The Art of Missing Someone, and a Museum Visit

1 &2. Local graffiti, 3. Nearly empty chapel, 4. Spring at Mamacoffee, 5. Tactile exhibit, 6. Door from chapel, Center. Master of Theodoricus paintings*

Friday, Caroline waved farewell, swung backpack onto shoulder, climbed up bus steps, and headed for the country. As we waved goodbye to her through the bus's tinted windows, I did a quick mental calendar check, because surely she’s still only five. Why did it feel like she should be carrying a guitar and wearing sunglasses behind those dark windows, off to see America. And why were we crying when she’d be back in a week and anyway, we’d all been looking forward to her kindergarten camp since Christmas?

Imponderables. I moped a bit and then threw myself into a spreadsheet so I wouldn’t think for the rest of the day. By the time Will came home from work I was so deep in numbers it took me until the next morning’s coffee to recover my equanimity. We spent Saturday the way we usually do, shopping at our local stores, strolling by mamacoffee for an espresso, pushing the stroller through the park to check out the latest flowers, and keeping my camera ready for any new additions to our local graffiti.

This Saturday though, the green grocers wanted to know if we’d heard anything from the children yet (their daughter and Caroline were bus buddies). The Greek store cashier asked where the little holčicka was and the drug store cashier volunteered that maybe the weather was on its way to getting warm after all. We walked home and I couldn’t help thinking that big cities are full of little villages and I was happy right in the middle of ours, even if it took C heading to camp to remind me.

The next day, still getting used to the quietness of space without Caroline, we decided to do what we hadn’t had a chance to do for nearly six years - visit a museum undisturbed.

Or at least nearly. We lulled James to sleep strolling across the sway and rattle of cobblestone, and arrived at the Convent of St. Agnes happy to have won sixty minutes of quiet. We spent a few of those minutes wandering around the ground floor looking for pictures, lost in a maze of corridors, convincing ourselves that the art collection must have moved. We found empty chapels and a tactile exhibit for the blind (complete with a braille typewriter for leaving notes), we circled the gardens again, and just as we were about to leave, discovered the staircase up to the galleries.

The Convent houses the Czech National Gallery’s medieval art collection, beginning the exhibition with a wood carving from the very early 1200s, and ending it with prints from the mid 1500s. Sometimes, in an art museum that covers the medieval to modern, I’m happy to stroll past the rooms of madonnas and saints to get to the renaissance. But that morning, with a sleeping stroller, and a collection dedicated to the Gothic, we slowed down and took the time to look.

We were the only visitors, the guards decided we were harmless, and we were free of children, so we spent the rest of our hour arguing all we wanted: about the goldfinch in the madonna portraits (from the apocrypha or not?), the Theodoricus blank books and their bindings, the apostles and just who might be Judas, and the aptness of poor Catherine clutching her wheel. We had a deliciously nerdy time, and James slept until the last gallery.

When he woke, he wanted to be carried, and his wiggling turned the paintings back into art to rush by. It was time to go. We stopped to pick up a book to try to solve a few of our morning debates, and headed home.

And if you’re wondering how Caroline is doing, the latest news from this morning is that she hasn’t cried one bit, she can’t wait to ride the horses today and she’s been a perfect milá, or dear. Pshew.

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Goldfinch – the jury is still out on this, Will thinks they are related to the birds in the apocrypha which the infant Jesus brought to life from mud. The National Gallery guidebook suggests the association of goldfinch with thistle bushes, thistles representing the crucifixion, the goldfinch thus foreshadowing the poor babe’s later fate. My guess is that it could be a combination of the two, depending upon where the tradition started from and if that group of artists even had access to the apocrypha books.

Blank books – it’s pretty unusual to see blank manuscripts already bound, as most medieval manuscripts would be prepped by assembling parchment into folios, scoring the skins for neatness, writing and illuminating the text, and then binding the whole. My vote is a tabula rasa motif, but Will is not biting.

*Master of Theodoricus paintings from the Virtual walk through of the gallery. Understandably, no cameras are allowed in the actual exhibition.

Coffee doodles

Will starts his day brewing a pot of coffee in our moka machine. We have two - a 3 cup and a 1. When we go on vacation we often take the largest, just in case coffee is in short supply. Will uses the small for his early morning brew, and it is blackened with use.

