TURUN YLIOPISTON JULKAISUJA ANNALES UNIVERSITATIS TURKUENSIS SARJA - SER. B OSA - TOM. 358 HUMANIORA Johanna Ruohonen IMAGINING A NEW SOCIETY Public Painting as Politics in Postwar Finland TURUN YLIOPISTO UNIVERSITY OF TURKU Turku 2013 From the Department of Art History School of History, Culture and Arts Studies University of Turku FIN-20014 Turku Finland Supervisors Professor Altti Kuusamo University of Turku Dr. Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna, Senior Research Fellow University of Helsinki Pre-examiners Professor Jonathan Harris Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton Dr. Liisa Lindgren University of Helsinki Opponent Dr. Liisa Lindgren University of Helsinki Custos Professor Altti Kuusamo University of Turku Layout: Päivi Valotie On the cover: Tove Jansson, “Electricity”, 1945. Oil on insulate board, 286 x 213 cm. Helsinki Art Museum. Photo: Hanna Riikonen, Helsinki Art Museum. ISBN 978-951-29-5293-9 (PRINT) ISBN 978-951-29-5294-6 (PDF) ISSN 0082-6987 Painosalama Oy – Turku, Finland 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 7 Preface: Re-visioning the Invisible 9 I PUBLIC PAINTING IN THE SOCIETY AND IN ART HISTORY 1. The Politics of Public Painting Monumental Painting as Public Art 15 Being Public 17 Private Sector Public Painting 23 Public Art and Agency 26 Monumental Memories: Art in Remembering and Forgetting 29 Setting the Framework 32 2. Public Painting in Art History Mural, Monumental, or Public? 36 Between High Art and Decoration 38 National Art in an International Context 41 The Uninteresting Public Painting 47 Building a Tradition (of Ignoring Public Paintings) 49 II FORMULATING NATIONAL ART 3. Picturing Ideologies Nationalism and the Early Finnish Public Painting 57 Realising an Ideology 62 National and Foreign 68 Addressing a Divided Nation 75 On a Lighter Tone 82 National Character for Art 87 “Art for the People” 94 4. Public Painting in the Reconstruction The Creation of National Unity 100 From War to Reconstruction 106 Raising the Destroyed North 108 Continuing Earlier Practices 116 III PUBLIC PAINTINGS OF THE FINNISH WELFARE STATE 5. A Joint Effort Constructing Finnish Art Policies 121 A New Task for Municipalities 124 School Construction and Art in Education 129 Governmental Art Commissions 133 Indicating Corporate Social Responsibility 139 Monumental Altar Paintings 144 Opportunities for Artists and Finnish Art 149 6. Competing Art Paintings through Competitions 155 Awarding the Correct Artists 160 Institutional Friction in Competitions 162 Local versus National 167 Painting for a Public 170 7. Imagining Finnishness From Politics to Images 177 Nation as a Family 183 The Days of Life 190 Work and Rest 195 Modern Society 203 Forgetting the War 212 8. Abstraction in Finnish Public Painting Abstraction and the Public 217 Art in Architecture 220 A Watershed for Art Historians 226 Institutional Acceptance of the Art Informel 233 IV CONCLUSIONS 9. Public Paintings as Material and Political Agents A Continuing Tradition 245 The Paradox of Public Painting (for Art Historians) 247 Nostalgia and a New Society 249 Notes 254 List of Works: Public Painting in Finland 1900−1970 273 Abbreviations 284 Sources 285 Index of Artists 307 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As always, this research would not have been possible without the participation of a number of people in different institutions. I am most grateful to my supervisors, Professor Altti Kuusamo from the University of Turku and Dr. Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna, Senior Research Fellow from the University of Helsinki. Professor Kuusamo is a passionate scholar, who has provided the most enjoyable workplace for us researches at the Department of Art History, and aided my work on many levels. Dr. Kervanto Nevanlinna has followed my work closely, and encouraged me further with her wide-ranging expertise, helpful criticism and support. I thank you both! I also want to express my gratitude for Professor Harriet F. Senie for welcoming me into the Graduate Center of the City University of New York for the academic year 2006–07 and sharing her expertise on public art. I thank Professor Jonathan Harris from the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, and Dr. Liisa Lindgren from the University of Helsinki for acting as external assessors of my dissertation manuscript, and for the useful criticism provided, and Liisa Lindgren also for accepting the position of the opponent in the public defence of the dissertation. I have had the pleasure of working at the Department of Art History at the University of Turku, even though most of the time not physically there, and I want to thank all of my colleagues: fellow doctoral students who have discussed my work in seminars and unofficial occasions, the delightful staff of the department, Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, Tutta Palin, and Lars Saari, as well as the helpful secretaries Sari Miettinen, Tilda Junko, and Laura Salmi. I thank Riikka Niemelä, Annika Landmann, Ringa