July 21

How Art teaches History and World Perspective

Yesterday was a lazy morning, mostly from trying to catch up our readers with a very long post of Prague news. Our plan to head out by 11 was a bit derailed by the blog handoff at 10:30 to Steve whose daily job is proofing and adding photos.  But we finally locked the door a bit after noon with our first destination the Veletrinz Palace, aka the Trade Fair Building. This houses Prague's quite large modern and contemporary art .

  

The building has an interesting history starting when it was designed to be a four building modern complex devoted to commerce across four continents. But history intervened, only one building was built, and art was exhibited there until during WWII it became the way station to assemble Prague's Jews before deporting them to concentration camps. Back to trade use in the 50's and back to art in the 90's with an impressive six floor collection.

Alfons Mucha and the Slav Epic, the short story

Mucha, a much admired Czech artist, created twenty gargantuan paintings depicting his version of Slavic history. His style total Art Nouveau (think Job rolling papers art) , his color palette something like deep pastels viewed through frosted glass, and his humor or 'hook' of painting one person in almost every picture somewhere near the lower left corner staring intently at the viewer. This last noticed by Steve, not in any guidebooks or descriptions, but I heartily agreed. 

The Permanent collection was huge and impressive but moreover, it was a lesson in Czechoslovakia's place on the world stage back in the early 20th century. Embarrassingly, until yesterday I could not have named one Czech artist. Today, I still cannot pronounce the names beyond some easy first names like Jiri but I have at least seen their wonderful works.

The most fascinating part - seeing these artists who painted just like Picasso and Matisse and Gauguin and Cezanne and Munch and realizing they were part of the vibrant international art scene back then. They showed in Paris and world exhibitions, walking away with the gold and the silver.  And although they were part of the Impressionist and post-Impressionist movements, their paintings have a very slightly different look and a little bit of an edge. They seem to love painting and sculpting nudes in all shapes and sizes.  

  Marci, Lisa & Debbie

For us, this was a whole new world of art 'colored' by the unique culture and vistas and history of the old Czechoslovakia and the new Czech Republic. It made me realize the prominence and importance of this region back then, a total 180 from how I always thought of this city, this region or this country across the centuries. 

Amazing few hours at a museum not even listed in our Top Ten Prague book. We could have stayed all day but then....

We would not have gotten to take the long and lovely, totally relaxing, two hour, no commentary, cold beer drinking, sunny, breezy, slow boat ride on the Vlatava passing  the tourist spots like Kampa Island and the Frank Gehry buildings,

seen with new perspectives, and the everyday people places like river beaches full of sunbathers.

It ended just in time for a slow stroll to dinner at LaFinestra, a lovely Italian place with great food, perfect service, rustic bread and air conditioning AND fans going.

In addition to the menu and the daily specials, the waiters being forth huge platters of fresh fish or meats for you to choose from and no matter if you have seen this before, I doubt you have ever seen a meat plate as big as this one!

Steve started by choosing a really incredible Primativo from Puglia, super velvety and deep. It went great with:

The Amuse Bouche (does everyone have this now?)

Ripe piece of cantaloupe wrapped with Parma ham with pomegranite and passion fruit seeds.

STARTERS

Steve a chopped green asparagus salad with fava beans, peas, mango and parmesan.

Marci a white asparagus creamy soup with grilled octopus and burrata.

Intermezzo (not the wedding variety)

A small wine glass with what the waitress described as lemon sorbet but which we describe as a liquid lemon julius, delicious and jaw tingling.

Mains

Steve a linguini (homemade pasta) with shrimp tartar (they don't use the 'e' at the end of the word anywhere here), burrata and tomato sauce.

Marci a risotto with cheese and pepper topped with tuna tartar.

And luckily in between it all, I finally found a pair of shoes to replace the ones wearing out! Had to settle for red, which won't look too great when I wear my orange shirt, but they fit and they are comfy. We'll see how many miles I get out of these.