Czech artist David Černy (the c with a little hook over the top is pronounced ch, i.e. Chair-knee, it means Black) is no stranger to controversy. Sometimes I like his work, sometimes I don’t, so please don’t read this as a critique of his talent, or of him as a person.
Not Terribly Subtle
But I don’t like his most recent piece of work at all. It’s a huge, purple, middle finger floating in the middle of the Vltava River. I guess it’s supposed to be directed at the Castle, so it’s sort of a fuck the government statement. A lot of people are reading it as fuck the Communists, because the Communist Party is expected to do better than expected in the upcoming elections, if that makes any sense. (Polls say they are likely to come in 2nd place, giving them a chance to take part in a coalition government. This has got some people freaked out, because the memories of barbed wire fences, censorship, having to learn Russian in school, and calling everybody “soudruh” are only 24 years old) .
But the way I see it it’s a big fuck you to the city of Prague. It’s a fuck you to every mother who’s walking with a stroller on Kampa Island. It’s a fuck you to all the tourists walking across Charles Bridge. It’s a fuck you to any Prague artist who is actually trying to create art that says something.
As an artistic statement, Fuck You is about the least imaginative statement possible. Every tagger who has ever written Fuck You on a wall has expressed exactly the same sentiment, and there are thousands of them in Prague, not to mention every other city in the world. This did not require any great imagination or depth of artistic sentiment to conceive, and I suspect it did not require a tremendous amount of technical skill to create. It is not a work of art. It is a floating piece of vandalism.
The only imagination Černy has demonstrated with this is in his choice of what surface to deface. He gets no credit for that. Quite the opposite. Kids with spray paint cans defacing an abandoned warehouse in a neighborhood nobody goes to don’t bother me too much. Planting a big, purple turd in the Vltava River, this scenic body of water which is the centerpiece of this magnificent city of graceful ancient bridges and beautiful buildings, where I will not be able to avoid seeing it if I take my kids down to feed the swans (actually, I’m sure my kids will think it’s hysterical – little boogers) is entirely another matter.
So, fuck you, David Černy. I hope your stupid statue sinks.
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