Art, Music and Blogging in Prague
St Giles Church, Prague Old Town
Tim Reviews High Art in Prague:
National Art Museum - Veletržní Palác
A Baroque Concert in Church of St Giles (Kostel sv. Jiljí)
Morning Motivations
Did I tell you my hotel does breakfast thrown into the room price? So no matter how hungover I was from my comedy club / Alpha move excesses, there was no way I was going to miss this eat-all-you-can buffet. I piled the plate high with Czech sausages, refilled the coffee and drank copious juice. Heavy but satiated, I repaired straight back to bed. How did I get in this state? What happened the previous evening?
Tossing and turning as bright, jigsawing light escaped through my hastily pulled curtains, I realised this self-pity was a fucking criminal waste of time. Get your lazy arse up Tim and go and do something! Thus inspired, I chose art. Because, why not? I’m cultured. Tick. Here. Tick. Cultured and here. Tick-tock. Let’s go to an art gallery and gaze at some pictures.
Retrieving my shorts from where I’d thrown them at 2.30am, I finally made it out of the hotel and caught the 17 tram off to, well even I can’t remember. Somewhere in one of Prague’s non-touristy areas, anyway. My destination? The brutalist, post modern factory building that is the National Gallery Prague – Veletržní Palác.
And what a good museum it is.
Beauty and Brutalism
Picasso, Monet, Toulouse Lautrec, even Van Gogh. Lots of - surprise, surprise - Czech artists. Essentially the theme was the nineteenth century onwards. Plenty of good Impressionist art that segued, unfortunately, into a load of modernist, cubist abstracts. The 1920s and 30s certainly were a particular low point in the story of art.
In total I probably spent a couple of hours in the museum studying the pictures with an intensity reserved for hangovers. I even came to appreciate the art-for-the-proletariat factory setting. I must admit though, I skipped a lot of the modernist stuff. As the art critic T.E. Robson once said, “What a load of bollocks. Learn to paint.”
But there was plenty of good stuff. I’d call out Adolf Kosárek - Winter Night (1857), Antonín Waldhauser - Gothic Ruins (1870), Georges Seurat - Harbour in Honfleur (1886), Oskar Kokoschka - Prague Charles Bridge (1934).
My favourite - for personal reasons - was The Balcony by Czech artist Miloš Jiránek (1908). I was disappointed I couldn’t get a postcard of this picture but not doing so saved me around 10p.
The utilitarian communist brutalism of the building - a factory of art in fact - worked. The layout was crisp and followed a well defined path. I would have spent more time on the floor dedicated to post war architecture (shocking, rabbit hutch apartments presented in black and white photos and scale models with much sub-Corbusian contemporaneous intellectual bullshit about homes for the workers) but, well, I couldn’t linger long. The paracetamol was wearing off and the hangover was kicking back in.
I needed the 17 tram back again. Onboard I was lulled by its steady rhythm and missed my stop. But, serendipity is the key to solo travelling and I stayed onboard as we trundled alongside the Vltava River. Indeed, I’d paid £1 for 30 minutes. So I got my money’s worth. I got off at the Dancing House (been there, done that, got the photo) and walked back. Hangover messy, I overshot a second time and ended up in the Old Town again just in time for the lunchtime troughing of the tourist hordes as they ordered their pizzas and burgers, Aperol and beer.
Sidebar: Overheard dialogue in Old Town
“Where shall we go?” a British Northern accent asked her rotund husband in his football top holiday attire. “There’s a Popeyes over there,” he responded and they gleefully crossed the road, the desire for empty calories strong even here in Prague.
Listen dumplings, Czech dumplings will fill you up better, for cheaper and, I dunno, you’ll try something new. Local - why are you here again? Nah. Fuck that. Irish bar later? They serve Stella. Can we get a tram to the Prague Castle? Avoid the Old Town unless you like being herded from overpriced, insincere, anywhere, nowhere, fodder.
I know. I know what you’re thinking: You’re the guy with a laptop who can’t handle real interactions that aren’t on a barstool with conversations that rise and fall depending on the drink you’re ordering. And what about your myriad failures to read people? Women in particular? Okay. Good points, all. I get that... Bitch. But we all come out swinging somewhere and find our level. I just write mine down.
