Artful Prague

The city of Prague is itself a work of art. This is a good thing, because after spending an afternoon in the National Gallery at the Prague Castle complex looking at their 19^th-century painting and sculpture—the artistic flowering behind a brief period of political independence—you would conclude that art this bad could only be done deliberately. Our guide, Natasa Sutta, regularly stopped in front of drab, dull landscapes to remark, "These are very Czech colors." I developed a theory that since invaders liked to sweep into Prague and sweep out with anything valuable, maybe the artists made paintings that defied anyone to steal them.

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Then we emerged from the gallery to the glory of the castle grounds. (The palace scenes in the movie Amadeus were filmed here by Czech expatriate Milos Forman.) No nation that created such exquisite architecture could lack aesthetic judgment. But it's not just the show-stoppers like the castle, which hovers breathtakingly over the city, or the masterpieces, such as the 15^th-century Old Town Hall, with its astounding astronomical clock, or the Baroque church of St. Nicholas that amaze.

What kept the three of us craning our necks and snapping our cameras were the stunning residential and commercial buildings, a mélange of Beaux Art, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco. There was even a Cubist building—who knew that this art movement was ever manifest in stone? The late 20^th century was well represented by Frank Gehry's Dancing House, known as Fred and Ginger, because it resembles dance partners in motion. We marveled at the attention to detail, how each building was a canvas for exuberant Crayola paint colors, or friezes, or murals, or reliefs, or shimmering gold balustrades.

As we took the panoramic tram ride down from the castle to the Old Town, without prompting, Sutta expressed what we had been thinking. "The beauty of Prague remains through the architecture. The buildings could not be stolen. The people are gray, their souls are gray, the waiters are grumpy. But the buildings speak of a noble majesty. I was ashamed of being Czech until I looked at the buildings.

"Prague has architecture from the ninth century to the 20^th century. In most other cities, there isn't that range—it's been pulled down. But the Germans didn't destroy it. The Communists didn't destroy it, even though they destroyed other cities to make them 'modern.' But not Prague."

The creators of Artbreak used the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, as a philosophical touchstone. But toward the end of the week, I sometimes felt it had been Jared Diamond's Collapse, so exhausted was I by becoming a culture vulture. Still, it was worth it to drag myself to the evening performances. One night we saw the avant-garde, five-man dance group Les Slovaks Dance Collective. In the lobby before the performance were traditional Slovak dancers, the women in dirndl skirts, the men in boots with spurs, their steps a European variation on square dancing. This turned out to be helpful, since Les Slovaks did a homoerotic deconstruction of Slovak folk dance, which was better than it sounds (unless that sounds good).

I preferred our nights at the jewel-box theaters of the national opera (Carmen), ballet (Romeo and Juliet), and symphony (Tchaikovsky and Dvorak). I vowed that when I got back to my family, I would try to drag those philistines to some culture.

After a week of arts immersion, I was both restored and exhausted—and forever grateful that I had never had to live under communism. I had also had the unexpected delight of befriending two strangers and spending 14 hours a day with them in complete harmony. On the flight back, I pulled out the sketch pad and pastels that were a gift from Artbreak and did a self-portrait while looking into the dark movie screen on the seat in front of me. It was the best piece I'd done in years. And when I arrived home, I found an art studio a few miles from my house and signed up for classes.

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