2012/13 Europe Adventure: Karlovy Vary - Weight Loss Program

Steps up from Castle Spa

It was snowing again when I got up and there was another foot of snow all around. After my water cure ad breakfast I headed to the Karlovy Vary Contemporary Art museum which I had visited on my first visit to the city four years ago and am glad I chose to go again. It was a perfect day for it and they had new works on both the 1^st and 2^nd floors. The museum is much larger than expected but the perfect size for an hour and half of enjoyable viewing.

Top of a corner of the Grand Hotel Pupp with the charming Angel playing the harp sculpture

Crucifx on large rock above the Grand Hotel Pupp. There has been a crucifix on this rock since at least the 16th century as was visible on the model of the city at the Karlovy Vary Museum

Sculpture outside the entrance of Lazne I

Sculpture on the other side of Lazne I entrance

Goethe Statue covered looking perturbed to be covered in snow

Here are a few of my favorite works. The “Palms” especially caught my eye partly because I saw it form an angle and as I approached I thought someone had done a large painting of human intestines but then of course I got in front of it, standing a few feet away and could see the beautiful image of the palms. I think with all the curative powers of the water here on my mind, I leaped to the image of bodily functions. Very strange and maybe there has been too much focus on health and bodily well-being.

Contemporary Art Museum

I found the information on the artist’s lives interesting as I did my research tonight when I got home. Understanding a little of the artists life always makes the art itself more interesting for me. Our lives always influence our work and that is most certainly true for artists. And you never know what you’ll learn when you start your research and tonight is no exception because I learned about the origin of the word “Robot” and how it was first used in literature (check out the information on Josef Čapek below.)

Palms (oil on canvas) by Květa Válová

Palms (oil on canvas) by Květa Válová. She is one of twins born in the steelmaking city of Kladno, the straight-talking, chain-smoking "Válovky" - as the twin sisters Květa and Jitka Válová are known - lived and created art side by side all their lives until Květa's death in 1998 at the age of 75. The main theme both sisters addressed is the human condition, particularly in the face of adversity. Born in 1922, the twins lived through two different totalitarian regimes. As young women in Nazi-occupied Bohemia, they were put to work in the Poldi steel plant in their home town. After the war, they enrolled at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design, and by the time they graduated from the painting studio led by the renowned Czech artist Emil Filla in 1950, the communists had usurped power.

Games with a Ball (oil on canvas, 1928) Josef Čapek

Games with a Ball (oil on canvas, 1928) Josef Čapek (23 March 1887 – April, 1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word robot, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek. First a painter of the Cubist school, he later developed his own playful primitive style. He collaborated with his brother Karel on a number of plays and short stories; on his own, he wrote the utopian play Land of Many Names and several novels, as well as critical essays in which he argued for the art of the unconscious, of children, and of 'savages'. He was named by his brother as the true inventor of the term robot. As a cartoonist, he worked for Lidové Noviny, a newspaper based in Prague. Due to his critical attitude towards national socialism and Adolf Hitler, he was arrested after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939. He wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he died in 1945. The word robot was introduced to the public by the Czech interwar writer Karel Čapek in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), published in 1920.[39] The play begins in a factory that makes artificial people called robots, though they are closer to the modern ideas of androids, creatures who can be mistaken for humans. They can plainly think for themselves, though they seem happy to serve. At issue is whether the robots are being exploited and the consequences of their treatment. Karel Čapek himself did not coin the word. He wrote a short letter in reference to an etymology in the Oxford English Dictionary in which he named his brother, the painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its actual originator. In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he explained that he had originally wanted to call the creatures laboři ("workers", from Latin labor). However, he did not like the word, and sought advice from his brother Josef, who suggested "roboti". The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech.

Vitek Čapek's inspired by South Bohemian fishpond of 1981 (I think.) What I loved most about this work is how it reminds me of Karlovy vary. The valley is the brown, the green is the lower hill, the black strip the top of the hill and then the trees at the very top left. This is one what I love about abstract works you bring your own experiences to what you are seeing.

Vitek Čapek (1954-1988) and his Cyklus Hladiny (translated online to Cycle Level or Menstrual Cycle in English)

The main floor of the museum has temporary exhibits and this month they feature the works of by Vitek Čapek (1954-1988) and his Cyklus Hladiny (translated online to Cycle Level or Menstrual Cycle in English) Known for his paintings and drawings of simple compositions like circles and ellipses he demonstrates his minimalist tendencies in art. The first two paintings below I believe are part of his original theme of the South Bohemian fishpond of 1981. The other series is the extensive cycle levels set with terse geometric breakdowns that gradually evolve into a number of monochrome works done between 1981 – 1986.

