From Tribute to Tradition: The Changing Face of Prague's Lennon Wall
At the beginning of 1990, the poster boards were removed, under which the visible remains of the beginning of the tradition of annual meetings on Kampa had been "archaeologically" preserved for almost ten years: the symbolic tombstone of John Lennon, inscriptions and drawings from December 1981. These were quickly supplemented by several new pictures and inscriptions, many of them in a foreign language.
In the 1990s, people started drinking alcohol at rallies. During the 1980s, no one would have thought of it. At most, there was someone with a cigarette, but even that seemed inappropriate to people. A meeting at Lennon's Wall was like a holiday or a spiritual thing for them.
In 1990, a huge portrait of John Lennon was painted on the Lennon Wall by the activist and artist Mario Torero, a Chilean mural artist from San Diego who was then a long-term resident of Prague. It was the first non-anonymous artwork on Prague's Lennon Wall, but thanks to promotional tourist items, it was also a symbol of the wall itself, especially for foreign visitors.
Accelerating globalization after 1989 transformed the appearance of the Prague Lennon Wall as well as the cultural and social expressions that were initially associated with it. General disputes about its meaning and significance, the onslaught of the tourist industry, and frequent commercialization led to the promotion of a simplified conception of the Lennon Wall, within which the Wall and its tradition were presented to both domestic and foreign publics.
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In the late 1990s, the Knights of Malta decided to repair the dilapidated Lennon Wall. Although the Prague Institute of Historical Preservation wanted it to remain white and covered with ivy so as not to encourage vandals to spray it, the owners decided otherwise. In agreement with the Club, they wanted to somehow preserve the freedom of expression that the Lennon Wall has always symbolized. The painter František Flašar then painted Lennon's portrait on the reconstructed Wall. It was to be accompanied by a multilingual sign asking people to draw only flowers on the Wall.
Source: BLAŽEK, Petr; LAUBE, Roman; POSPÍŠIL, Filip. Lennonova zeď v Praze: Studie, rozhovory, dokumenty. Praha: Muzeum paměti XX. století, 2020. 536 s. ISBN 978-80-907989-0-8.
