The right is still wrong in Finnish art
Politically conservative artists live in shadow of leftist tradition
By Esa Mäkinen
"It would be a suicide by self-immolation", says the startled author on the other end of the phone line.
I had called to ask if he would like to speak publicly about his own political convictions as an artist of the political right.
The answer is a resounding no. According to the writer, coming out as a right-winger on Finland’s left-dominated art scene would mean an end to grants, leading to economic problems. Boards and panels would not look kindly on such a move.
This in the year 2007, with a centre-left government in power. Are there really any right-wing artists in Finland, and if so, what are they doing?
"The left is right" declared Social Democratic writer Arvo Salo in one of his aphorisms from the 1960s. Therefore, the right is wrong - something of a prelude to the 1970s, marked by red-flag-waving cultural types.
The events of the ‘70s still come up from time to time - most recently in the summer, Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin (Swed. People’s Party) was asked what he felt about the incident in the 1970s when Finnish communist and translator Matti Rossi informed on a Hungarian artist who had made an anti-Soviet comment in his presence.
The year 1980 was an important watershed in the realm of political art in Finland. The trendy leftist comrades faced the yuppie decade, where party politics especially was a curse word.
According to Leena-Maija Rossi, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the political nature of art in the 1980s, artists at the time wanted to distance themselves from party politics - especially leftist political activities. However, politics in art did not go away - it just took on a different form.
"The politics of modern art has long tended to be a politics of generation and ethnicity, linking itself with questions of identity", Rossi explains.
Nowadays the division between left and right is not the only possible political dividing line in Finland. Artists will identify themselves as feminists, or greens, for instance. However, the left-right divide has not completely lost its meaning.
The former bassist of the rock band Apulanta, Tuukka Temonen, says that he has noticed that even today artist circles tend to veer to the left. As a supporter of the right side of the political spectrum, he has to choose his words with caution.
"I have to consider what I say, and be much more precise. People draw some rather sinister conclusions about being a right-winger", Temonen says.
For Temonen, a right-wing philosophy entails a respect for work, honesty, and diligence. Temonen says that he tries to promote these values in his own work.
"Rightist thinking also means that you’re open to all ideas at the beginning", he says.
"Leftists have a more clear-cut way of thinking on what the world is like. From that, they draw a line of what the world is like according to their own preconceptions."
It is hard to find openly right-wing writers within Finnish literary circles. One of the few is Tuomas Vimma, an imaginary writer, who serves as the facade for a Helsinki writer who agrees to an interview only if his real name is not mentioned.
Tuomas Vimma is a deliberate provocation - a 21st century yuppie who revels in his own elitist attitudes and despises both the poor and the untalented.
Vimma says that the writing is not a political manifesto of any kind. However, the smouldering ember was that he has never valued art produced with the help of state grants very much.
In Vimma’s view, the leftist leanings of Finnish art circles are a fading relic of the past. He says that the members of the generation that came after the baby boom grabbed the cloak of leftism because it did not want to admit its own bourgeois metamorphosis.
"However, that is what they are, as they sit in their 120-square metre apartments in [the upper-middle class Helsinki district] Lauttasaari sipping their vintage wines. They have to maintain a facade."
For the writer behind Vimma, being a right-winger means primarily bourgeois individual freedom to choose what to do and what to appreciate. The diligence appreciated by Temonen is not something that he links with his own world view.
"In the industrial age, the attempt was to teach the workers that God appreciates it when you wake up in the morning and work hard all day. I believe in productivity more than industriousness", Vimma says.
He also believes that the quality of art can be partly measured by its popularity among the public.
"If you produce good art, no matter what it is, the money follows - with some kind of a delay."
Disdain directed toward all things commercial was a big theme leftist thinking of the 1970s, and the attitude lives on in the field of Finnish art.
Painter Nanna Susi says that the notion of pure and contaminated art is still going strong in Finland.
"There is still a deeply rooted notion that real art does not sell. Producers of pure art are good, those who produce art that sells are charlatans and bad people", she says.
Susi considers herself to be a person of the political right, but only with respect to voting. She does not belong to any party, and her paintings do not deal with political themes. She wonders why commercialism is not considered a sin in the minds of some artists.
"Alvar Aalto designed one prototype of his Aalto vase. Since then about a billion copies have been produced, and they are sold at every filling station. Still, nobody questions the artistry of the Aalto vase."
As commercialism is a sensitive subject in the field of art, it is easy to use it for purposes of provocation.
For instance, painter Jani Leinonen, the founder of the Art Super Market Pikasso (see link) , which sold art in bulk, has toyed with commercialism throughout his whole brief career.
"My project as an artist is to break the myth that an artist is a poor, passive, sick, alcoholic subject, living at the mercy of rich investors and art institutions", Leinonen says.
Many like to thik of Leinonen, who is successful, and is seen often in public, as a right-winger; his public image as an artist makes people feel this way.
However, Leinonen says that in elections he votes for the Communists, the Left Alliance, or the Greens. Part of the artist myth, and the leftist populism of the art world is that an artist has to be a leftist in public. The painter is trying to fight this idea in a provocative manner.
"I have taken on a role that looks right-wing, although it is not. It is simply someone’s job to shake that structure a bit.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 23.9.2007
Previously in HS International Edition:
Art comes to the supermarket (2.9.2006)
ESA MÄKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
esa.makinen@hs.fi
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| 25.9.2007 - THIS WEEK |
The right is still wrong in Finnish art
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