reprinted verbatim in Pseuds’ Corner in Private Eye. I might add that the element representing the Czech nation consists of an LED strip relaying quotations from the speeches of their disturbed leader!I do urge you to find the catalogue and giggle your way through the pretentious artistic psycho babble with which it is filled and have a look at the individual elements of the countries. After looking at them you might begin to wonder if the EU hasn’t been given a more uncomfortably accurate depiction of the heterogeneous rag bag of absurdly pompous countries that make up the organization than any ponderous academic study emerging through the filter of civil servants and national prejudice could possibly do!
As in the best traditions of a Brueghel painting there are so many little details which tantalize and titillate: the sexually suggestive footballers of Italy; the drowned minarets of Holland;
the endlessly circulating cars of Germany; the group of priests mimicking the Iwo Jima flag raising but with the Rainbow flag of the Gay movement for Poland – it goes on and on and you can imagine national representatives howling with rage!The fact that Cerny has managed to get his installation up and running (there are moving, flashing and sounding parts) is a triumph. Elaborate hoax and naughtily irreverent it might well be but such a scintillating example of wicked humour in the heart of serious Europe is worth its weight in gold. And to cap it all Cerny said that he was influenced by Monty Python's Flying Circus in producing this work of art! Who needs a representation of the country when the idea behind it all is so gloriously British!
The recriminations, explanations, accusations and condemnations which this installation has and will provoke must all, surely, be regarded as a continuing part of the work itself. Just as with Christo’s ‘wrapping’ projects (my particular favourite was the ‘Curtain across the valley’) the ‘art’ is as much in the efforts to get the work done (Christo actually got a bank to finance the curtain) as in the actual object itself (the curtain only survived for a very short time.) In the best sense of the word the object becomes a sequence of events in which we can all participate.
If nothing else it will allow us to chuckle at the way that a resourceful joker got his hands on substantial public funds and managed through sheer face to erect a symbol of punctured pretension in a symbol of stuffy seriousness.
I like it. A lot.
Tomorrow, after my second Spanish lesson of the week - (No! For the love of God! Not more verbs!) – I return to The School of My Brief Sojourn to take advantage of the offer of help to get my qualifications sorted out. The trick in these instances of approaching Spanish bureaucracy is to get all possible documents together to forestall any nit picking on the part of the officials. The man who has kindly offered to help has arranged numbers of these accreditations and so I should be in a safe pair of hands.
The only distasteful aspect of the process is that I might have to go to a notario (for whose existence I can see no possible justification) and spend quantities of money for those ciphers to tell me that the documents I am showing are indeed documents. I will need to keep my temper as I pay a fee for no reason whatsoever to people whose only qualifications for their ‘legal’ jobs are that they know how to put ‘official’ stamps on a piece of paper. My fervent hope (a teacher’s prayer) is that they will be subject to nights of sleepless anxiety for the grasping futility of their existence.
One can only hope!
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