Nov 062009
Are you familiar with the CowParade? You probably are if you live or visited (at the right moment) one of the over 50 cities in which it was staged. According to their web page, it has been one of the most successful public art events in the world. I personally caught them in New York City in 2000 and Florence in 2005. Bucharest was the site of the CowParade in the summer of 2005, when local and international artists painted the fiberglass cows that were displayed all over the city. After the closing of the event the cows were sold in an auction and the money went to charity. Some of cows that were auctioned were redisplayed for the public to see, like the one in today’s photo which I photographed on Calea Dorobanţi.
How do they get them to stand still while they are being painted?
🙂 It's a trick that's being passed on from generation to generation.
MOOOOOOOOO! Fun and artsy sculpture! Great urban snap!
I visited Zurich when they started the whole trend with cows in 1998. Saarbrücken, where I currently live, did the same thing with lions in 1999. There is a book with a hundred of these lions (Berchtold, Herbert / In Saarbrücken sind die Löwen los!) and a few a still around on the streets. I always meant to put one or two on my blog.
I have seen horses painted like this, but I missed the cows! This one is painted very well!
Someone on the Romanian version of the blog enlightened me as to what the "theme" of the cow is. Apparently the cow is painted with the flags of the EU countries. First comes France, then Germany, Italy etc. Romania comes somewhere near the tail and is not visible from this angle.
AB: I would like to see some of those lions.
Right! How could we have missed all those flags, mine included…
Very cool idea! Reminds me a bit of the Berlin buddy bears that were exhibited all over the world.