EASTERN EUROPE

Monument To Those Who Were Driven Mad

One of the most bizarre works of art I have ever seen was in Craiova on North Titulescu Street near the Botanical Gardens. I was visiting there a few months ago as a visiting artist at the University of Craiova as a guest of one of Romania’s most controversial artists, Bogdan Tepeneag.

Right there in the middle of town, in a bed of pink tulips and under the shadow of a nondescript colony of apartment buildings was the Monument To Those Who Were Driven Mad. I had forgotten my camera in my hotel room so I borrowed a set of watercolors and a scrap of paper from a young (and very cute) art student who happened to be sitting on a stone bench nearby. I hastily scratched out the drawing above.

I subsequently learned that these types of monuments are quite common around the country. In Oradea, for example, there is a granite public sculpture called Unfinished Novel Memorial and in Arad there is a fountain designed by none other than the great Dumitrica called Atonement For Sins Yet Committed.