Art that no one understands

The heroes of this book are cleaners, police officers and prostitutes. Presidents, dictators and revolutionaries. And, of course, artists too. Here you will find artefacts that have been burnt, cut up, drowned or eaten. Paintings created by a donkey, an excavator or a motorcycle. Art critic Jan H. Vitvar invites the reader on an entertaining and adventurous journey through the history of visual culture, showing that our understanding of art is often based on fatal misunderstanding. A sponsor of London's Tate Britain couldn't bear to look at an unmade bed at the Turner Prize finalists' exhibition and decided to make it. In fact, it was a conceptual work by Tracey Emin. When the artist unmade her bed again, complete with discarded knickers and a used condom, she won the competition. Roman Týc, a member of the Czech group Ztohoven, went to prison for a month because he insisted that the little figures in unusual poses on traffic lights were art. History is full of countless cases where our conventional perceptions have clashed sharply with artistic expression. However, the curious situations that usually arise in such cases have enormous value. They offer a tear in the curtain of meaning, through which we can look anew not only at art, but at ourselves.