Wolf Vostell

Hradschin Prag

1969

Werk - Hradschin Prag
Artist / Artist group
Wolf Vostell
Title
Hradschin Prag
Year
1969
Edition / Serial number
100
Copy Number
5
Category
print, collage, Screen print
Material / Technique
color silkscreen on bristol board
Dimensions / Duration
50 x 70,5 cm
Collection
ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe
Description

A trained photolithographer, Wolf Vostell used various graphic techniques in a virtuoso manner and created numerous serigraphs based on photomontages. In the case of Hradschin Prag [Hradčany Prague], an oversized CRT TV sits atop Prague’s Hradčany Castle Hill, while at the foot of the hill the Vltava river flows under the Charles Bridge. With this surreal object graphic, for which Vostell used a postcard motif of Prague, Vostell comments on a possible reality, not without sarcasm: the monumental TV set becomes a building with a gigantic projection screen. Vostell had the idea that such screens could be used to present artworks or news to the public in 1971 with his collage Autobahnkreuz TV [Highway Interchange TV], in which he placed two oversized televisions at a freeway interchange. Vostell’s work exemplifies the contradictory effect of the emerging television culture on artists. Equally attracted and repelled by the social and aesthetic power of television, Vostell engaged intensively with the new medium from the 1950s onward, in which disruption of the television’s function or even its destruction were among the central motifs.

Author: Julia Ihls

About the artist/s