Takanen, and Nataša Bulatović Trygg for the communal experience of sharing an office, and Kai Stahl, in particular, for the numerous coffee breaks, and one weekend of long nights of work during the last, critical year of my research. Fellow researcher Katariina Kyrölä, a dear friend from the years of the Turku Student Theatre, has been a great help also professionally: always a few steps ahead, she has shed light on many unwritten and written practices of the academic world. I am deeply indebted to the National Doctoral Programme in Art History for financially making my research possible, professors Riitta Nikula and Renja Suominen-Kokkonen as its directors, and Hanne Selkokari for the practical side of matters, and for the important contacts and feedback I have got through the three summer schools I participated in. Furthermore, I want to thank Art Foundation Merita, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Turku University Foundation, and Lieto Savings Bank for financial support on my work. My research has taken me around Finland and also abroad: I cordially thank the institutions who have let me use their photographs and materials, and all the kind people in archives and art museums who have taken time from their busy days to assist me: Riitta Kormano, Marjo Aurekoski-Turjas, and Ninna Pulli from The Museum Centre of Turku, 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Leena Mattelmäki, Satu Oksanen, and Tuija Honkala from the Helsinki Art Museum, Soila Kaipiainen, Sirpa Joenniemi, and Mikko Marjamäki from the Tampere City Art Museum, Tarja Talvitie from the Kuopio Art Museum, Jaana Oikari from the Jyväskylä Art Museum, Sari Rautanen from the Rovaniemi Art Museum, Päivi Rahikainen from the Regional Museum of Lapland, Tarja Kekäläinen and Katariina Kemppainen from the Oulu Art Museum, Sinikka Miettinen from the Varkaus Art Museum, Merja Ilola from the Hyvinkää Art Museum, Päivi Viherluoto from the Hämeenlinna Art Museum, Heli Ahmio from The State Art Commission, Michele Cohen from the Public Art for Public Schools in New York, Kristina Garmer from the Museum of Public Art in Lund, Sweden, the helpful staff of the Finnish Painters’ Union, Alfred Kordelin Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation, and many others, all of whom I unfortunately am not able to mention here. I thank Kari Kotkavaara, Teija Luukkanen-Hirvikoski, Petja Hovinheimo, and Arja Kohvakka-Viinanen for sharing their insights on research fields which touch upon mine, and Päivi Valotie for the beautiful layout of the book. I have no words to express my thanks to my family and friends: my parents Ulla and Matti Ruohonen, who have been my first and strongest supporters, and in particular my father for reading the manuscript at its final stages. My dear friends with their expanding families I thank for bringing joy and everyday adventures to my life, and my spouse Jani Merikivi for being there all the way. Our amazing children, who were born in the midst of this research, I thank for existing. I dedicate this book to you. 8 PREFACE PREFACE Re-visioning the Invisible “There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument. They are no doubt erected to be seen—indeed, to attract attention. But at the same time they are impregnated with something that repels attention, causing the glance to roll right off, like water droplets off an oilcloth, without even pausing for a moment.”1 The words of the Austrian writer Robert Musil from the 1930s apply similarly to public painting. Indeed, here lies the great paradox of public art: a permanent artwork becomes such an integral part of the visual fabric of the everyday environment that its audience stops seeing it. A work of art is only noticed, then, in its absence. Andreas Huyssen has suggested that the wrapping of the Berlin Reichstag by Christo in 1995 made the building visible in a way it had not been before. The veiling, in fact, unveiled the building.2 The veiling functions as an antidote to the visual water-on-oilcloth effect of public monuments. Finnish public paintings have become invisible not only for their daily audiences but also for Finnish art historians. In previous research, the number and significance of Finnish public paintings has been undervalued, as a consequence of which I set out to investigate a much smaller production than what in reality existed. This research began, then, at a very basic level: by tracing a production, which had not been recorded before. The number of paintings surprised me in the course of the research, and I came across new paintings up until the final stages of my studies. “Come across” is not perhaps a very scientific, yet perfectly valid term—the paintings came to my knowledge through many curious ways. At an early point of my research in this field, I found an archival reference of a painting called Kalapoika (Fishing boy), painted by Otso Karpakka in 1958 for Keskusjatkokoulu (“Central Secondary School”) in Turku. [Images 129−130.] I lived in the city but I had never heard of such a school.