Meditations on the 1956 Monument in Budapest
Meditations on the 1956 Monument in Budapest

Summary/Abstract: As it so happens, due to the circumstances of my life at the moment I drive almost daily down Dózsa György street, one of the main avenues of Budapest. I have therefore driven past the monument built in 2006 in commemoration of the Revolution of 1956 several hundreds of times. Rarely have I taken much notice of it, and when it happened to catch my eye, I usually just cast a scornful glance at the forest of rusty iron columns that are gradually more densely packed as they approach a triangular wedge of solid walls piercing the road. Even without taking into consideration the political circumstances of the construction of the monument (which was erected under a government led by the Socialist Party, the Prime Minister of which was justifiably regarded not as an heir to the Revolution, but rather as a successor to those who were complicit in its suppression), I felt a strong antipathy to it. It struck me as a typical work of provocatively unappealing art that expressed some arbitrary notion of the artist, a notion probably not entirely clear to the artist himself.

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