Ah yes, the Pink Tank. It’s one of the foremost icons recognizable to anyone interested in Czechoslovakia’s throwing-off of Soviet rule in the 1989 wave of Eastern European revolutions. True, the events that made this war-chariot famous (by making it pink) did not happen until about a year-and-a-half after the actual Velvet Revolution, but they unquestionably represented a deliberate snub to the Russians.

We’ve had occasion before on this blog to discuss the maverick Czech artist, David Černý, whose rosy re-christening of the Russian IS-2 tank that used to stand on Soviet Tankers’ Square in Prague made him famous, but that was in the context of one of his later (but just as wacky) artistic works. Anyway, the focus now is on the tank itself: whatever became of it? Lidové noviny provides the answer, via the Czech Twitter-news service Zpravy:

Lidovky: Růžový tank přebarvíme, plánují ruští kozáci: http://t.co/oazjtJzQ

October 24, 2011 4:51 pm via twitterfeedReplyRetweetFavorite

@Zpravy

Zpravy

“The pink tank we will paint another color, plan some Russian cossacks.” Yes, citizens of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk (in Siberia, just east of the Urals) – including members of the “Cossack Tank Brigade” stationed there – are taking up a collection to re-paint it to another “special” color, presumably closer to the green of its original military purpose. They have also paid for a special plaque, listing WWII veterans’ names from the Chelyabinsk area, that they are asking the Czech government to place in front of that tank. It’s no longer at the square (now known as Kinsky Square), by the way – it was moved to become part of the collection of Prague’s Military Museum, and a series of six photos accompanying the article show the tank (still pink, and with what looks like a snorkel on top lending it a certain priapic aspect) being moved across the Vltava River that bisects the Czech capital.

David Černý, by the way, has no problem with any of this. His only question is whether the Chelyabinsk cossacks would like to hire him to re-paint the tank, or whether they’re just going to send some other Russian artist of their choice to Prague to do the job. Does he really need the money – or was he joking?

The funniest sort of scandal erupted this past week in Brussels, in connection with the brand-new (and first-time) Czech presidency of the European Union. Have you heard of this? The New York Times has its account here. It had to do with a huge sculpture that the Czech government commissioned for erection at the building that houses the European Council, one that – as you would expect – was supposed to reflect in some way upon on the EU and its member-states. But the Czechs made a key mistake in entrusting the task to the (Czech) artist David Černý. As the sculpture was set up over the weekend, for completion by Monday, it soon became clear that there was something very wrong; by the time the dedication ceremony was supposed to happen on Thursday, yesterday (and it did), controversy was flying thick and fast.

What were the Czech authorities in charge of EU relations thinking? Černý, after all (whose last name simply means “black”), has always been notorious, it’s accurate to say, rather than just “famous” within the Czech cultural world, bursting onto that scene in 1991 by painting the tank constituting a Soviet war-memorial in Prague a shocking pink color in one daring night-time raid. Although he was briefly arrested for that, that pink tank became a metaphor for the wacky, world-turned-upside down ambiance of the Czech Republic, and Prague in particular, in the years immediately after the 1989 “Velvet Revolution.” Barely pausing to catch his breath, Černý went on to produce a series of additional eye-catching works of sculpture, a few of which you can appreciate on his Wikipedia page. Those “tower babies,” for example: you can pick them out crawling all over the gigantic TV tower, itself located in the Prague 3 district, from much of the rest of the city. And that “riding a dead horse” statue is mighty big and impressive in its own right – look for it at the internal shopping-and-movie-theater-area located within the Lucerna building at the corner of Wenceslas Square and Vodičkova Street (a magnificent building once owned by Václav Havel himself, built by his father – also named Václav Havel). (more…)