- AWESOMEST SCULPTURE EVER: It’s a map of Europe! “Here is Bulgaria, represented as a series of crude, hole-in-the-floor toilets. Here is the Netherlands, subsumed by floods, with only a few minarets peeping out from the water. Luxembourg is depicted as a tiny lump of gold marked by a ‘for sale’ sign, while five Lithuanian soldiers are apparently urinating on Russia.” [New York Times]
ART NEWS 9:29 am January 15, 2009
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{ 54 comments }
Minarets? They are gonna piss of teh muslins.
“After being challenged by reporters this week, Mr. Cerny admitted that he and two of his friends constructed the whole thing themselves, making up the names of artists, giving some of them Web sites and writing pretentious, absurd statements to go with their supposed contributions.”
Sounds like the way I composed most of my papers in College.
Can we get this guy to make something friendly for the America- and god-friendly new proposed entrance to the capitol?
I wish there were better photos of this thing. I love how the UK is absent from Europe. LOL
One man’s art is another man’s Lithuanian soldier peeing on Russia
“But before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.”
Like anybody needs to pose that question, except rhetorically.
i’m pretty sure the things sticking out of the netherlands are bongs, not minarets.
…the country of Georgia is represented by a smoldering crater!
I think I can see most of those countries from my porsche. also.
-SP
[re=219394]space stout[/re]: They’re both.
We need to invite this guy to do a stateside version. This is exactly the kind of thing on which the San Francisco Arts Commission would spend its entire budget.
worth seeing the slideshow: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/01/15/world/0115-MOSAIC_index.html
And a US sculpture would have:
Bulgaria = Alabama
Netherlands = Louisiana
Luxembourg = Delaware
Russia = Texas
Lithuania = New Mexico
Reminds me a little of this map:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/12/23/227/
space stout: They’re minarets. It’s a big part of the reason it’s considered offensive. Still better than a hole-in-the-floor toilet though. Those are disgusting. The French use them to.
[re=219384]shanemacgowan[/re]: In other words, it was the artistic equivalent of “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy”.
Germany as a giant swastika and Romania as a Dracula park, ftw.
I’ve been laughing all morning long. Sweden as an IKEA box? France on strike? Non-existant UK? Priceless.
Now can we commission a map of the Middle East please?
i’m pretty sure i read somewhere that romania actually IS constructing a dracula theme park. i mean, if you were them, wouldn’t you?
No snark… this guy is my new hero.
Russia should have just been a big pasty flexing Putin torso though…
[re=219412]ladymacbeth[/re]: You mean there isn’t already one- what the heck is their problem? they have been free for a few years now.
[re=219404]jagorev[/re]: …in my opinion, this would be the representation:
New Jersey = Filthy Urinal
Alabama = Double wide trailer
Mississippi = Meth lab
Texas = A short school bus
N.Y. = A hand giving the finger
California = A Mormon getting beaten by a drag queen
[re=219421]AngryBlakGuy[/re]: I disagree with your characterization of NY. If anyone should be represented by a rude gesture, it should be Massachusetts.
I want to party with David Cerny.
[re=219421]AngryBlakGuy[/re]: Illinois = Blago’s hair
Iowa = Vilsak in the Pooh suit
Michigan = flat tire
Why didn’t anyone realize right away that there was something seriously weird about the new piece of art in Brussels?
Gee I dunno. Maybe they were too overwhelmed by the co-mingled odors of funk and ass eminating from the population of Brussels?
[re=219404]jagorev[/re]: good, except Russia isn’t in the EU. How about:
Poland – Pennsylvania
Ireland – New York City
Latvia – Cleveland
Czech Republic – Porn Valley
Portugal – New Jersey (well, Newark at least)
Spain – Los Angeles
Slovakia – Mississippi
Turkey (always-aspiring EU member) – Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, because they both like teh tortures
[re=219423]jagorev[/re]: …I figured Mass. would be represented by a hairy azzhole.
(der spiegel has better pictures.)
Cerny extraordinarily epic win. He and Blago have the biggest trucknuts.
