public art | Linnea West

One of the more recent public monuments in Budapest, this memorial to those who fought for freedom during the ’56 revolution was created in 2006 to commemorate the 50th anniversary. One of the memorable acts of the beginning of the spontaneous revolt against the Stalinist government was the pulling down of a statue of Joseph Stalin. Wikimapia (first time I’ve seen that) has a helpful entry on the monument and the history behind it here.

There was, perhaps not surprisingly, a fair amount of discussion about the sculpture’s design at the time. But I quite like the abstract steel and wood sculpture that fades into, or rises out of, City Park, and I certainly like it more than the idea of a traditional heroic sculpture featuring figures.

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.)