My goal was to have a nice lunch at one of the many beautiful Art Nouveau cafes in Prague. I realized that one, Cafe Louvre, was just around the corner from my hostel. Apparently all of the bigwigs ate here back in the day, even Einstein. It still retains a lot of charm and is actually decently priced. Of course, I had to try the strudel and it was one of the best I’ve had so far. I love they way they serve your coffee, on a little silver tray, with a glass of water. It was raining like crazy and my next stop was the Convent of St Agnes with no close tram nearby. So I was pretty drenched by the time I made it to this interesting museum. It’s a gothic church built by St. Agnes, very plain with echoes of frescoes remaining. You can walk down to the foundation where Roman baths can be seen, always building on top of something else.
The rest of the museum is dedicated to medieval religious art from all over the country. The sheer volume of work is impressive but almost too much. It was interesting to see the progressions of styles, moving from very blocky iconic people to more naturalistic forms. Also, there was some really bizarre imagery in these paintings. People with no skin, huge face masks that were bigger than the people holding them, and some landscapes that looked Cubist in inspiration. I love looking at the reliquaries as well, these hugely elaborate structures are built to house some body part of a saint. Set in gold, silver and jewels, they seem more impressive than what it’s holding.
For something completely different, I headed to the other end of Prague to the Meet Factory . This was advertised as the contemporary art space in Prague. It took 2 trams to get to the south end of town where train tracks and industrial warehouses line the streets. It reminded me a lot of the Georgetown neighborhood near me. The building itself is an old warehouse and is hard to miss with two full size cars hanging off the front. The building contains artist studios, a theater space, cafe and small gallery. You can’t go into the studios and there was nothing happening at the theater. That left the gallery and cafe space that was open to the public. It’s a cool space but it’s probably more interesting when an actual event is happening.
Some of the work I found interesting:
I didn’t stick around long because the sheer amount of cigarette smoke in that place made it tough to breathe. Did I mention everyone smokes here? And everywhere? I guess I’m just not used to it anymore. I actually had more fun taking photos of the junkyards surrounding the place. Lot’s of rusting train cars and gutted buses. Very cool patinas.
The rest of the museum is dedicated to medieval religious art from all over the country. The sheer volume of work is impressive but almost too much. It was interesting to see the progressions of styles, moving from very blocky iconic people to more naturalistic forms. Also, there was some really bizarre imagery in these paintings. People with no skin, huge face masks that were bigger than the people holding them, and some landscapes that looked Cubist in inspiration. I love looking at the reliquaries as well, these hugely elaborate structures are built to house some body part of a saint. Set in gold, silver and jewels, they seem more impressive than what it’s holding.
For something completely different, I headed to the other end of Prague to the Meet Factory . This was advertised as the contemporary art space in Prague. It took 2 trams to get to the south end of town where train tracks and industrial warehouses line the streets. It reminded me a lot of the Georgetown neighborhood near me. The building itself is an old warehouse and is hard to miss with two full size cars hanging off the front. The building contains artist studios, a theater space, cafe and small gallery. You can’t go into the studios and there was nothing happening at the theater. That left the gallery and cafe space that was open to the public. It’s a cool space but it’s probably more interesting when an actual event is happening.
Some of the work I found interesting:
- Modern cave paintings
- SHAPE, experimental music from Europe.
- The most interesting was a dark room with a pyramid shape with screens. The way images were projected they looked like they were floating in mid air. The images were about breaking from the physical world and projecting yourself across the universe.
I didn’t stick around long because the sheer amount of cigarette smoke in that place made it tough to breathe. Did I mention everyone smokes here? And everywhere? I guess I’m just not used to it anymore. I actually had more fun taking photos of the junkyards surrounding the place. Lot’s of rusting train cars and gutted buses. Very cool patinas.
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