ARC Poster Exhibition, Budapest

ARC‘s exhibition of billboards at Ötvenhatosok square below the park asked artists to address the theme “…with good cheer and prosperity” from the line “God bless the Hungarians with good cheer and prosperity” from the national anthem.

Given the economy, it’s not surprising that many responses are not very happy (although I still have a lot I want to try to decipher through Google Translate). They do offer very interesting insight into the Hungarian mind and situation. The explanatory text also mentions how the free expression exemplified here would have been unimaginable 20 years ago.  (And if you, as an American like myself, might be tempted to dismiss this with an offhand ‘so what’, check out this article about current Czech politics and libel from The Economist.)

Message to God, Németh Adreinn, Farkas Júlia, Koncz Gabriella, Szabolc András, Sebestyén, Eszter

In memoriam TV Teddy, Peter Szabina

Dare to Dream, Megszűnt könyvtár

Mentality, Szabo Julcsi

Statue erection game, Kovács István Haykovats

Viktor Orbán Petting Zoo, Kovács Ambrus

Ki a magyar?

Welcome to the Hungary 8-bit version

 

The Green Fairy Resurrected

Absinthe, ah the decadent wonder of late nights and green fairies. Ah the miraculous release from life’s troubles. The scintillating pleasure of dissolving sugar in its neon depths.

Absinthe has saturated bar menus in Manhattan of late as the drink du jour. As far as I’m concerned, that jour is past.

However cool it may be that Van Gogh might have cut his earlobe off because of it, it doesn’t taste so delicious. You see the face of the woman in Picasso’s 1901 Absinthe Drinker? Nobody smiles in the paintings of absinthe drinkers. It’s because a vile green herbal liquor is sitting in front of them, reflecting a sickly pallor upon them. Absinthe was deliciously illegal and hard to obtain in Manhattan (which would make even toadstools a luxury good) but now it’s plentifully available. It tends to taste like anise, a flavor that I’ve always detested.

So what is there to be said in favor of this over-available, under-tasty liquor? Vintage poster art for one, and paintings like the one by Picasso for another. Artists seem to love portraying absinthe, whether its advertisements of smiling people and lascivous green lady fairies or paintings of sallow, dejected loners in bars. Could absinthe have been different then?