Portrait of Rehor Samsa (sculpture copper sheet and nickel, 1964) by Karel Nepraš

Portrait of Rehor Samsa (sculpture copper sheet and nickel, 1964) by Karel Nepraš emerged as one of the most innovative Czech artists in the latter half of the 20th century. He and his generation of artists were responsible for a boom of Czech visual culture in the 1960s. He first distinguished himself as a cartoonist and cartoons inspired his sculptures. This unusual intersection of sculpture and cartoon humor shaped the unique nature of Nepraš’s oeuvre. The artist himself described it as a clash of humor and gravity. According to him, humour was not only an artistic strategy but a defense mechanism for preserving sanity in a society full of absurdity. In the 1950s and 1960s he co-founded two artistic groups, the Šmidras and the Crusaders’ School of Pure Humor Without Jokes.

Prophet (sculpture patina coated wood, 1967) by Jan Koblasa

Prophet (sculpture patina coated wood, 1967) by Jan Koblasa has ranked among the leading figures of Czech and European art since the1960s. His sculptures have been integrated into many European cities, sacred spaces, and sculptors’ parks. But sculpture is only one of the areas in which Koblasa has achieved renown: he is also acclaimed for his accomplishments in stage design and decoration, book illustrations, and graphic art. After participating in the Czechoslovak Art Informel movement, Koblasa developed his own style. In particular after his emigration following the country's Soviet occupation in 1968, he began working in a style that was difficult to define, in particular within the context of the Western art world he now found himself in - which at the time was enthralled by Pop Art. Koblasa struck them as too foreign, too spiritual, too baroquely expressive, or even too serious. After a period of travelling and searching, he settled in northern Germany, where he taught at the Muthesius Hochschule in Kiel, and where several of his public sculptures can be found. Jan Koblasa (born 1932 in Prague) is perhaps one of the most interesting living Czech artists today. His career spans more than six decades, including several years spent in exile in Italy and Germany. He has worked in the areas of sculpture, painting, drawing, print-making, and stage design, has created costumes for the stage and screen, and is an author and composer.

The Sea (Oil on canvas, 1961) by Olga Karlíková

The Sea (Oil on canvas, 1961) by Olga Karlíková lived and worked in Prague, and from the middle of the sixties worked in ateliers in Northern Bohemia and was a member of the generation which during the sixties completed its entry into the wider international context, only to experience repressive normalization after the August occupation in 1968. During the war Olga Karlíková created designer textiles for ÚBOK (the Institute of Residential and Clothing Culture), an institution for which many other artists worked. At a time when it was impossible to exhibit abstract art, this design work allowed her to work with abstraction and Olga Karlíková was also interested by structural abstraction and art informal, which allowed her to commence an examination of her life-long themes of space, land and sea, later joined by the song of birds, whales and recordings of their movement.

Knot (oil on canvas, 1964) by Stanislav Podhrazský

(hanging sculpture) Landscape with Hill (sculpture, wire, 1974) by Karel Malich & on the left is Lines #97 (oil on canvas, 1992) by Zdeněk Sýkora

Landscape with Hill (sculpture, wire, 1974) by Karel Malich is one of the most respected classics on the Czech artistic scene. Today he is mainly known for his colored pastels and wire objects.

Lines #97 (oil on canvas, 1992) by Zdeněk Sýkora (February 3, 1920 – July 12, 2011) was a Czechoslovakian modern abstract painter and sculptor, and a pioneer of using computers in art.

Uncle Charles Romantic by Disposition (oil on canvas, 1960) Mikuláš Medek

Adorable Young Man (Oil on canvas) Mikuláš Medek - I don't know about you but I'm still struggling to see the Adorable Young Man in this painting.

Uncle Charles Romantic by Disposition (oil on canvas, 1960) Mikuláš Medek

Adorable Young Man (Oil on canvas) Mikuláš Medek

(November 3, 1926, Praha - August 23, 1974, Praha) was a Czech painter. He was a grandson of impressionist painter Antonín Slavíček and son of general of the Czechoslovak Army and catholic writer Rudolf Medek. He is considered one of the most important exponents of the Czech modern painting in the post-war period. He was the husband of the photographer Emila Medková.

