Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

The main façace wall

■ The main fapade wall with the itatuei of Marx. Cngeli and Lenin

central position of observation to discover that there is 'nothing' behind it. Standing in the middle of the barren wilderness, this 'Potemkin' wall of a portal is emblematic of the humbuggery that characterised the former regime. But in contrast to the temporary nature of the illusory buildings once raised by the Czar’s aristocratic general, what this well-constructed scenery is meant to suggest is the appearance of permanence itself.

The portal is a jolly-joker of sorts, using as it does the ubiquitous style of facades from the totalitarian past. These include its imperial proportions and the time-honoured features borrowed for the purposes of self-legitimation from the architecture of classical antiquity.

The facade is built of redbrick, the material dominating the architecture of the entire park. The pedestal of every statue here is made of the same red blocks, which is also the material to be used for the low wall (for financial reasons not to be built to this day) meant to arrange the statues standing between the opening facade and the end wall along three thematic promenades.

Of the three gates in the main facade wall only the two small ones (semi-legal ’back-doors') at the side can actually be used as the immovable wings of the main gate are permanently locked. The small gates are temporarily made of timber but were meant to be replaced with iron gates made of chains fastened to steel frames and welded to one another. With this dramatic texture, the planned-for gate would have been an allusion to the poet Gyula lllyés's famous line, proclaiming that ”... everybody is but a link in the chain". In fact the full name of the park, Statue Park - One Sentence about Tyranny, derives from a poem of

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