Harry’s Place

I think that is very funny and very subversive. If we can’t have a laugh at ourselves then we ought to pack up shop. No doubt the brochures will be pulped, making them very valuable as collector items. I particularly liked France “on strike” and Sweden as a piece of Ikea flat pack.

This actually makes me very proud to be a EU citizen.

Better out than in, as they say. Incidentally, how is the United Kingdom portrayed?

According to the report by Guido - and this is the best joke of them all - Britain has been left out!

Yup!

I think this is juct one more case of pseudo-art that reveals how flawed comtemporary art is and how difficult it is for serious artists to succeed in the flood of tasteless ‘artists’ that pretend to be non-comformists…

the page in the brochure depicting portugal is telling: colonialism is nowadays a non-issue in this country, a turned page, both for us and for the former colonies, while there would be many negative things that could be used, but as the artist probably got that image of colonialist portugal from the times of communist rule in his own country, it might have come as an obvious, easy solution…

as for France, what a lack of imagination!!!

so I mainly see this as a waste of taxpayer money, as is the very existence of rotative six-month presidencies.

it could be subversive if it was a bulgarian artist depicting his own country as a turkish toilet, for instance, but since it is a czeck, I don’t see where the subversiveness lies.

The description regarding the UK piece is hilarious as well - perfectly lampoons pretentious descriptions by artists of their own work:

If art and associated attitudes
are not to become pleasing-appearance
ready-made goods, but a living,
albeit perhaps fleeting, organism, art
should be able to improve exactness
of its message in the time allotted
to it and thus, paradoxically, define
itself in history. This improvement
of exactness means that its individual,
selectivesieve can cover the so-called
objective sieve. Where their nodes
do not coincide, ‘free space‘ opens.
Energy of the free space is proportional
to the power of sharing, or, more
precisely, it is the sum of the freely
pulsating words which, in this context
and in each specific time, is able to
define (tangle up) different meanings
naturally through spontaneous intuition.
These screen points are spatial
holograms of historical memory, experience,
and therefore each such new
overlap becomes another non-linear
tangle to the naked eye.

it’s by one artist not 27

I see that the artist has adopted the identity of ‘Khalid Asadi’ for the British piece, and the list of his exhibitions includes ‘2005 ‘The Beer Mat Show’ Alicante.’. From the rubric I take it that Europeans see Britain as being in a mess, regarding national identity and history. Interesting that the airfix frame is actually empty, there is no object that can be associated with Britain. Sarah Franco, are you an artist? I can understand your ire at the grants going to these jokey displays. My own personal pethate is video art. Can anyone explain why wideos of taps dripping or people chopping up vegetables is art?

Having read the piece on the BBC website, it says that Britain is represented by an absence because it is the most eurosceptic. The title, ‘Entropa’, it seems to me, is a pun on the word ‘entropy’, and therefore, the most negative stereotypes are fittingly used. Having said that, it’s still only a joky display.

Also, Guido tells us that the Lithuanians are represented by some soldiers pissing into Russia. Oh my giddy aunt, the whole thing has given me my first laugh in 2009.

‘Fraid the very act of going for the most offensive national symbols is not one of subversion, but just punk rockerism. Oh, how my sides are hurting with laughter. It must have taken whole seconds to hit upon the German image.

Out of interest, is the Czech image the only one which mocks an individual, whilst all the others allude to an intrinsic feature of the populations?

Sue R., i’m not an artist, I’m a political scientist. I am very interested in art in general and very critical at contemporary art in particular but I’m not an expert in art. Artists are supposed to work for an audience. I am part of the audience, that all.

anyway, it takes time to recognize an artist and credit him his real value. many will never be recognized while others will not survive the test of time.

About 50 years ago I saw an item on Southern TV where an artist and an interviewer walked around a circle of abstract paintings as the artist explained the significance of each “opus”. At the end of this they stood in the centre of the circle and the interviewer asked the artist to “sum it all up”. Imagine my shock when the artist said that it was all rubbish really!

This incident has vaccinated me against the pretensions of talentless artists ever since.

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES.

I was wondering what a pethate was for a while there Sue. Thought you must be a proper intellectual throwing around words I’ve not even heard Mark Lawson use. What annoys me about video art is that the artist is trying to specify how long you spend looking at their stupid crap for, all the ones I’ve ever seen have been on a loop and invariably I’ve ‘got them’ in about 5 seconds tops yet it’s inexplicably a 5 or 10 minute loop.
Also the medium ages really fast, and not in a good way. your cutting edge 70’s video art looks as edgy as a cave painting in no time, I’m thinking here of gilbert and george’s ‘2 twats staring at you’ for some reason.

My own personal pethate is video art.