[re=219428]pondscum[/re]: [re=219423]jagorev[/re]: …Alaska = A turkey in a turkey grinder
[re=219381]MARCdMan[/re]: Have you looked at Denmark in the sculpture? It’s the muhammad with a bomb cartoon that caused the cartoon riots, done in lego and in the shape of the country. I love Cerny.
This thing gets better and better. From [re=219432]jbd[/re]‘s link: “Denmark is shown as a collection of colorful Lego blocks — put together in such a way as to recall the infamous caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.”
For example, next to the piece for Italy — depicted as a huge soccer field with little soccer players on it — it says, “It appears to be an autoerotic system of sensational spectacle with no climax in sight.”
Italy FTW!
[re=219430]President Beeblebrox[/re]: no way does PA have more Portuguese than Rhode Island.
Oh, and the whole light blue section in this map would be Germany:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg
I’m German, and I find this thing hilarious.Cerny should be made king of all artists.
My favourite was Poland, btw: Catholic priests holding up a gay pride flag.
[re=219421]AngryBlakGuy[/re]: No no. Tennessee is the Meth Lab. Mississippi is either a Rebel flag or a Klan hood (though that’s probably better for Georgia).
[re=219440]jagorev[/re]: You meant NJ, not PA… yeah, I think you’re right about RI. Although RI could also be Liechtenstein. Or maybe even San Marino.
Really, that is the best piece of art to come out of Europa since Michael D. Angelo died.
But, if the New York Times wants to stay my liberal paper of record they’re going to have to know the difference between Dracula and Nasfuratu. Really.
The scupture of Gaza is many entirely out of charcoal briquettes.
[re=219466]S.Luggo[/re]: many = made
[re=219466]S.Luggo[/re]: And Iran is made of backlit green glass. He must be hinting at something…
There will be no gaza sculpture! For reasons different than no England…
[re=219466]S.Luggo[/re]:
Or a Bullseye.
No mention of Iceland? I figured it would be represented by a black hole where no money ever comes out again.
God, I love this thing. As someone of Lithuanian descent, I could not be happier than it’s Lithuanian soldiers peeing on Russia. I mean, almost any country could be peeing on Russia, but it’s Lithunia.
[re=219472]ManchuCandidate[/re]: [re=219468]MARCdMan[/re]: [re=219467]S.Luggo[/re]: …the Gaza Strip is depicted by a bombed out U.N. building.
Finally, those snooty Bulgarians get their comeuppance. Now if only I knew where their country was located or even what they do to be stereotyped as a series of floor toilets.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/world/europe/15mosaic.html
What’s the big deal, they still have hole in the floor toilets in the Bullet trains in Japan, (and state of the art waste treatment systems so are no smells or leaks).
I feel like such a failure as a former art major. Because I really don’t see the highway swastika in the Germany part at all. It looks like a figure-8 to me.
i wish we had a dracula theme park. only ours would be PUMAs.
Poland is made out of some brown stuff, with peanuts in it. Eeeeewww.
What to make of the structure that holds the whole shebang together? Blue for Nato. Is the structure made of plumbing pipes from the Bulgarian Empire?
Has anyone seen it at night? Do some countries light up? Are there fountains?
This is fantastic.
David Cerny is a hero. What people don’t realize is that his first famous thing, that awful pink Soviet tank in Prague, was terribly offensive because it was a REAL WAR MEMORIAL, for the Soviet liberation of Prague in WWII.
Cerny painted it at night, and also added a big flippin’ the bird finger. It was wonderful, and also (I think?) the front-page photo on the first issue of Prognosis, the eng. language paper where I worked long ago.
Hmmm, I wonder if Mr. Cerny would make me a map of the counties of Tennessee.
Oh my god, is Sweden an Ikea box? I am so gay for Cerny.
Oh man, Brussels! You have been *trolled*! So very hard!
I can’t believe I didn’t see this until today. Fucking awesome. I don’t get Finland, though. A hippo and an elephant and a man crawling with a shotgun? I read that it is supposed to symbolize chronic alcoholism, but I don’t really get it.
Anyway, how stupid and incompetent was the Czech bureaucrat who hired Cerny? A quick Google of his recent work includes an embalmed Saddam Hussein in a tank with the noose still around his neck and a couple of large sculptures of men urinating/ejaculating.
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