~ballad of the old bohemian pt. 1~

July 28th, 2008

Like Ali is an Alps Slut, I am an Art Nouveau Slut, which means I spent our short time in Prague (Praha) with my head craned upward and mouth dangling open in rapture. The city looks as though it was designed by Alfons Mucha, in part because it was.

The streets are clusters of buildings adorned with boho swirly-ques and pensive ladies, some of whom have the Tree of Life sprouting from their heads.

There is also quite a bit of Arts and Crafts style adornment: earthy, epic allegories of honest labor and noble pursuit of knowledge. Noble or pensive, these buildings have something to say.

Jan Švankmajer, the surrealist whose film Faust remains among my top ten, lives in Prague and has a gallery called Gambra here, attached to his house.

It was closed while we were about, but you could sense his presence everywhere in the city, or I should say I recognized what I once identified as Švankmajer-esque all over Prague. It’s got a humorous, slightly perverted, dark fairytale spirit that is enchanting and hard to pin down.

Witches abound (in life-size puppet form at least), as do men with long wild hair and even wilder eyes…