I love the 1930s design of these machines, and thought of the pot as the perfect doodle subject after our visit to the Josef Lada exhibit at Obecni Dum (Municipal House) today. Josef Lada's line drawings are inspirational, to say the least, and the thirties were prime time for him. I can just imagine him having a cup of coffee from one of these, carefully poured and steaming.

Bruegel in the Czech Republic

W. H. Auden introduced Bruegel to me in high school. I copied out Auden's poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts,“ and taped it to the inside cover of a notebook, above a copy of one of the Pietr Bruegel (the Elder) paintings mentioned in the poem - The Fall of Icarus. The copy was a Xerox, and hard to make out, but it gave me the feeling that I knew a little bit about what Auden was talking about, a dark story transposed from myth into painting into poetry again.

A few years later, my sister and I flew to Europe for the first time, traveling with one great-uncle to visit another. We spent a day at the museum in the poem, the Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, in Brussels. The Institution, my great uncles call it, as it was there that my great-aunt spent her career as an art historian, studying and writing about the Early Flemish Primitives. It was there too that I found Icarus, falling from the sky. After so much anticipation, actually seeing the painting was a disappointment. It was much smaller than I imagined and guarded by heavy glass that reflected the ceiling lights so badly you had to approach it from the side, not straight on. I replaced my grimy photocopy with a postcard. I could just make out Icarus‘ legs kicking as they disappeared into the sea. The color was beautiful.

When we first moved to Prague, we planned a trip to Vienna to visit the Kunsthistorische Muzeum. My great-uncle, who likes Bruegel even more than I do, gave me a lecture about the Kunsthistorische Bruegels before we left on our trip. “At least find the Children’s Games, Massacre of the Innocents and the three season paintings,“ he said. “Buy calendars.“ I knew what he meant. Art calendars come sturdily wrapped, with bigger pictures than in a book or on a postcard, and 12 images for almost the price of one poster. And because they are European style, the dates are so small you can easily ignore them when your year is up. It is a great way to gather a favorite artist's works all in once place, big enough to really see the detail, and without a binding to worry about either.

I bought calendars. And this time thought the Bruegels in their musuem setting gorgeous. I especially loved Bruegel's winter scene - Hunters in the Snow - with its flat, almost asian style, the contrast between the snow and the sky and ice, the cheerful curl of the dog tails.

If you do a Google search on Bruegel and his six seasonal paintings, you’ll see that three of the six are in Vienna, one hangs in the Metropolitan, and one is missing. That is five. The sixth is in the Czech Republic. It lives in a chateau outside of Prague, north towards Dresden.* The chateau (or zamek in Czech) is called Nelahozeves and it is just along the Vltava river, in a small town of the same name - incidentally the same town Antonin Dvorak lived in most of his life, just below the chateau walls.

The chateau is owned by the Roudnice branch of the Lobkowicz family and by itself is a fine place to visit, especially if you like Renaissance architecture. But what makes it different from the hundreds of castles in the Czech Republic is its collection of art and musical instruments. It is the largest private art collection in the Czech Republic, art once scattered across many properties owned by the Lobkowiczs but now gathered together under one roof. The collection includes a Rubens and a Velasquez, and some quite excellent and interesting portraits (Hapsburg family members can mostly not be called beautiful). What really stands out as the jewel of the show, though, is decidedly the Bruegel.

It is a big painting, covering nearly the span of one wall, and the details are what makes it nifty to visit. While I still prefer Hunters in the Snow for its colors and its design, there are more people to get a good glimpse of in Haymaking, and each is doing something a little different from his neighbor. Then too, it's summertime and everyone, even at work, seems more relaxed than in the winter painting. Standing in front of the painting, in its stone room in Nela, I let the design give me a tour, following the characters down the lane, through the broken line of the houses to the hill in the very far distance. Then our real tour guide called us into the next room. I bought a postcard, the colors are beautiful. But I'm looking forward to going to back soon so I can revisit the original.

* The Bruegel, and most of the paintings formally housed in Nela, have since been moved to the Lobkowicz palace next to the castle.


