This summer it seems to be impossible to have two sunny days in a row and the following day turned out as grey as most days have been. Well, that’s a good excuse to be inside: this meant museums, cafes and pubs. I was a very good consumer that day, probably spent more than the museum card’s price on silly souvenirs and beer… I’ll deal with the first museum visit of the day in this post. 🙂
Onnetar and me got the day started by visiting the old home of the Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, now the Gallen-Kallela Museum in Espoo. The location is strange, it seems to be very close to the motorway, but still hidden away in the foliage. I might have been here as a kid – I remember visiting some artist home once upon a time, which I remember was like a magical castle: could have well been this one – but really it was a new place for me. My aunt likes the cafe here too, but I was in it for the art of course (a dietary constraint rather than a dislike for lovely old-fashioned cafe).
A fitting piece of art in the museum yard: The Head of Tuonela’s Pike – AKG liked his magical monster fishes and dragons.
Cute detail of a another wooden sculpture, face of a baby bear.
The house.
Sweet: cafe served water for dogs too “water for the friend”.
Nice wooden elements in the cafe porch.
The house was a sight in itself, planned and built by the megalomaniac artist. It did indeed look a lot like a castle with its tower and steep stairs and rooms set on many different levels. The biggest hall of course was the one in which he had worked. Gallen-Kallela looks really macho and cruel in all the portraits I saw of him, and I feel I’m probably fortunate never to have gotten to know him. It’s not just the timely Stalin mustache (though it doesn’t help), but the whole “rinta rottingilla” attitude, he seems to be swelling up with pride and ultimate sterness.
I like his stuff though. The current exhibition in the museum shows the work behind the Juselius masoleum made by Gallen-Kallela. The masoleum is in Pori and was ordered by a businessman as a memorial to his daughter Sigrid, who died when 11. Gallen-Kallela and Pekka Halonen were asked to do the frescoes, and the exhibition paid appropriate attention to the fact that Gallen-Kallela had also lost his first daughter, an experience which evidently influenced him a lot and made working on the Juselius pieces work of personal mourning for the artist too. The texts written to accompany the pieces were at times a little pompous, but this might have been just to stick to the style of the word-to-word quotes from the artist himself, who wanted to describe “kansamme hiljaista kaarevaa kulkua elämän harjua pitkin Tuonelan syliin” (can’t/won’t translate).
I like to think you could see AGK’s own mourning in the attention and detail in the painting and other works. In general, many of his works seem etching-like with the firm, full lines – but they also have something very wooden in them. I’m thinking about a particular etching and a piece of woodwork here:
Ex Libris Dr. Otto Engström.
Detail from a piece of pine work called ‘Syntiinlankeemuskaappi’ (hehe).
What I appreciate a lot also is his tendency for mild monstrosities. Those many teets there are not so mild, I guess, but things that hang somewhere between different life-forms, human/animal/plant/inanimate, fascinate my imagination. One monster I especially liked was the one in this:
AKG, Paha omatunto (1897), stained glass.
The snake coiling around the heart looks so much like some badass monster insect, or even more precisely, creepily much like Alien. As a sidenote, this, and another detailed, symbolic piece, Kalmankukka, would both make decent tattoos too.
Kalmankukka.
Since we’ve some much of death here, and it’s a memorial, there obviously needed to be a lot of Paradise too. I liked the initial sketches more than the bigger paintings which resulted in this case. The sacrificial pyres were more fascinating images than the regular Christian symbols which took over at the end. I liked the idea of a Paradise made of Finnish landscape, pyres, yellow horizons, clouds and high-wooded forests. I also liked
As the sketches, the bigger paintings were also impressive. I was delighted to see Ad Astra (1907) “in flesh”. Ad Astra is a masterpiece. The face is peaceful and empty and at the same time intense and concentrated, the girl’s eyes looking intently into something above her. I like the colour red used in the clouds circling the Earth, from which she rises. It flows well with blood, and her orange hair milling around free of gravity. Though I’m not sure if AKG’s remark about the canvas completes or ruins the viriginal picture: behind this one, he’s painted his own portrait “ilkialastonna” (“stark naked”).
AKG, Ad Astra (suom. “Tähtiin”).
There were a few other bigger paintings I reallyliked too, continuing with the death and summer themes. Karhunputki (1889) was just nice and pretty, Elämä ja kuolema (1884) was thematically a bit more interesting, as a variation of the vanitas topic, utilising the life-heat of midsummer (that’s how I read the mating dragonflies!).
AKG, Elämä ja kuolema (1884).
In the upper floors of the museum some old technical toys were on show, and there was a nice installation piece by Kaisa Karvinen, in which visitors were invited to participate. You were supposed to write up what you dreamt of when you were 11 (Sigrid’s age at death) and what you dreamt of now. So my dreams are public secrets now:
Hanging dreams.
My dreams as a 11 year old….
Haven’t changed much!
After the museum visit we went for a short walk by the shore, which had been left to grow as it liked to. There was a little hut growing grass and flowers on its roof, an old damanged swing and pieces of dockwood whiling away in the waterline. Pretty peaceful, but you could still hear the motorway nearby – like the noise was slowly eating up that place where an artist once set up in seclusion. Oh well.
Definitely recommend a visit to Tarvaspää, and it doesn’t even have to be for the art, it’s just a nice place to stop for a coffee and some walking. Of course, if you are interested in art, Gallen-Kallela is one of the most important characters ever to emerge out of the Finnish art scene (or merge the scene out of himself, as you wish), and is worth knowing. This exhibition in particular takes a look to the soft side of the macho man, so I definitely got here at the right time.
*
Gallen-Kallelan Museo
Gallen-Kallelan tie 27
Espoo
Open daily 11-18
Be Afraid of the Woolf 