2024-04-23 23:23:06
Friday’s performance by sculptor David Černý and curator Marie Foltýnová on the Czech TV program ended with vulgarities. The director of the Prague Capital Gallery, where Foltýnová works, has now apologized for the rudeness. According to her, however, she could be understood in the tense atmosphere. The director criticizes Černý’s proposal. The chairman of the Prague Committee for Culture, Jan Wolf from the KDU-ČSL, requested the removal of the curator, and he also apologized.
Černý and Foltýnová clashed in the final ten-minute episode of Friday’s Události program, commenting on the plan to place two of Černý’s sculptures on the facade of the renovated Máj department store in Prague. They will measure several meters and look like the fuselage of a spitfire fighter, but with rainbow butterfly wings. The work is intended to pay tribute to Czechoslovak airmen during the Second World War and commemorate the entry of the Czech Republic into NATO, as well as the anniversary of the alliance.
However, the memorialists do not like the proposal, and the representative of the Prague Capital Gallery, curator of art in public space Marie Foltýnová, also criticized it in the broadcast. She argued, among other things, that May is a cultural monument. “The question is whether Máj is such a fundamental cultural monument,” David Černý relativized, who several times misspelled the curator’s name and addressed her as comrade. He also questioned the activities of the Gallery of the City of Prague. Foltýnová had previously criticized his statue with the mythical figure of Lilith on the house in Karlín. “I don’t think the work is progressive at all,” she said at the time.
In the last seconds of Friday’s broadcast, Černý could be heard telling the curator something. “Go to hell,” responded the curator. “You go to hell,” replied Černý. A snippet of this exchange has received hundreds of thousands of views on the X social network, formerly known as Twitter, alone.
Prague representative Jan Wolf from KDU-ČSL, who is the chairman of the municipal committee for culture, apologized to Černá on behalf of Foltýnová. According to him, the curator acted in a shorthand and punishable manner. “An official cannot really afford this, especially when he speaks for the capital city of Prague. If Mrs. Foltýnová wants to speak like this, then let her leave the ranks of the employees of the Gallery of the Capital City of Prague and then she can say what she wants,” wrote Wolf on Facebook. The post was later deleted by a he apologized for him.
Now, her superior, gallery director Magdalena Juříková, has also apologized for Foltýnová. According to her, the artist attacked the curator and behaved disrespectfully towards her, as a result of which the emotions culminated in rude words. “We are aware that this method of communication does not belong in public media, however, in the atmosphere of attacks and rioting, it is humanly understandable. The Gallery of the Capital City of Prague hereby apologizes to the audience and the artist,” said Juříková.
She calls for the debate to return to the merits of the matter, i.e. placing contemporary architectural elements in the historical core of the capital.
“In this case, it is not a battle between the new and the old, it is about complementing the old with the new and suitable. David Černý’s design for the facade of Mája is oversized for this situation and, with its zoomorphic morphology, seems disharmonious with the clean lines of the post-functionalist building of the department store and its surroundings ,” says Juříková.
According to her, the gallery is the curator of public space in Prague, and therefore similar plans are in the center of her attention. “In such key places, there should be the widest possible consensus on the chosen work, even if it is a private owner of the building whose facade is in question. We believe that such a debate will still take place in a much calmer atmosphere.” says Magdalena Juříková.
Its current owner, Amadeus Real Estate, which has been renovating the building on the corner of Národní trýda and Spálená Street for the past two years, decided to place the work on the facade of a department store from the 1970s. Since it is a protected building, the intervention must be approved by the preservationists. Last week, when asked by Aktuálně.cz, the Department of Historic Preservation of the Prague Municipality refused to comment, saying that a decision had not yet been made and referred to the owner of the building. He doesn’t want to provide any more information either.
However, the author of the proposal, David Černý, said on television that the decision had already been made. “It is allowed temporarily for one year by the preservationists. And after a year it will be able to be taken down without any problems, absolutely without any problems,” said Černý about his work.
He appeals to the public to wait with criticism until they see the result. He also argues for the consent of the original architects of Máj, namely John Eisler, Miroslav Masák and Martin Rajniš.
“Eisler said that it’s nice, that he likes it, that he agrees with it, and I guess he gave written consent to it. Just like Martin Rajniš, who commented on it with the words: for God’s sake, finally the barracks will look like something, ” said Černý on television. Last week, when asked by Aktuálně.cz if he liked the proposal, Rajniš did not want to say anything.
The shape of the building with moving sculptures and photos of the butterflies themselves were published last month by the civic association dealing with historic preservation, the Club for Old Prague. He is dismissive of their location and calls Černé’s work kitsch.
The proposal is also rejected by the National Institute of Monuments, which issued three expert opinions on it. In the final, however, the city decides. In the worst case scenario, the Institute can submit a so-called dissolution to the Ministry of Culture, which then has the final say. But he is not going to do that, because the installation is supposed to be temporary according to the investor’s proposal.
Pavel Karous, a sculptor focusing on fine art in public space, was not pleased with the Černé sculpture. OF his view the cultural monument is destroyed by such an intervention and “current postmodernism, which does not belong to the architecture of the 70s” is added to it.
On the other hand, journalist Jan H. Vitvar from the Respekt weekly, author of a book about David Černý called Fifty Licks, sees in the work a connection to the first sculpture that made Černý famous. It was a Trabant walking on human legs, reminiscent of the escape of East Germans through Prague to the West. “He likes connecting machines with people or animals in the appropriate scale, it is an essential part of his work, and the sculpture for Máj follows on from that,” explains Vitvar.
On television, David Černý argued, among other things, that Prague is interesting for its architectural contrasts, such as the Tančící dům standing on the historic embankment on the right bank of the Vltava since 1996. It was designed by Vlado Milunić together with the world-famous Frank Gehry.
Video: Prague is in a straitjacket, says Jiřičná
Prague should have been more courageous after 1989, renowned architect Eva Jiřičná said in the Spotlight program this February. | Video: Jakub Zuzánek