dobry den praha: Cubist Museum

Thursday afternoon I journeyed with my class past Old Town Square to the Cubist museum. Some students from the other program left as soon as the profesorkas left us alone. I was happy to see that all of my fellow ECES participants stayed, happy with the opportunity to wander about a new museum for free.

For those who don't know, Cubism was an avant-garde movement which touched many realms, especially painting, drawing, and sculpture but also architecture and literature (someone on Wikipedia claims that Faulkner's As I Lay Dying falls into this vein. I'm not sold on that idea but it certainly is fractured and at times incoherent in a strangely beautiful and complete way.) I almost forgot about Appollinaire! I feel that he may be more Dadaist though. This is my favorite of his poems:

Translation: My heart like a flame upside-down.

To be honest, I don't know if that would qualify as Cubist, but I love it so whatever.

I have heard many say that Cubist architecture can really only be seen in the Czech Republic. Indeed, the building which houses the museum as well as some others in the neighborhood would fall into this category. In the museum there are some photographs of Cubist architecture:

I discovered that Cubist architecture is somewhat different from other mediums. It seems to rely on angularity and symmetry to convey three dimensions and to give shape to the structure. Cubist work on a canvas or paper negotiates the confusion between two and three dimensions. Of course, the work itself is two dimensional, but the way in which images are fragmented seems to me attempting to compensate for the loss of one dimension by giving the illusion that it is present on the canvas... Ugh I'm confusing myself. I wish I had taken an art history course. I guess it is useful to have my own original musings. Anyway, I took a bunch of photographs as the museum. Enjoy!

Don't forget about how Cubism came about, or so I've been told. Picasso was at an anthropological museum and came across some masks that had been made by tribes in Africa. They had some on display at the museum: