Sunday, October 30, 2011
Self-portrait 2011
That's it! Three sessions, one yesterday, two today. The picture is now at such a point – at the point of momentum like Juhani Tamminen would say – that I would like to continue, but my experience says that I should not. It is easy to make a painting if the moment is right. Having made it, it is also easy to overwork on it, i.e. to spoil it.
Identifiers: What I'm going to so now, self-portrait
Having a Go at a Self-portrait
You just suddenly notice you are sitting at a mirror, with your head inclined. You have drawn the beginnings of a self-portrait with a charcoal. Old-fashioned portraits are history. No-one has enough time these days to get settled and sit as a model long enough for the artist somehow to learn to see whom he is trying to represent. Haavikko wrote a book entitled “Yritys omaksi kuvaksi” [An Attempt at a Self-Portrait]. The title reflects how difficult the task is.
Identifiers: What I'm Going To Do now, self-portrait
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Intellectual Atmosphere of the 1960's
Anu Kaipainen had moved from Oulu to Helsinki. In 1967 she had published the novel entitled Arkkienkeli Oulussa [The Archangel in Oulu]. I had made a documentary for TV2 called “Eräs in memoriam” [A Certain In Memoriam]. In her letter, Anu writes about it and something else as well. The Oulu times had been hard for her, quite as they were for all of us who tried to make art or literature. We didn't keep quiet. We were quite noisy and organised events – and supported each other. Erkki Hyytinen burnt the manuscript of his novel in 1965 as a token of the depressing atmosphere. Anu is seen on the right in this photo.
Identifiers: Anu Kaipainen, letter
Friday, October 28, 2011
Linda G.
Linda is an American juvenile book writer. She had been in Finland as an exchange student and taken a fancy to the Kalevala story of Sampo. She was writing a novel about a family during the Winter War who lived in Vyborg. The family had a son whose age was the same as mine when the war broke out. Linda had found my story on the Internet. Journey to Vyborg It was astonishing that someone in the United States was interested in my childhood in Vyborg. I narrated and drew my recollections like the one above, Hirvimäki, with Alvar Aalto's famous library building in the background. When I asked Linda later how she was getting ahead with the book, she replied:
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Houllebecq and Salama
Our garden is big enough to keep me busy enough. I have been clearing Hungarian liliacs that were growing wildly and shadowed our neighbour's garden. Together with Airi, I took the branches to the dump in the trailer. When I was sawing, I was thinking about Michel Houllebecq's novel entitled “The Map and the Territory”. It is an artist novel about Paris, about things and places that are familiar to me. While reading it I dug up Hannu Salama's “Sydän paikallaan”. It is an author novel about Helsinki. Those two novels are like French bread vs. rye bread. It's not hard to guess which one I like more.
Identifiers: Houllebecq and Salama
Monday, October 24, 2011
Talks with Anna-Leena
I have wondered afterwards by myself if I exerted too much of an impact on Anna-Leena's ideas of the cruelty of making literary and art. In his book “Heikosti positiivinen” [Mildly Positive] she published one of our discussion which I had recorded. I followed Anna-Leena's development as an author and actor at a close distance. We still talk to each other. It was not many weeks ago that she last visited us with her son Lauri.
Identifiers: Anna-Leena Härkönen
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A Fellow Sufferer
I have received lots of letters and they have all been friendly. I recorded some in my diaries. Here an emigrant born in Vyborg feels he had lived a childhood similar to mine in the same streets and alleys as I. He found my pictorial story on the Internet in 2001.
Identifiers: letter, Vyborg people
Saturday, October 22, 2011
When We Gave Up the Finnish Markka
I copied these pictures of Finnish coins and notes in my diary at 9.15 pm on December 31, 2001, just a few hours before they became history and made room for the euro.
Identifiers: markka
Thursday, October 20, 2011
A Diary Page Ten Years Ago
People don't like losing the markka. No-one knows what will follow. Hopefully nothing – worse. The things are bad enough already. People also would not like to join the NATO military union. We just seem to slipping there somehow. And we would not like a federation, but some strange force is attracting us in that direction. The people is taken here and there no matter how hard it is struggling against. Power resides with the people, that's what the constitution says...
