I have decided that Prague could use a little help in the signage department and with mapping concepts. Of all the big cities we have been too, I have had the hardest time here. Maybe it is because of the extremely difficult language and reading the names of streets and words is beyond difficult. I have noticed too that maps here vary and the directional pictures and distances are oddly distorted. The tram stops aren’t named on any maps, so you are always guessing a bit and it is very easy to get on one direction hoping to end up the other direction, but you just can’t tell from reading the panel at the tram stop…….anyways, it just provides more adventure, but patience becomes very important.
Alone this morning, I went to the Valanzia Palace, commonly known as the Museum of Modern Art. The only reason it has two names is to confuse you even more when you are trying to find it. I like to go to an occasional modern art exhibit so I can complain and make fun of some of the stuff these ‘artists’ come up with. I don’t think I have honestly found a way to appreciate or understand modern art. This was no different AND they let me take pictures of it. No flash. So, these are some examples of the creativity expressed in Czechoslovakia:
- A block of connected spoons about the size of a dishwasher (I thought about the ‘spoons’ game and wondered where the inspiration came from for that one)
- Copper Underwear. A size small of course…..why wouldn’t an artist use a size extra-large…… would that still be art?
- A box of chocolate body parts: I am sure that one was tasty and if you like to suck your thumb, you can do it literally
- An untitled sculpture: I thought, of course it is untitled, nobody can tell what it is!
- The letter “F”: the artist says it is short for “Fuck” and he only thinks in first letters……WTF is he talking about?
- Bronze Babies: weird….more to come on that
To complete my exposure to creative and obscure thought processes, I met up with Molly and Patricia and dragged them (not really) to the Franz Kafka Museum. I remembered reading his short story Metamorphosis in high school. Kafka is a Prague favorite, regardless of his dark, dysfunctional obsession with inner turmoil. The city shaped him, his father shaped him and his Jewish heritage haunted him…..ironic how out of the deepest of despair comes another form of art. Kafka is immortalized all over Prague, and the city refers to itself often as the City of “K”. I go back to thinking about the Modern Art Museum and the letter “F”.
The three of us make a huge salad for dinner and drink a bottle of wine…..Patti wants to go for a walk later and so we go to see the local TV station tower at the top of the hill where we are staying. Not a typical TV station, as this one used to be used to broadcast the Communist agenda and protocol to the neighborhood. In 1989, or something like that, Prague held a ‘Baby’ exhibition and throughout the city, babies abounded. Oddly, the TV station has 7 bronzed babies climbing or descending the tower. Big babies. At night, the tower is lit in red and blue and the silhouettes of the babies are a strange and haunting sight. Unforgettable and queerly likable.
