Aliens and Herons

This book examines the broad phenomenon of sculpture in the public space (also referred to as monumental art) in Czechoslovakia during the Normalisation period. This subject encompasses not just isolated monuments and memorials the public space but also sculptural and relief ornamentation on architectural works – governmental buildings, schools, hospitals, large businesses, factories. To quote the title of one chapter, this is sculpture that belongs to no one. In totalitarian Czechoslovakia the state held sole dominion over the public space and its aesthetic and ideological tone. Like civil engineering projects even artistic ornamentation of architecture was subject to central planning and budgets for new buildings had to include specific sums for works of art. Art thus became part of the state’s bureaucratic machinery. Public areas were literally flooded with sculptural works, varying widely in quality and standards, and almost every artist who lived through that period contributed at some point to the creation of public statuary. This was a phenomenon unparalleled outside the totalitarian state. It came to end shortly after 1989 and it is almost a wonder how little interest we show in this extensive collection of production today. Out of a love for art and an interest in a period not personally experienced, various private and civic initiatives have emerged that are trying to protect sculpture in the public space and analyse the circumstances in which they originated. The finding is that the situation was never black and white, and the conditions, motives, and stories of people and their works vary and intertwine.
This book contains approximately 500 selected works of sculpture created in the public space – some still around, others removed – and presents them as a representative sample of the thousand such works that were created between 1968 and 1992. The book is published as a Czech-English bilingual edition.