Identifiers: Power resides with the people
A Letter from Mika Waltari
I wrote a letter to Mika Waltari in September 1967 to ask him for a statement and opinion on Wäinö Aaltonen's production. I was making preparations for a TV film on the theme. I knew that Waltari was an art lover. After “carefully” considering my proposal, as he says in his letter, he finally decided to turn down my request. I had come to know Wäinö Aaltonen in 1958. I did not manage to finish the film when he was still alive. The film has since disappeared from the YLE archives.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Ilmari Kianto's Open Letters
In his old days, at the age of 85, Ilmari Kianto wrote open letters for the Kaleva newspaper. They were very popular indeed. Here is a fragment of a train trip from Helsinki to Oulu via Tampere, where Veikko Sinisalo joined in. He had compiled a poetic evening on Kianto's production. As chairman of the Merikoskikerho, I was receiving them both. In the town hall banquet room, Sinisalo gave his recitation, and we had dinner afterwards at Tervahovi. All in all, the evening turned out to be “unforgettable”.
Identifiers: Ilmari Kianto
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
The Laanaoja Bridge
I had seen a brilliant colour picture of van Gogh's painting “Bridge at Arles” in the Oulu City Library. Bridge at Arles. I decided that I should paint a similar picture of the Laanaoja bridge. I was sixteen. I wanted to become an artist. I studied art in the city reference library. For years, I walked in the Kastelli fields with my painting tools.
Identifiers: Laanaoja Bridge
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Reino Rinne, 1913-2002
Yesterday, on the day we commemorated Aleksis Kivi and Finnish literature, I remembered Reino Rinne, an author and journalist from Kuusamo, an unabated defender of the Kuusamo rapids, a philosopher and lover of art. In the 1970's we had been jointly planning a document on nature protection against outrageous destruction, which was very much under way. It was not approved by the YLE. “I remember a breathtaking plan for a TV film... But the time for the film has now gone.” This is how Reino thinks back in the dedication of his book “Luotiin Koillismaa” in 1995. In his book entitled “Totaalinen rauha” [Total Peace] (1987) he nails down his view of the meaning of top culture as follows:
“When I compare Urho Kekkonen's funeral to that of Aleksis Kivi and Eino Leino, I'm struck dumb. The raising of Kekkonen's glory, what shocking national splendour and hypocrisy! Finland should be ashamed before Aleksis Kivi and its excellent top culture in general. We should kneel down, bow down to earth.”
Identifiers: Reino Rinne
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Schjerfbeck Poster
In 1992 I made a TV film about Helene Schjerfbeck's large exhibition at the Ateneum. The poster on our sleeping-room door dates back to those times. It is hard to imagine a more simplistic painting. It represents a flower arrangement. There is not much left, if the superficial is removed from a picture. When the door is open, the painting is invisible against the wall. When you close the door and it becomes visible, your brain catches a mental image of an arrangement – probably much the same that Helene Schjerfbeck saw when she was painting it. What a strange painting!
Identifiers: Schjerfbeck poster
Sometimes Some Rhythm
Occasionally an old drawing from my archives pops up and stays persistently in sight whether I want it or not. This is one of them. It is from the late 1950's. I insisted on painting northern landscapes, although art education had brought to Finland the only correct style of painting, the non-figurative one. The winds of change were blowing everywhere, of course. I realised that his landscape belonged to the endangered types of nature. The wilderness, soon to be pierced by motor highways, was still vividly present in it. Even the sky was bluer, the woods more scented and Arctic brambles sweeter in those times. I must have intended to make a painting based on the drawing, and probably had actually done so. Now those rhythms tempt me to get back to the theme.
Identifiers: What I'm going to do now
Monday, October 3, 2011
Ten Novels
I once asked Erno Paasilinna to name ten of the best novels. He would not get down to do something so absurd. Milan Kundera describes in his book “The Art of the Novel” what he thinks makes a novel into a work of art. When it makes. Authors of significance to Kundera include Cervantes, Rabelais, Musil, Broch, Kafka and many others from Proust to Flaubert. In addition to telling stories, authors also tell about their era and changes in it. “In the Middle Ages, the unity of Europe was based on a common religion. In the modern era, creative culture replaced religion... Now culture in its turn is receding. But giving way to what and whom?” Twenty-five years ago, Kundera saw culture and art stepping aside – but giving way to what, he is wondering. Today we know in a very concrete way which forces rule the world. The art of the novel is capable and allows Franz Kafka, for instance, to say things about human conditions that no sociological study can say to us.
PS. I add a few more authors highlighted by Kundera: Joyce, Hašek, Gogol, Belyi, Dostoevsky and of course, Kundera himself. He makes it easier to understand what being European means through his analyses of important novels.
Identifiers: The art of the novel
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