Guess whose exhibition was on at Spilberk Castle

I have to admit that, despite having visited Brno, I hadn't made it to the city's Spilberk Castle. I don't know why; it was always on my to-visit list and it is in the city centre. This month I at last made up the short hill to the formidable building.

Spilberk Castle is home to the city's museum and an art gallery, which features local artists in a permanent exhibition and international artists in a temporary gallery. As I walked into a castle courtyard I encountered a huge blown-up soup can. Yes, Andy Warhol's amazing graphics are on display in the temporary gallery.

The gallery was busy, but as I have observed elsewhere in the Czech Republic not so much that I could not enjoy the artworks fully. I doubt that it would be the same if the exhibition had been on in Britain. I had a rather limited view of Warhol's work based on his most famous works, but this exhibition showed Warhol to be more than just a showman, to be a brilliant artist.

If you want to see a larger permanent exhibition of Warhol's work you can either go to New York or you can go to to the Warhol Museum in Medzilaborce in Eastern Slovakia. When Warhol was asked where he came from, he replied "Nowhere", suggesting that he created himself. He, of course, reinvented himself. He changed his name from Andrej Warhola to the anglicised Andrew Warhol. His parents were Czechoslovakian immigrants from a little village close to Medzilaborce. They were ethnically Ruthenian, an ethnic group related to the Ukrainians from that part of the Carpathians.

Warhol practiced his parents' Orthodox Catholic religion and towards the end of his life started to paint icons. The first artworks he would have seen as a child would have been the icons on the walls of his mother's room. Knowing that suddenly we see Warhol's prints in a different light - in some ways he was always creating icons - of Marilyn Monroe and soup cans. It turns out that Warhol didn't come from nowhere after all.

Sly Subversion - A Very Czech Trait

There is something about the Czechs that enjoys sticking a pin in pompous orthodoxy. It is often done slyly and with humour. It is there in The Good Soldier Sveyk and in the tales of Jara Cimrman.

And it is also to found in Czech architectural decoration. Above are some Atlases very grimly holding up the facade of a building on Brno's Svobody Namesti (Freedom Square). No humour here. Atlases like these can be found on many of the Czech Republic's larger buildings.

But if you walk down a road from the square you will find Czech subversion at work. Instead of an Atlas you get a dwarf!

Czech Castles - Pernstejn

The journey to Pernstejn castle is a delightful one. It takes you through the beautiful wooded valleys of the Moravian Highlands and then suddenly you see the proud medieval fortress perched high on a large rock.

This castle was so well-sited and designed that it was never taken by an enemy in any of the many wars that have raged across this land. If the enemy managed to get past the castle's many walls and ditches, through the maze of courtyards under constant fire from above, and made it into the main part of the castle, the defenders could withdraw to the Baborka tower, which was only connected to the rest of the castle by two wooden bridges. If the worst came to the worst I suppose they could have burnt them, but it never did.

Like some other Czech castles, Pernstejn comes with a resident ghostly white lady. In this case the ghost is that of a vain maid, who was forever admiring herself in her mistress' mirror rather than doing her duties. When a monk rebuked her for neglecting going to mass, she laughed at him and he cursed her. It is said that even now if a woman looks in one of the castle's mirrors, she will lose her beauty within a year.

Now the Castle is popular with Czechs - there was a group of excited children there when we last visited  - and with film-production companies. If the castle feels somehow familiar, it is probably because you've seen it on the big screen. It was a location in Van Helsing and Nosferatu, to name just two films.

Despite the castle's rural setting, Pernstejn is only an hour from Brno by public transport or you can opt for a guided tour and visit the caves of the Moravian Karst as well.

Brno

Spilberk castle, Brno

I am a great fan of the Czech Republic's second city. Indeed at times I think I prefer it to Prague. The two are very different in their feel. Prague to my mind feels like a Northern European city, whilst Brno has more of the Mediterranean about it. In Prague everyone seems to be going somewhere, whereas Brno has more of a relaxed cafe culture. It helps that the climate is milder there, and also that the historic centre is pedestrianized. As a result people sit at tables outside the city's many cafes and restaurants and chat to friends over coffee or maybe the local wine. 