Still-Life (oil on canvas, 1932) by Emil Filla

Still-Life (oil on canvas, 1932) by Emil Filla (April 4, 1882 – October 7, 1953), a Czech painter, was a leader of the avant-garde in Prague between World War I and World War II and was an early Cubist painter.

Thirst (oil on canvas, 1922-1923) by Pravoslav Kotik

Thirst (oil on canvas, 1922-1923) by Pravoslav Kotik was a Czech visual artist who was born in 1889.

Twilight (oil on canvas, 1909) Jakub Schikaneder

Twilight (oil on canvas, 1909) Jakub Schikaneder is known for his soft paintings of the outdoors, often lonely in mood. His paintings often feature poor and outcast figures. Other motifs favored by Schikaneder were autumn and winter, corners and alleyways in the city of Prague and the banks of the Vltava – often in the early evening light, or cloaked in mist.

Arrival of Spring (Oil on canvas, 1911-1912) by Jan Preisler

Arrival of Spring (Oil on canvas, 1911-1912) by Jan Preisler was a pioneer in modern Bohemian art, and his work developed from pure Art Nouveau and Symbolism towards Expressionism, in three phases. The period 1887-1900 is represented by the triptych Spring (1900; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.): with its lack of scales of tonal value or Impressionist instantaneousness, it is a skilful use of colour and composition. The figure of the boy with autobiographical features is symbolic of a whole generation.

Wine Drinker (oil on canvas, 1923) by Antonín Procházka

Happiness (oil on canvas, 1923) by Antonín Procházka

Wine Drinker (oil on canvas, 1923) by Antonín Procházka, a leading painter in the style of Czech modernism. Procházka's cubist work came close, through its distinctive colour scheme and the artist's liking for rounded relief forms, to the Orphic version of cubism. His work is varied and the painting next to Wine Drinker is “Happiness” and although both have disproportionately shaped women the first is clearly in the cubist style but the second with oddly thick, almost misshapen arms and hands and enormous slanted eyes but then some more realistic elements. Something doesn't seem to fit and perhaps it's simply that she doesn't look very happy to me.

View of left staircase at the museum

View of right staircase at museum with large painting of the quintessential image from the American movie North by Northwest

I had only two treatments today a hydrobath and a massage and then I got to spend some quality time in the sauna sweating out toxins.

The massage was done by Natalia again and we chatted which was great and it was a good deep tissue massage and she eased all the tension from my muscles. She's actually not Czech, she's Russian and here for a few weeks exchange program. She is a physical therapist for babies 1 day old to 1 years old and she was saying that she just can't wait to get home. She lives in a large town in the middle of Russia. It was so unexpected to hear her say she really missed being home because I've always imagined that Russian's would prefer to leave the country but clearly not true. Also she loves her job which is so great to hear and I imagine working with the babies is very rewarding work.

There is also on the walking trail heading toward the museum a spring water fountain that is mountain spring water not the mineral cure water. Locals come with water large empty water bottles I've noticed to fill up with natural spring water. Today I tasted some and it's so clear and cool and fresh. It reminded me of Poland Spring Water.

I then took a two hour walk around the city taking pictures and finding the 16^th and final spring which is just up the hill from the old post office and Thermal Hotel. It’s no longer in operation but at least I found all 16, thanks to young Martins help from the Karlovy Vary museum the other day and even if I couldn’t drink the water from each and every one I’m glad I’ve now been to them all.

Spring #16 Zeleznaty Pramen - Ferrous 11.9˚ C.- Only Carlsbad cold mineral spring, called Ferrous spring rises on the slope above the right bank of the river warm in the north of Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad). Temperature of the spring with a high content of iron and arsenic is only 11.9 ˚ C.

Small Dog at a moment of contemplation before running
and jumping again

Crazy little dog running at me with great ferocity

As I walked around I was on a street with lots of residential houses and this tiny, tiny yapping dog came running at me barking like crazy and jumping up and down like it was hyped up on drugs. I had to laugh because it circled me barking as loud as it could and following me down the street. When I got to where his parents were I said to the women “he thinks he’s a much bigger dog” and I made a gesture of hugeness with my arms wide spread and she laughed and looked down at her precious puppy who was still out of control and leaping about madly. The dog even followed me down the street as I walked past its parents continuing to scream at me. Oh, these little dogs think they’re so fierce but really he could fit in the palm of my hand so not really much of a threat no matter how loud he barks.