Hermitage again

I have probably mention this before, but Amsterdam has a Hermitage as well - it is a satellite from the big mama in St. Petersburg and its situated in a awesome, imposing building right in the heart of the city - for centuries this building was old people's home until the institution moved elsewhere and the city gave the spot to local version of Russian collection - the exhibitions change every six months or so and I always try to check them out - I have also visited the real thing in St. Petersburg, which was a bit too crowded for my taste. Not that anybody asks me, but in my opinion Hermitage was just too much - where in New York's Met I loved seeing opulence, in St. Petersburg it just struck me as vulgar and showy - at one point I just had enough and galloped trough the rest of the palace to see darn Caravaggio - another, quieter museum nearby was less crowded and I enjoyed it much, much more.

Anyway, there is a new exhibition in local Hermitage and off I went to check it out. The current exhibition is called "Jewels! The Glitter of the Russian Court" and as usual it attracts enormous audience and commands high prices. Its advertised as profusion of richly decorated gowns and ensembles once worn by the highest echelons at the Russian court. Now, either I have seen too many of these exhibitions or I got saturated with too much knowledge about Russian history but for the first time I looked at this a bit cynically and clear-eyed. This wasn't art. In fact, it wasn't even lesson in history. Looking at the crowd around me - mostly retired Dutch pensioners, silver haired ladies and alike - I saw people admiring and gawking at decorative objects that once belonged to wealthy aristocrats - in other words, current local bourgeoisie soaking in the refined air of Russian court. Bowing to Mammon. Admiring the idea of wealth. Make no mistake, this was not about art or history - dresses, fans and silk shoes that once belonged to countess this or baroness that were not art. If anything, they were stolen from private collections once the real owners were butchered, let's get real. Decorative artifacts displayed in glass cabinets were perhaps pretty but also not art - all sorts of knick-knacks decorated with pearls, rubies and emeralds - exquisitely designed, for sure and great craftsmanship by some of the most famous houses like Cartier and Fabergé but from today's perspective quite ostentatious - jokingly I described the bunch as bottle openers covered in gemstones and basically this is what they were, showy pieces designed to impress the visitors with their owner's wealth, look I can afford to have a comb or toothpick or ashtray decorated with diamonds. Same for jewellery - today we appreciate discreet designs and its all about colour & quality of the stones, not about the size of the rocks. For some reason I didn't really care for this exhibition and mainly it was because it was focused on The Glitter of the Russian Court  - something I have seen many, many times and at this point found it tedious (I mean, are we bowing to royalty here?). No art, no history, just a collection of gold-encrusted salt shakers. Old ladies swooning but me strangely detached. 

One interesting thing were portraits - I mainly just glanced at dresses, feathers, silk shoes and display of peacockokery but the portraits were real deal and some of them actually displayed the owners of these objects. Since I have professional background in gemstones and Russian history, I recognised some of the people on the wall and in fact I do remember seeing the very same portrait of queen mother (previously young princess Dagmar of Denmark, who survived the revolution and died in Denmark) back in Russia. I wanted to explain to my friend who she was and out of me poured the whole story about Romanovs - he was flabbergasted and I was amused that I still possess such encyclopedic knowledge of Romanovs after all this time. There was also a excellent portrait of Italian architect who designed Winter Palace and best of all, a portrait of some young prince (Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Gorchakov) which was sensational and worth admission of the ticket alone, I absolutely loved that portrait and must found out more about its creator.