Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
The terminal wall
On our way back it's worth considering what may have become of all those hundreds of other political monuments that have been cleared away all over the country. These chequered stories are not unknown. At best, the more interesting items have been deposited in local-history collections or museum storerooms. With allegorical works the allocation of new functions has become a widespread practice. Statues made of bronze have often fallen victim to vandals and thieves of non-ferrous metals. There have been many cases of politically motivated vandalism, too: reliefs of a local significance have been knocked off and plaques have been smashed to pieces. Several works were severely damaged while being toppled or removed without expertise. And then there are those which have simply been forgotten and now stand gathering dust in a weedy corner of a park somewhere. Hódmezővásárhely is a rare exception in that statues and plaques removed from the public spaces of the town have been gathered into a local history exhibition patterned on the Statue Park of Budapest. When the Iron Curtain came down, keen interest was shown by Westerners in the sculptural products of eastern Europe. Several statues of Stalin, Lenin and other notables, which had become dispensable locally, were bought up by collectors in western Europe and the USA. There is a small collection of statues, for example, in Gundelfingen, Bavaria, while the statue park of Moscow can be found in a central park, where sculptures removed from the city are on display together with works made by contemporary artists. The only sister institution abroad comparable in significance to the Statue Park of Budapest can be found in Lithuania. Here, in the vicinity of Druskininkai, a collection called Grutas Park was opened in 2001. Here can be found sixty monuments exiled from the public spaces of Lithuania and set up in a 'theme park’ imitating a Soviet prison camp, complete with barbed-wire fences and watch-towers. The park, which mixes Disneyland-style effects with the bitter mementoes of the Gulag, has been found rather grotesque by those who do not believe that consumerism and historical confrontation mix well. What is missing from the Lithuanian exhibition is a well-conceived architectonic design, that aesthetic generosity of allowing these symbols devoid of legitimation and territory to communicate with the surrounding space, and the overall dignity of negotiating the thematic concerns at hand, both of which have been the key to the success of the park in Budapest. "The Statue Park is an issue of historical signifiacance; meanwhile, the architectural articulation of its delicate and complex theme was a task of utmost significance, not to be approached without the appropriate circumspection and creative responsibnility. Composed by 53
