The Giant's Banquet - bus stop in Liberec (Czech Republic)
N 50° 46.261 E 015° 03.567
33U E 504192 N 5624363
Not so far of the magnificent Liberec' Town hall you can find one of the most surreal sites in the city, a city-bus stop. But this is not usual boring bus stop, but artwork of the "enfant terrible" of the Czech art world - David Cerný...
Waymark Code: WM6GAF
Location: Liberecký kraj, Czechia
Date Posted: 05/30/2009
Views: 161
In the center of Liberec, at the crossroads of a busy city life, a sculpture by the well-known Czech sculptor David Cerný has been installed. The artist had an unusual assignment: his task was an artistic rendition of a functional city element - a bus stop of the public transport of the city. It has resulted in an exceptional artistic object, which represents a form touching on sculpture, architecture and applied art.
Cerný’s Stop demonstrates a possibility of a new approach to the public space, showing how something as common as a bus stop may look. It is evidence of a shift in the development of art in comparison with the 19th and 20th centuries, when people were used to the fact that a sculpture was a figure or a decorative piece standing in the middle of a square or a park. David Cerný definitely does not belong among the artists who "do art for art’s sake". He does not create his works at his studio "for the stock" in order to exhibit it in a gallery after a while. The substantial thing for David Cerný is the place, context, situation, and that both in architectural and spatial terms and social, historical and political terms.
All which takes place at the Stop has a connection to the history as well as the present of the Liberec Region, and according to Cerný, bronze items symbolize the former Czech-German-Jewish community. The basic form of the Stop consists of a giant bronze table which serves as a roof, referring in terms of style to tables popular in this region in the late 19th century. A similar source of inspiration is represented by chairs for those waiting under the roof. On the laid table, there is a "German Kriegl" for beer, a Jewish candlestick which refers to the nearby place of a burnt synagogue, a vase modeled after a historical dish exhibited in the Liberec Museum, an animal-trapping plant in the vase which refers to the unique collection in the Liberec Botanical Garden, as well as a historical beer bottle which Cerný allegedly found somewhere in the Frýdlant Region. Next to the stop, there lies a "cast-away" platter with Liberec sausage. The center of the table is dominated by a bespectacled head pinned on a fork, which is supposed to be a riddle for us. The whole stop is completed by details such as a bronze trash basket in the form of a large can, a frame for a bus timetable as well as flies crawling on the tablecloth, carnivorous animals and knives...