Familiar images reside in the soul of the Finns

Tuula Karjalainen mapped out collective memory of Finnish art

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By Anu Uimonen
     
      "I’ve been putting together the jigsaw of the Finnish soul”, PhD Tuula Karjalainen describes her long project, as the final outcome of which a book called Kantakuvat – yhteinen muistimme (“Core Images - Our Collective Memory”) was published on Thursday of last week.
      Karjalainen classifies as core-images those Finnish works of art that “every Finn” recognises.
     
“Even if the precise name of a work or an artist escapes a Finn, he or she will still recognise as familiar the young Aino of the Finnish National epic Kalevala fleeing from her aged suitor the shaman Väinämöinen, or the wounded angel with its bearers, the wide-eyed girl on the smoking slash-and-burn clearing, or those fighting capercaillies”, Karjalainen lists.
      The number of the so-called ur-images is surprisingly limited, all the same
     
To determine the number we are dealing with , Karjalainen asked people about Finnish works of art that they could name even when woken up from the deepest sleep. “The same 10-15 works were repeated over and over again. The generation of the respondents, whose ages varied from 18 to 80, played no role.”
      The core-images are kind of pictures beyond pictures, keys to other impressions and things.
      “A work of art is alive if it exerts an effect on today’s world in other ways than just by hanging on a museum wall.”
      Versions of the core-images one runs into constantly: in advertising, modern art, folksy "outsider art" - to say nothing of mouse mats, bank cards, and plastic bags.
     
In this way, the images develop into a kind of “national album” that can be compared to an average family album.
      "New photos are constantly added to a family album. Likewise, old pictures are removed: images lose their meaning, when we no longer recognise the people in them.”
      Likewise, the national album of our core-images gets renewed, only much more slowly. But its images, too, require a narrative; they need stories that can be associated with them.
      “Even if the work of art remains the same, its narrative keeps changing”, Karjalainen says.
     
“For example The Wounded Angel has become the symbol of the Finnish Civil War to the people of the city of Tampere, after it was used in a Civil War commemoration day parade in 2008.”
      It makes no difference that Hugo Simberg finished the painting already in 1903, fifteen years before the Civil War took place.
     
Among the core-images in Karjalainen's collection, The Wounded Angel is in a league of its own. It is a kind of ur-image of ur-images that appeals to the Finns in a completely unique way.
      A couple of years ago it even won the “Painting of Our Land” vote organised by the Ateneum Art Museum.
      “Simberg’s expressionist painting calls for constantly renewed interpretations also because the mystery it contains will never be resolved”, Karjalainen says, and she draws a parallel between The Wounded Angel and Edouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l'herbe from 1863.
      “Then again, I have never quite understood, why people love The Fighting Capercaillies so much. Even though it does have all the Hollywood ingredients.”
      Whatever. An ur-Finnish image Ferdinand von Wright’s famous bird painting naturally is, as are Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Aino Triptych, Eero Järnefelt’s The Wage Slaves, Helene Schjerfbeck’s The Convalescent, Albert Edelfelt’s Boys Playing on the Shore, and so on.
     
There is no recipe for how a painting becomes a core image in the national psyche.
      In the same era many other paintings may have been painted that are just as good, but, for some reason they have failed to establish similar status in the minds of the Finns.
      “The singling out of images happens gradually. First they start to become more common as reproductions, wall rugs, and crochet works. Then they start appearing on the pages of school textbooks.”
     
Karjalainen began her research into images that ring a Finnish bell some sixteen years ago, but the undertaking remained on the table for a long time, while she worked first as the director of the Helsinki City Art Museum and then of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma. Once retired, she finally had time to finish the book.
      “This is the perfect time for the book to come out. The research into visual culture and its roots is manifested in the Kalevala exhibition in Ateneum, the Disney exhibition in the Tennis Palace Art Museum, and the recent Picasso exhibition in Paris.”
      The "Picasso and the Masters" exhibition looked at the influence on Picasso of artists both old and modern, and showed how iconic works had affected the Spanish painter's art.
     
The ur-images chosen by Karjalainen are all from or near the ‘Golden Era of Finnish Art’, which was between 1880 and 1910. Karjalainen believes, however, that in time newer art will also come into the frame.
      “For example Tyko Sallinen’s The Fanatics and The Barn Dance, or some of Juho Rissanen’s works may become part of the national album. Also from the realm of modern art, for example photographic art, new core images will surely arise. But it will take time.”
     
     
Tuula Karjalainen: Kantakuvat - yhteinen muistimme. Maahenki, 160pp. EUR 45.00
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.3.2009


Links:
  Hugo Simberg (Wikipedia)
  Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Wikipedia)
  Helene Schjerfbeck (Wikipedia)
  Eero Järnefelt (Wikipedia)
  Albert Edelfelt (Wikipedia)
  Ferdinand von Wright: The Fighting Capercaillies
  Finnish National Gallery - Hugo Simberg: The Wounded Angel
  Finnish National Gallery – Ateneum Art Museum

ANU UIMONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
anu.uimonen@hs.fi