But then someone made the valid point to me that I should go back sooner rather than later because the longer I wait, the more tourists are going to start showing up, and the more crowded and hotter it is going to get. So I finally decided I needed to stop being an idiot and go back to the Hermitage several times before I get out of this city mid-June.
Anyway, so this weekend, to try to make up for lost time, I went to the Hermitage TWICE.
Well, sort of.
On Friday, I went into the main part Hermitage to see two special temporary exhibits, both of which were awesome, awesome, AWESOME.
The first was a collection of 200 prints from the German avant-garde, a lot of political stuff, all done with techniques I had learned last semester in printmaking class, which made looking at the works so much more interesting to me as I could appreciate how they were done (kind of like my feelings after taking Painting Techniques last spring with Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz). Here is one of the prints from the exhibit, by Karl Holtz, circa 1920. It's a Lithograph print, called "Unemployed":
The only bad part of the exhibit was that special exhibits at the Hermitage close a half an hour before the rest of the museum does, so we were rushed towards the end of viewing as the babushka hurried us along and out so she could leave. It was really nice going to the Hermitage at that time of day though -- it was so peaceful and empty that I might make it a routine. I definitely need to go back to look closer at this exhibit before it ends.
The other special exhibit I saw that same Friday afternoon was the Hermitage's collection of rare and artist books. It's kind of a silly, funny exhibit -- they chose books to put on display by kind of hilarious criteria: they have the largest book, the heaviest book, the smallest book, the oldest book..... but it was really interesting to me, especially as someone who used to be so into reading books about used and rare book collecting (think: Lawrence & Nancy Goldstone's books). Here is a pendant-book that was in the exhibit, an almanac for the year 1821:
The most exciting part of the exhibit though was the fact that my printmaking professor -- Yuri Shtapakov -- had one of his own artist books on display in the collection. It was, once again, a book I have seen many times in the studio, Yuri chucking it to the side to get it out of the way, and then there it was in a glass case under beautiful lighting looking so professional and valuable all of a sudden. The only shitty part about books being on display is that under glass cases, you only get to see one page, or just the cover. Maybe if I go back they will have changed which page things are open to.
And then, on Sunday, I went and saw another temporary exhibit, this one a restrospective of the photographer Boris Smelov. Oh my god, I loved this exhibit. It was exactly the kind of gritty, silvery, black and white photography, geometric, contrasty, that I love so much. It was beautiful, and three whole rooms full of gorgeous prints of St. Petersburg from 1970 - 2000.
See? Aren't they beautiful? What I loved the most about them was that they are images of this city that I have grown to love so much and become so comfortable in, but not glossy, over the top, too-beautiful postcard shots. His photos of winter make it look like winter in St. Petersburg -- gray, gross, cold, shitty as hell -- but somehow they are still gorgeous and intriguing images. They are also not of the typical iconic places, but that image of the dove on the roof, I could not find roof tops like that in any other city than St. Petersburg.
So, there you have it. I returned to the Hermitage, but not really the traditional Hermitage. I need to go back again to wander the permanent colleciton at my own pace and enjoy the impressionists on the 3rd floor, check out the Prodigal Son by Rembrant, the usual..... one thing that I did do though was walking back to the exit from the room where the German print exhibition is, we walked through the room where the two infamous DaVinci works are on display. And get this, as it was 5:30PM and the museum was going to close in a half an hour..... there was absolutely NO ONE in those rooms, save the museum babushka doing her word puzzle in the corner. I got to go right up to both of the paintings, standing as close to them as I could without setting off the alarm, and study them intensely without having three different tour groups of retired American mid-Westerners and Japanese businessmen mobbing in front of me. It was really, really great.
And the best part? All three of these exhibits will be up through the end of June so any and all of my future visitors who want to see them, can!
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