One of the things about wandering the world and bumping into things is that sometimes you get great recommendations that you actually have time to take advantage of. Take our stay in Prague, where my sister suggested we visit the Alphonse Mucha museum. Never heard of him. His style, Art Nouveu. And since we had had our fill of Dutch masters and strange contemporary works, and impressionists in our previous 50 days, sounded like the perfect new art exposure. And it was. The Mucha museum gives you a taste of his life as an artist (famous in his life time) , and a thorough view of his posters. But it also turned our attention to his life's master work, the Slav Epic, which was actually housed in a completely different place due to its size. Luckily, it was one of the few museums we've been in thus far that allow pictures. Here are some excerpts of the 20 piece Epic.
For a sense of how big this 20 piece master work is, if it were transported to the states, they'd likely be able to squeeze them all into the GSM ballroom, but barely. It is massive, and it was singularly painted by Mucha.
I think what appeals to me beyond the sheer impressive feat of the thing is the use of light and shade that make figures seem like they float on different planes, giving them an other worldly presence, the intense eyes from the people staring out at you from the canvas, and that, though he paints frames into the pictures, he frequently breaks that frame by having a character step through it, or drape a piece of fabric beyond it, bringing the art closer to our world than the one he's created.
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