I have visited the city many times over the years and each time I find something new to do. Brno's most famous building is Villa Tugendhat, and it certainly should be on any visitor's to-do list, but there is much more to see. The Villa isn't even the only major modernist building in the city. If you are interested in the architecture of previous periods, you will find Gothic and Baroque churches, Renaissance palaces, Art Deco villas and Art Nouveau apartment buildings and shops within easy walking distance of the city centre.

Called the "Moravian Manchester", Brno boomed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on the back of a vibrant textile industry. As in Manchester the industrialists invested in the best architects and artists to create the buildings and institutions appropriate to their city's status. These included the Moravian Museum of Applied Arts. The permanent collection of this excellent museum has free entry and features some stunning examples not only of textiles but of furniture (including pieces designed by locally-born Josef Hoffmann), glass, graphics (Alfons Mucha was also a local) and other objects.There is currently a temporary exhibition on display at the museum entitled Brno - Moravian Manchester. 250 years of the capital of the textile industry. Frustratingly the exhibition closes a month before I bring a textiles tour to the city, but so it goes. My suspicion is that the exhibition is actually the one that will eventually be permanently installed in the Loew Beer Villa, which is due to open a month after the tour.

The Museum of Romany Culture

Last year I took a friend and some Australian artists to Brno. Sometimes when you organise a visit serendipity takes a hand and things just happen. We had of course visited the Villa Tugendhat and members of the group decided it would divide up to explore the city on their own.

Some decided they would follow my advice and visit the Museum of Romany Culture. Meanwhile I stayed at the hotel. The phone rang. "Listen to this," said my friend Maggie. Gypsy music and the sound of fast dancing feet came down the phone. "There's an open-air festival here. All the gypsies are enjoying themselves." I left the hotel immediately and made my way to the museum.

The Museum is easy to get to - it's on several of the main tram routes and not far from the centre - but the area is a bit run-down, as is to be expected given that the gypsy population tends to live in the poorer areas. When I arrived the open-space outside the museum was milling with people, many in traditional brightly-coloured costumes, but the music had stopped temporarily. I looked around for my party and decided they must be inside.

The gentleman on the museum counter told me that, although the museum was officially closed for another hour because of the festival, my Australian friends had been allowed in. The museum staff had been so delighted that a group of Australians had come to visit their museum, they had opened up specially.

Inside the museum the members of the group were walking around the exhibition rooms listening to their English-speaking audio guides. The museum's story starts with the Romanies' departure from India, and then follows them as they arrive in Europe. It shows their traditional way of life on the road, their traditional crafts, customs and society. One room is devoted to the Holocaust, or the Devouring as the gypsies call it. They, like the Jews, were sent to the gas chambers, but we do not hear much about that. The last room in the museum is a celebration of contemporary gypsy culture and its influence on music, film and fashion. It is a fascinating museum offering an insight into a people and culture about which we non-Romanies know pitifully little.

When we left the museum, after over an hour's visit, the festival was still in full flow. Excited girls in their lovely red and gold dresses ran through the foyer. A Brno radio station was recording a performance by one of the local groups. We walked back to the city centre and the music faded behind us.

A few days later I went online to write a review on Tripadvisor and found that alongside the 5-star reviews, there were two 1-star ones. These were in Czech and were nothing more than expressions of the blind racism that the Romany Museum so eloquently counters. I wrote a response and I am glad to say that when I looked recently the 1-star reviews had been removed.

Villa Tugendhat, Brno

A visit to this modernist masterpiece is always a highlight of a stay in Brno. I first went there with my husband, who is a lover of buildings and all things architectural, so we took the longer technical tour. A large grin never left his face during the 90 minute visit.