Yes, I’m a snobbish twat. Read my stuff - I own it. I’m the mayor of this town. Finding interactions with humans, observing them in foreign places, is what I do. But these random diversions helped in one way: It delayed my first beer today: 16:00; a new self-denying record! Onto the music.
Baroque Interlude
Not sure when I first heard Ave Maria. As a non Catholic, it didn’t really cross my musical horizon that much. Perhaps the Liverpool film ‘No Surrender’ (anyone remember that one?). But today, in a beautiful church, first with a powerful organ and secondly, with a string quintet and soloist, it was moving. Very moving.
The formal church setting, perhaps? The professionalism of the musicians, maybe? Hard to say but it got me both times. Dust in my eyes and all that. Twice. I was there for Vivaldi. Mozart. Handel. Albinoni. All my baroque favs. The musicians went Route One with us €30 tourists; playing the heavy hitters, the Classic FM (or whatever the equivalent in the US is) top ten. Popular classics. Chuck in local boy Dvořák and you have a cosy hour of Western cultural brilliance.
The Church of St Giles (Kostel sv. Jiljí) setting was perfect. These pieces were composed with religion in mind, in praise of God in an era when that meant something, when people gave a toss. And so hearing these excellent musicians play these excerpts from The Greats here was, cynicism aside, moving.
The audience. Well, pretty much 100% tourists. American mainly (who says they’re dumb, they certainly aren’t - I don’t endorse that stereotype), Japanese, probably some other mixed Europeans as well. The solemnity of a magnificent church didn’t really create a chatty-chat, where you from, environment. This wasn’t a boozer so I traded my normal barstool for a pew. On either side I had Americans and I guess they were religious. They bowed their heads and clapped at the end of each piece ever so politely. As though doing so was a bit profane in a church, you see. I guess.
Tim Has Thoughts
Me? Well, you know me. Laptop guy. Getting pissed in a bar writing shit about everyone, soooo; I thought I’d mix it up here in Prague. I love classical music. I love baroque and, outside of Venice and watching a Vivaldi recital at an historic church in San Marco, this was grazing the ceiling of the best experience you can get. I took a couple of short 5 second videos but - to be honest - felt a bit guilty doing so. Does anyone live in the moment anymore?
Yeah, yeah. We’re all victims of Insta culture, #somoved_prague. I get that but, but, I’m an artist. I paint word pictures of foreign cities for your benefit. You know, the bits that other quotidian, top 10 sights wank merchants miss. So, the odd video helps jog the already-had-four-pints-before-I-arrived memory.
Yeah, I needed a piss halfway through. I suffered for my art and you, my dear readers.
Talking of click bait bitches. I met some famous Prague YouTube vlogger I’ve been following in the lead up to this holiday on my way back from the church. His videos gave me some useful insights into what to see in the city whilst I’m here. Actually, it was he who recommended going to the National Monument at Vítkov. Good videos. Cool guy. I went over and shook his hand and said I watch all his videos. He kinda blanked me with a ‘thanks for watching’ before immediately looking away. Wanker. 2 million subscribers? I get better numbers from my bot attacks.
And with that, we head to the bar.
Quotidian Notes / Further Reading
Part 4 of my Prague Quintet series of articles about my recent trip to Prague. This is the morning after the night before, detailed in my Comedy Night in Prague blog.
And who is that vlogger? Not hard to work out. Perhaps I was being a touch unfair and maybe he was filming. Nah. He’s a nob.
I separated art (pictures & music) from museums. The weighty history of Prague in the 20th Century deserves its own blogpost. Fuck! This Quintet is turning into a full bloody orchestra. Did I actually do anything in Prague apart from write? Weeeellll. Yes, see above for example. Where I wrote, well that in itself is another blog. FFS.
Read more City Tours in Scabrous adventures series. Try The Darkness of Bruges or, for perhaps The Do’s and Don’ts of Krakow? My wanderings around the sights (bars) of Breda is criminally under-rated. Along with the video of me on stage in that town.
