Wahlroos: Devoted to Kalevala Devoted to Kalevala: Perspectives on Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Kalevala Art Tuija Wahlroos Museum Director Gallen-Kallela Museum Abstract In addition to his many-sided activities in the field of pictorial art, Akseli Gallen-Kallela has been very commonly defined as the Kalevala illustrator. A need to depict Finland’s national epos followed him throughout his life. In my article, I wish to open up questions and problematics concerning this task. I also shed light on the developing or changing ways of interpreting the mythology into art. Gallen-Kallela started his last but unfinished Kalevala project, the so-called Great Kalevala while staying in the United States in 1923-1926. It was supposed to become the final synthesis of what the artist himself had learned up until then about the Finnish people, nature and traditions. Akseli Gallen-Kallela said of his work The need to have Gallen-Kallela on thus: one’s skin brings into focus an interesting I derive little personal benefit from manner of returning the “official” images from dividing my time between so many the museum walls back to people on a deeply different fields of the arts, but in a personal level. It also gives fascinating ideas to young, fledgling nation, such as ours, interpret the profound question of the purpose we need a spirit of enterprise and and the use of the mythological symbols. It inspiration. Others will follow in my would be a subject for another study, but in this footsteps, and more committed artists context, it provides yet another good example of than I will absorb influences and the quality of Gallen-Kallela’s Kalevala art: like develop each field independently, as myths themselves, his art is constantly open for specialized experts. Besides, I need the new interpretations and purposes and its elements stimulation that these exciting and narratives bend smoothly to ironic, serious, experiments have given me. And, in the respectful or critical variations. end, it’s not only for art’s sake that I am In Gallen-Kallela’s case it is especially doing this. For me, art is life, religion – interesting how the desire to illustrate the everything. (Gallen-Kallela’s Kalevala haunted him all of his life. This sketchbook 1897; as cited in Karvonen- separates him clearly from his contemporaries Kannas, 1996, p. 110). and underlines his unique role. It even reveals his fearless attitude to take risks – artistic and The artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1856-1931) is a economic – while many of his colleagues thought unique phenomenon in Finnish art history. His the task to illustrate the epos would be nearly versatile and massive production consists of impossible.1 In my article, I wish to open the paintings, drawings, graphics, illustrations, problematic to Gallen-Kallela’s lifelong task of design, textiles, uniforms, flags, photography and depicting mythology and to show how he even buildings. He carved, hammered, printed, approached it. A special focus is given to the engineered and built. An educated artist merged artist’s last but unfinished project, The Great into a skilful craftsman and this combination Kalevala, which he started during his 1923-1926 built the cornerstone of Gallen-Kallela’s artistic stay in the United States. identity. By crossing over the boundaries of the bourgeoisie and rural life by transmitting folk art Kalevala as a Guiding Star - Developing the into the field of fine arts, Gallen-Kallela was able Image of the Myth to create images, which met the needs of his time Early Kalevala themes appear in to promote Finnish art both on international and Gallen-Kallela’s sketches at the age of 16, soon domestic levels. He filtered layers of influences, after he had started his fulltime art studies at the secular and religious pictorial traditions, sense of Drawing School of the Art Association of different materials and techniques into his art. Finland in 1881. Adventurous incidents From this simplified diversity comes the strength connected to the Sampo myth and the tragic hero of his image, which has not faded. It is also Kullervo were among the first themes that remarkably manifested in his Kalevala related appeared (Okkonen, 1935, pp. 15-17). The art. These strongly contoured and emotional interest towards Kalevala reflected both the works have been etched into the minds of Finns and they still keep on living in our culture –in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! popular as well as in subcultures, for instance in 1 Pekka Halonen’s opinion was published in the forms of tattooing. magazine Aika 1910. (Bonsdorff, 2009, p. 75). 