Provocative art: Rebel sculptor gives Czech president the finger ahead of polls

Published time: October 22, 2013 15:57

Workers anchor a boat bearing an installation work by Czech visual artist David Cerny in front of the Prague Castle in Prague October 21, 2013. (Reuters/David W Cerny)

A controversial Czech artist known for his anti-communist stance has sent a very clear message to the republic’s president ahead of parliamentary polls by installing a giant purple hand with a raised middle finger on Prague’s main river.

David Cerny, 45, placed his 10-meter statue of the hand making an obscene gesture on a pontoon boat on the Vltava River on Monday. The huge plastic sculpture is floating near the famous Charles Bridge and is pointed at the Prague Castle – the seat of leftist President Milos Zeman.

This unusual stunt comes only four days before Czech snap parliamentary elections, which may bring the Communist Party a share of indirect power for the first time since the Velvet Revolution ousted it in 1989. Zeman favors a post-election plan by the leftist Social Democrats to form a minority government with implicit support from Communists.

“This finger is aimed straight at the castle politics,” Cerny told the New York Times. “After 23 years, I am horrified at the prospect of the Communists returning to power and of Zeman helping them to do so.”

During the campaign ahead of January presidential elections, Cerny helped Zeman’s rival, charismatic aristocrat Karel Schwarzenberg of the Top 09 rightist party, who came second in the polls.

“Our president is just another reason not to live in the Czech Republic,” the artist told The Prague Post in September. “The political system here is not good, most people know that.”

Zeman was on a visit to Ukraine when the controversial installation was mounted. Through his spokesperson he declined to comment on the statue that he had not seen, Czech media reported.

Cerny is known for being provocative in his art. The floating hand is also not the first time that he has flipped the bird to make his point.

The artist first gained wide attention in 1991 when he got arrested after painting pink a monument to the Soviet tank – commemorating the liberation of Czechoslovakia by the Red Army in 1945 – and placing a raised middle finger on top of it. 

Cerny also came up with kind of a logo of a red hand, giving the finger with an obscene slogan written beneath it, referring to the Czech Communist Party. The offending finger was given even more prominence after the Rolling Stone’s Keith Richards wore a T-shirt with the logo on it on stage in 2003.

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Provocative art: Rebel sculptor gives Czech president the finger ahead of polls

Jaden Smith Has His Finger on the Pulse of Modern Education

Perhaps you heard the other day that Jaden Smith, son of actor Will Smith, sent out a tweet that stirred up a hornets nest of criticism. Take a peek:

“School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth.”

He continued:

“If Everybody In The World Dropped Out Of School We Would Have A Much More Intelligent Society.”

Jaden Smith is 15 years old, and if we take the comments at face-value (who didn’t hate school at that age?), they are easy to dismiss. But let’s ignore face-value for a moment and assume he knows exactly what he’s talking about. He has, apparently, reached the same conclusion many of us have who suffered through public school, who found that when we questioned authority, were told we were behaving inappropriately. When I say “question authority” I don’t mean we were doing anything particularly “wrong” in the usual sense. Maybe we were writing conservative editorials in the school paper, or writing essays in English class that went against the established narrative. Maybe we wrote that popular culture and the growing trend of “if it’s true for you, you shouldn’t be judged” was corroding our nation. Maybe we refused to write about something else, even when enough teachers complained to the point the principle invited you into her office for a chat.

Of course, you can’t be given detention or expelled because you wrote something teachers disagree with, especially since they had no cause for doing so (you didn’t use profanity, didn’t attack a religious or ethnic group, etc.). The only thing you did wrong was not write what they were telling you to write. Why the fuss? Because other students were reading what you wrote, especially the school paper editorials, and maybe there was a danger that others would convert to your way of thinking.

One reaction to Jaden Smith’s tweet pretty much sums up all of the responses I looked up: “He has such a huge group of fans that really look up to him,” Us Weekly reporter Jennifer Peros told ABC News. “So this isn’t really the example you should really be setting.”

Exactly. Heaven forbid that young people actually question what so-called authorities tell them.

Now, we do need basic education. No question about that. But after so many “they never taught me that in school” moments as an adult, I have come to realize that school really wasn’t there to teach me anything except conformity. And when I didn’t conform, I wound up having to explain myself to an authority figure who thought she knew better, yet was in the untenable position of being an educator telling me not to think and explore other ideas.

If you can break away from the collective group-think of modern education, as Jaden Smith suggests, you might actually stand a chance of truly learning something.

And what drives Jaden Smith’s point home is a new text book that, basically, rewrites the entire Constitution, and is aimed at “advance history” students. Brainwashing 101.

We used to say, “Don’t trust anybody over 30,” which was fine until one turned 30. And then it became, “Don’t trust anybody.” Especially teachers.

Teachers are the new sacred cows. They are not to be criticized in any way and if you do, you are tarred and feathered. I have little respect for a collective industry that follows progressive policies and passes those policies onto kids in the name of “education.” I know many teachers, and they are good people. I like dating teachers because when you do something wrong, they make you do it over again. But the good ones are a drop in the bucket compared to the juggernaut of the educational industry that has a death-grip on your kids’ necks.

You know what I’ve also learned after 38 years on God’s green earth?

Sacred cows make the best burgers.

BRIAN DRAKE is a broadcaster in California and the author of The Rogue Gentleman, a thriller in the tradition of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor. Follow him on Twitter.

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Jaden Smith Has His Finger on the Pulse of Modern Education