Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (43.2010)

&2fA7ArA'A In this construction, white man stands
for production and the monster for destruction.
With this theoretical framework in mind, I wouid
argue that in Liane Lang's performances the rôles
are simply shifted, and the defeated beast cornes
to be equated with the Eastern European socialist
monuments, which were thus rendered into a cultural
hierarchy, of course at a quite low position.
Leťs get tested, what was the reaction of the
local artists' in the satellite countries, where it was
mostly perceived that the Soviet-type socialism had
been imposed on them and hadn't been their own
product, and, after all, what was at stäke? In the
hrst years of the transition, a sort of exorcism of
socialism was the foremost atdtude of art. As a very
effecdve method for coping with the trauma of being
oppressed for almost half a Century, Tamás StAuby


3. LAw I AAwřVziw A IL/A/e PrvrA, /LTyvc/, zWP. PAAu

covered the A in Budapest with
a white shroud, leaving holes just for the eyes, thus
transforming the statue from the symbol of occupa-
tion into the symbol of the Spirit of Freedom. In
the same way, David Černý converted the negative
message of a Soviet tank in Prague into its opposite
by covering it with pink paint. His statue (AD/? Æyg-
Ag Oad), hanging on the end of a pole, provided a
délicate metaphor of both the transitional nature and
the ambiguous and fragile posidon of memorials and
monuments of a lost empire in a changing society.
The honeymoon was quite short, and the eu-
phoria of freedom quickly evaporated as the so-

MITCHELL, W J. T.: The Violence of Public Art: Do the
Right Thing. In: Mv /A PAA Ed. W J. T. MIT-
CHELL. Chicago 1992, p. 75.

43