The Villa was commissioned by Grete Loew Beer and her new husband Fritz Tugendhat in 1928. Both came from Jewish families that had become rich as a result of the huge expansion of textiles and other industries in Moravia that had in turn paid for the architectural transformation of Brno. Grete had been impressed by the work of German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe when she had visited a house designed by him in Berlin and so commissioned to design the couple's dream home. He was told that money was no object. Tell that to any architect and you will make his day, tell it to a genius like Mies and you will get a masterpiece.

The villa is set on a hillside overlooking Brno. From the street it does not look as impressive or as large as it is, because you enter at the top floor. The two lower floors open on to the garden. When you enter the building you start to see why the building is so special and why it cost so much. Mies's famous motto of “Less is More” is exemplified by the lack of ornament and the emphasis on the materials used (steel, glass, marble) and the flow of walls and spaces. This extends to the fixtures and fittings, even the beautiful line of the door and window handles.

It is hard to imagine the impact this villa would have made in its day. We are used to white geometrical modernist buildings, but this was a time when most people were still thinking in terms of art deco. However, unlike in the UK where modernism took a long time getting going, the Czechs rapidly took modernism to their hearts. There are many more modernist gems to be found in Brno and elsewhere in the Czech Republic, but they deserve a separate post (or maybe more).

The story of the villa was not a happy one. The Tugendhats were able to enjoy their new home for only eight years, before they fled to Switzerland ahead of the German invasion. The villa became the property of the Nazis, used by the Gestapo, who removed the villa's fine semi-circular ebony wall which defines the dining room. And then the liberating Soviet troops treated the villa with such contempt that they used some of its living spaces as stabling for their horses. It wasn't until the 1980s that any attempt was made to restore the building. Now, thanks mostly to funds from the EU, the building is fully restored and open to visitors.

NB Entrance to the villa is restricted to groups of a maximum of 15 people and not all tours are in English. As a result it is advisable to book weeks if not months in advance. I recommend the shorter tour unless you have a particular interest. 

Visit to Brno

For some reason the bishop always came last in the annual Brno hide-and-seek competition.

I have just come back from a trip to the Czech Republic's second city, Brno. I was busy researching and organizing a tour of the area by the Textile Society. As part of the research I visited the treasury in the cathedral to look at the ecclesiastical garments. As I walked round the building waiting for the treasury to open I passed a series of identical bishop's tombs, which made me chuckle.

The Oldest Puppet Ever Discovered

I have just come back from the wonderful exhibition  Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind   
which is currently on at the British Museum. This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition brings together some of the finest paleolithic works of art, including some superb pieces from the Czech Republic. 

I already written a post about the first ceramic representation of the human figure - the Dolni Vestonice Venus. But the sculpture that attracted my son's attention was the first example of a puppet in the world. The Czechs love puppets and clearly this love goes back to the very beginnings of human habitation in their country. This marionette or stick puppet was discovered in the grave of a man in Brno in 1891 and it is thought to have belonged to a shaman. 

The British Museum captions states: 
The time and skill required to shape and articulate potentially movable limbs on an ivory figure make this a remarkable piece of craftsmanship.

Its spectral appearance and the shadows it could perhaps have made on the walls of a tent if suspended in firelight add a sense of theatre to the way it might have been seen 26,000 years ago.

One of the most remarkable theatrical experiences I have ever had was a production of Gilamesh by an Italian shadow puppet company called Gioca Vita. By moving the puppets between the light source and the screen the puppets grew and diminished on the screen. The impact was extraordinary even when I knew what was happening, it is hard to imagine the impact this puppet would have had on its original audience.

It doesn't surprise me that puppets date back so far. The animation of inanimate objects is something that is innate to human nature. It is something the Czechs understand very well. So if ever you find yourself watching a puppet performance in Prague, don't be surprised by how skilled the performers are, the people of this country have been practising for 26,000 years.

The exhibition is on until the 26th May.