Day 25, Part 1: A Feast for the Eyes

Wednesday, June 6, 2012 

We learned tapestry weaving this morning from our Fibers teacher and a guest teacher. After the basic technique, we learned how to make patterns and shapes, then how to remove tapestries from the loom (we're using simple hand looms - just boards with nails in them) and how to attach a new set of warp threads. 

I've found that I enjoy weaving. There's something satisfying about it. It's like painting with yarn - but the warp and weft threads (I now know the difference) give it more built-in structure. Weaving, after all, is one of those mediums that were using pixels for thousands of years before the computer was invented. It also seems like it could be an almost infinitely flexible medium if you were familiar enough with it. 

My first tapestry, in progress. I finished it and promptly started coming up with ideas for a second one. I might end up doing a lot more of this… 

After class, we took the tram across the river to the National Gallery (Národní Galerie), Prague's major modern art museum, stopping on the way to look at more street repairs and a tiger moth on a lamp post.

The building itself is actually one of the least interesting ones I've seen in Prague...

It's really more of a backdrop to the giant sculptures in the front. 

Again, the museum was built around a main staircase. Here, though, there was an enormous central opening that cut through all the floors of the building, allowing you to look across and see art on the other side.

It was fun to look over, see something interesting on a lower floor, and then wander over there trying to find it. 

We started in a temporary exhibit - a series of paintings by Alfons Mucha, called the Slav Epic. They were monumental, gigantic, cinematic paintings. Each one was two stories high, most of them overflowing with crowds and festivals and saints and allegorical figures painted larger than life and in exquisite detail. We had a booklet that explained each painting - fortunately, since many of them were loaded with history and allegory five and six layers deep. They were painted with what must have been half an ocean of egg tempera. None of them used full black or full white; they were all in a series of subtle middle tones, ranked with the finest control I've ever seen in a painting to create a sense of depth with, in many cases, hardly any variation in value. They were like visions seen with half-lidded eyes, like the shining scenes of a dream, otherworldly and yet vivid enough that I felt I could have simply stepped into them. 

Photographs were forbidden in the gallery, which was just as well. No photograph could possibly have done the paintings justice. 

They were kept out of sight, apparently, during World War II; their sense of freedom and pride in the culture and history of the Slavic people was not something that those in charge wanted publicized at the time. (Mucha painted the last few paintings in the series fairly late in his life, to celebrate the independence that had taken so long to win. He died the year before the war broke out.) After the war, the paintings were split up for decades. This is the first time since then that the complete series has been exhibited together. 

Apparently, there is discussion of giving it a permanent space somewhere in Prague. I hope it gets one. 

After far too short a time, we moved on to the rest of the museum. I kept up with the group fairly well until we got to the galleries of early 20th century painting. There, there were more František Kupka paintings, a panoramic mural by Alfons Mucha that spanned nearly an entire wall (still small in comparison to the Epic), some beautiful work by Czech Impressionist painters… 

After a while, the teacher came back, found me wandering dreamily from painting to elegant painting, and brought me down a few floors to make sure I saw some of the more modern art as well before the group got too far ahead and lost me altogether. 

I'm not posting photographs of the paintings, since those never turn out well. I did make a list of the names of my favorite painters (aside from the ones listed above); however, I have misplaced it since. I'll add them to this post if I find them again. 

In addition to paintings and sculptures, the modern section of the museum had jewelry...

Tiles and metalwork...

Architectural models...

Glasswork ranging from the elegant to the spectacular...

A surprising amount of industrial design (particularly appliances shown in various World Expositions)...

And a lot of the quiet, subtly playful pieces that are some of my favorite things in modern art.

Fastener II, by Běla Kolářová: a button made of buttons.

One of a series of... I'm not sure what to call them. Texture paintings? They had no color variation to speak of - just elaborate, marbled, metallic surfaces. Beautiful work.

 Destroyed Music, by Milan Knížák.

I particularly liked the record that had had guitar strings nailed across it. Ruined for one type of music, altered for another...

A whole platform full of clocks, second hands only, almost - but not quite - ticking to the same beat. The sound of them all was incredible.

Ouch.

This is not a camera problem - the whole room, floor to ceiling, was painted in this screaming yellow. The most unsettling art in the museum was in here. I didn't photograph the other scuptures.

Table - Non-Table, also by Milan Knížák. 

I stayed in the Gallery, wandering from room to room, until nearly closing time. I could have stayed for a week.