28 Journal of Finnish Studies, Volume 13, Number 2, Winter 2009! artist’s personal interest as well as the common sacred substance from the every day. It relies on and growing public and institutional demands for an individual’s capability to understand the new illustrations (Okkonen, 1961, p. 199; essential characteristics (Anttonen, 1996, p. 62). Wahlroos, 2004, p. 52). Gallen-Kallela’s sacred and national substance A request for Kalevala art had aroused grew from his close experiences of rural life and in Finland already in the beginning of the 19th nature. They made the world of the Kalevala century soon after the first and the second alive in his imagination. versions of the Kalevala were published in 1835 and 1849. Robert Wilhelm Ekman (1803-1873) In regard to their themes, the old tales of was the most significant painter in this field in the Kalevala evoke in me the warmest 1850s and 1860s (Ervamaa, 1981, p. 9). His feeling of familiarity, as if I had lived and efforts to create a wide series of illustrated scenes experienced it all myself. But when I use from the Kalevala have remained as original these themes, it is not in order to drawings and as two self-published booklets with “illustrate” them, but because their reality few of his approximately 100 drawings corresponds to my own imagination and published. He also painted some large canvases they arouse in me a yearning to put them (Stewen, 2008, p. 73). on canvas. Nor do I proceed from the Ekman made his images at the time theme, but rather from my own state of when the idea of Finnish art and style did not yet mind and conception of painting, the exist and when Finnish artistic culture, in its images that appeared in mind, having infancy, still had not developed its institutions. It already lived in my soul since my early was obvious he painted according to European childhood (Gallen-Kallela, 1903, as cited models and following his teacher, famous history in Okkonen, 1961, p. 417). painter Frenchman Paul Delaroche. Ekman’s Kalevala works are partly detailed and Throughout his life, Gallen-Kallela faced the ethnographically-inspired studies of imagined challenge of how to bring into pictures the ancient Finns and partly reflections of sensual mythological imagination, which was at the same Parisian salon paintings. The inability of Finnish time very concrete and multifaceted, real and critics of that time to evaluate both the demands supernormal. Gallen-Kallela’s mental images of and the results of this new task might have been the Kalevala found their first realization in the the reason for the quite indifferent attitude spirit of realism. However, he soon came across Ekman received (Ervamaa, 1981, p. 10; Stewen, the problems of realistic depiction. The 2008, pp. 72-74). However, his works have an metaphors of the old poems were illustrative, important place in the history of the Kalevala concrete visions, while their content referred to illustrations and they clearly had an influence on the supernatural world of spirits, seer-shamans young Gallen-Kallela when it comes to the and incantations. Coexisting in the poems were handling of the themes and the compositions. the everyday and the sacred, the real and the When Gallen-Kallela started his otherworld. Kalevala career, he faced the same problem as In his Kalevala images of the late Ekman: how to find the balance between national 1890s, Gallen-Kallela sought a form of themes and international form. At the beginning, expression that would combine the multiple the realistic approach served as a solution, and meanings of the theme with simplicity and Gallen-Kallela’s early Kalevala paintings were lightness of expression – the coexistence of based on recognizable Finnishness with original naiveté and seriousness familiar from the Early details from nature, costumes and utensils Renaissance. The new impulses adopted by painted in a French realistic outdoor manner. Gallén in the early 1890s – stylization, archaism, Compared to Ekman, Gallen-Kallela had time on primitivism, the study of ethnography and the his side. In late 19th century Finland, the whole achievements of ancient cultures – all began to concept of Finnishness was under a new influence the core solutions of the paintings, formulation since our national position as a which he was creating. A further element Grand Duchy of Russia was changing. There was towards a more dense and reduced composition a national need to define Finnish identity and was provided by graphics, which appeared in Gallen-Kallela gave his answer through his art. Gallen-Kallela’s oeuvre after 1895. His depictions of Finnish nature, people and the The period when Gallen-Kallela lived Kalevala were recognised to be important isolated in his distant countryside home Kalela, because they showed the potential of our own also included work in applied arts, and the use of heritage and culture. decorative elements and colour opened up in a According to the scientist of religion new way through experiments with materials. Mircea Eliade, the right historical moment is Adding to this ensemble of various impressions needed to reveal a specific, national and also personal impulses – a quiet life in natural 29 Wahlroos: Devoted to Kalevala surroundings, grieving for his daughter2 – we Alongside individual works of art, there were obtain a picture of the starting points for the best- plans, which expanded all the way to a hand- known of Gallen-Kallela’s works, his painted deluxe edition on parchment.