David Cerny Da mai vechi, din 2009

I See a Red Door and I Want it Painted Cerny

in reason.com

by Matt Welch

The New York Times this weekend ran a fun little profile of Czech art-prankster David Černý, the guy who did that great fake group-EU sculpture that got the Czechs in so much hot water when they held the EU presidency for six months. Excerpt:

He has painted a Soviet tank pink, depicted Prague's heroic 10th-century King Wenceslas riding a dead, upside down horse and lampooned the incendiary, right-wing Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, by displaying a caricature of him inside a giant fiberglass anus.

"David Cerny is one of the region's leading cultural and political satirists and one of a handful of Eastern European artists who have achieved global stature," says Jan Vitvar, culture editor of Respekt, the Czech political weekly. "Some Czechs would prefer

him to be grayer, more contemplative and behave less like a rock star, but no one can ignore him." [...]