Some types of art translate very well to video, such as the surrealism exemplified by Un Chien Andalou. If the aim is to create an atmosphere or feeling, then video can be effective at this as well. I saw a nice piece in the Tate Liverpool which was essentially just footage of Brasilia (I think) but created a very ominous air and captured the ghostly, inhuman nature of a place which was created with purpose rather than people in mind. Also, video art is very useful for giving the impression of movement and change through time. The video in the Tate Modern in London of a fruit bowl rotting I especially liked, although not necessarily because it was “art”, I just like that kind of thing.

On the subject of the post, I completely disagree with the BBC’s reading of the German piece. It only looks like a swastika if you automatically link Germany with Nazism, which says more about the BBC than about Germany or the artist. The description in the pdf gives no indication that the piece refers to Germany’s Nazi history, and the accompanying drawing looks even less like a swastika than the final piece.

Now, if Cerny had funded this himself or received only a peppercorn fee, I wouldn’t be thinking pompous twat. The Soviet tank painted pink? Okay, a bit out there, but cheap and cheerful.

As it was, he would have received a considerable retainer, made all the more considerable by the assumption he was to be assisted by more people.

Yes, it is an EU fraud!

Beautiful

Belgium is depicted in the guide as a chocolate box; on the sculpture it is a collection on minarets.

add. - the Netherlands is submerged with only a collection of minarets showing.

Great stuff. Perhaps we can look forward to a gargantuan statue of Jean ‘Lenin’ Monnet with a gigantic phallus protruding from his forehead…now that I’d love to see.

political scientist

Adding the word ’science’ to a subject doesn’t actually make it science.

Oh, I’ve mixed Belgium up with the Netherlands… will correct. Easy mistake to make.

Britain is there, or the United Kingdom anyway. It is shown as a collection of odd bits on a plastic frame of the kind Airfix kits came on (you have to snap them off and glue together). Not art, really, but good and witty graphic design, I would say. Some people are bound to take offence but they don’t seem offensive to me, a little bland if anything. In some places they were clearly stuck for an idea (france is weak and so is Germany (although I can’t see a swastika in that one David)). Sweden is funny, if obvious.

Jon d: You could read ‘pethate’ with a French/Italian/German accent if you like; if it helps.

The clean and ordered “a la franga toilet networks” of Cerny is a nice piece of art. In reality Bulgarian public toilets are not that clean and well kept.

I am very much of an artist, as my regular visits to Wetherspoon’s illustrate.

I am ahamed that on the subject of ‘pets’ and other than this glorious artist is not mentioned.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_P%C3%A9tomane

A few important points have been missed by the BBC story and others:
…….from reuters…….
The 8-tonne mosaic will go “live” later this week, when certain country “pieces” will start to move and make noises.
That will apply, for example, to Germany’s cars on a motorway network and to Italian soccer players practicing on their national map with goalposts at the country’s northern and southern ends.

…… from http://www.eu2009.cz ………
The Czech government is renting Entropa until the 30 June 2009. The rental costs amount to €50,000. Other expenses, such as production costs, were to be borne by the creator, the Czech artist David Černý

Very funny and a nice little earner for the £350,000 it cost.

Presumably the EU’s financial controls were not up to the task of paying all the so called artists individually and so they just handed the money over to Mr Cerny?

How long before 30 or so aspiring artists come out of the woodwork claiming we wuz robbed?

Mrs Ben

‘Britain is there, or the United Kingdom anyway. It is shown as a collection of odd bits on a plastic frame of the kind Airfix kits came on (you have to snap them off and glue together). ‘

Yeah, I didn’t understand what his point was here. I wondered if it had something to do with devolution, and the breaking up of Britain into a dis-united kingdom.

‘Britain’ is a political fiction. We’ve always known that north of the border.

Sad to see it revealed to be so empty though.

My own personal pethate is video art. Can anyone explain why wideos of taps dripping or people chopping up vegetables is art?

FYI: video art installations are typically executed by art students who have not done an iota of work all year, a week or two before their degree show.

Every art student knows this and laughs their chocolate pants off about it.

Actually it was payed by czech goverment only , so we werent robbed , czechs were . A hilarious piece of art!! Bravo !!

“the Netherlands is submerged with only a collection of minarets showing…”

a clear reference to Geert Wilders’ warning of a “tsunami of islamic immigrants…”?

As a Bulgarian I am actually ashamed of the oficial bulgarian reactions. Many people here aplaud David Cerny. I wish I were Czech too.

As a non-European, I believe that Europeans are matured enough to just have a laugh to such a brilliant work!

Thanks so much for the link to the brochure, and for the post! I mention it in my take on the piece over at elenabella.blogspot.com.