(photo copyright to each painting's museum)

A Prague design tour: from art nouveau to cubism

Christmas is at our house this year! Though, I should really say our flat, or our three point five rooms. The thought of entertaining 12 people for a week at Christmas is slightly daunting, to be sure, so I’ve decided to get organized and forego my usual lackadaisical tour guide approach (here is a map marked XYZ, take the tram to the castle - X, roll down the hill and you’ll hit the Charles Bridge - Y, here’s our house - Z, see you in time for dinner!)

This time I've decided to think thematically, to try to come up with new routes around the city that bypass the end of the alphabet etched in red on all of our maps. Not that I'm throwing away the castle-roll-down-the-hill tour but I’m adding technical museums and architecture, sports centers and opera. Watch this space as new letters get added to the map each week.

The first tour (beyond the castle):

The Mucha museum
Just off one of Prague’s busiest shopping streets, the Mucha museum is a tiny space dominated by the oversize work of Alfons Mucha, the artist who founded the Art Nouveau movement (originally called Le style Mucha) in Paris in the mid 1890s. By spending even an hour here, you’ll exit the museum with a new perspective and understanding on a good slice of the design around Prague - from Czech money to many of the buildings built during a time of great construction in Prague, 1900 to 1910. I recommend watching the video while you're there.
Mucha museum website
Panská 7, Prague 1. Open daily 10:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Obecní Dům, or the Municipal House
A massive highlight of Art Nouveau architecture in Prague, the Obecní Dům is located just down the road from the Mucha museum. Completed in 1912, it was the last of the big Prague Art Nouveau projects, and Mucha had a hand in many of its murals. I recommend viewing it from both outside and in as the Obecní Dům is a beautiful example of design applied to everything from bathroom tiles to building facades.
Municipal House website
nám. Republiky 5, Prague 1. Open daily 10:00 to 6:00 p.m.

The House of the Black Madonna, the Museum of Czech Cubist Art
Built the same year the Obecní Dům was completed, in 1912, the House of the Black Madonna not only demonstrates cubist architecture (apparently an architectural style unique to the Czech Republic) but hosts art by Czech Cubists. It is part of the National Gallery in Prague system.
More information on the House of the Black Madonna
Celetná 34, Prague 1. Open daily except Mondays 10 to 6 p.m.

Grand Café Orient, at the House of the Black Madonna
Recently reopened and reconstructed to exactly match the plan of the original cafe, completed at the same time as the house, the Café is a beautiful place to take a break and have some coffee. Reviewers recommend the latte.
Celetná 34, Prague 1. Open daily 9 a.m.–10 p.m.

Filed under: Prague architecture tour

Do you surf art museum web sites? I’ve been a dabbler for years, since I first discovered the National Gallery of Art museum site (U.S. NGA), and the Guggenheim. Then I'd cruise to museum sites to check out the design, look up a picture I'd read about, catch exhibition info. But it wasn’t until recently that I found a museum site really worth serious surfing and download time, something that could almost equal the experience of being there.

The Rijks Museum changed my mind. It's in Amsterdam, and the home of "Night Watch" and several Vermeers, so justly well known in its brick and mortar state. It isn't a museum with the budget of the NGA though, so when I found the website I was mightly impressed by what they'd put together. Check the Rijks out and let me know if you aren’t blown away by the fabulous design and then by the close ups of the opening images and the master collection.

In some cases the images preserved online are bigger than the actual canvas (especially the Vermeers), letting you see the details of the brush strokes. The quality of the print is certainly better than reproductions in books, and, because of the even illumination of a computer screen, probably better than most viewings in real life. I can gaze as long as I want, unbothered by crowds, gallery hours and guards that froth if you get within two feet of their treasure (sadly, understandably so if you consider how many pieces of art have been stolen or destroyed in the past few years while in public galleries).

I can only equate the novelty of the experience to what it must have been like to listen to the first magnetic tape recordings of music, during the forties. That’s when recorded sound quality leaped ahead so quickly people could be confused whether they were listening to live music or recordings. Gramophones had always added a certain buzz. It was hard to even pick up the intonations of, say, a harpsichord. Most voice, string instruments and pianos -while audible - still sounded much better in person. With the advent of the Magnetophon though, everything changed. Listeners could feel that the best seat in the concert hall was their armchair, at home comfily in front of the fire. Could it be that online art museums will one day also fulfill that function for the art world?

For more on the magnetophone and the sea change in music in the early 20th century due to the recording industry, check out this recent New Yorker article.