Marja-Liisa Torniainen:
JOY!
Elias Canetti and Christo. What have these two great 'C's got to do with each other? Remembering a question I had heard about the influence of childhood experiences on an artist's production, I was searching through my mind for an author who had poignantly described the subject. There are plenty of them, of course, but the first one to suggest himself to me was Elias Canetti. Checking the titles of his main works in an encyclopedia, I found to my surprise that he also comes from Bulgaria - like Christo.
In his trilogy The Tongue Set Free, The Torch in My Ear and The Play of the Eyes, Elias Canetti depicts richly and lovingly his childhood and youth as the son in a Spanish Jewish businessman's family in different parts of Europe - and analyses the impact events would later have on his life. At the beginning of his memoirs, he writes about his wonderful, multilingual and -cultural native town Rustsuk (later Ruse): "Everything I have experienced in later life had already happened in Rustsuk before."
He left the country at the age of seven.
So Christo Javacheff, later Javatscew, also grew up in Bulgaria. I do not know what kind of cloth was weaved in the factory owned by his family, but in any case his father was a textile manufacturer. Later, as a young man, Christo moved to Paris. He made a living by painting portraits in the street. He was very skilled at that. At that time, he also met Jean-Claude, daughter of a general. Surely he experienced memorable moments in the streets and on the bridges of Paris. You cannot take a bridge with you as a souvenir to America - but you can still parcel it up, can't you? The union of Jean-Claude and Christo has lasted, as lovers and as colleagues - like Pont Neuf.
When I was young, people used to stretch and fold their sheets before taking them to the mangle - or not taking them. The great mangle was a story of its own. I will not go into that. But all of us children ushed, gleefully, under the flapping sheets being folded. My own son always crawls into a bed about to be made...
In front of highly esteemed visitors, a red carpet will be spread...
Curtains are opened - and drawn - in life and in theatre.
Bookstores and draper's shops are inspiring places. Too inspiring for someone with small means, so I try to avoid them. What an enormous experience an entire factory with all its cloth must have been... for a little boy. And enormous is what his later creations are, too, no mere kitchen curtains.
For a child there is no such thing as 'normal', as he has not yet learned the norms, to do the normal things, to be without experiencing, to live without living. To him there is no separation of the holy and the material, there is just the Wonder of Life. This is the simple fact that artists repeat in their productions, striving to show the miracle and value of it even where we have let it fall into an oblivion of wortlessness.
In the Amos Anderson Art Museum, each floor is filled with Christo and Jean-Claude's great plans for the use of cloth, detailed drawings of works envisioned and photographs of realised projects.
In them, we all get to sit together under big parasols, to walk in a park along promenades covered with yellow and gold, we Very Important Persons, to stroll on the golden midlle-of-the-road... to find the hidden reality anew
ABRAKADABRA
to see again!
The most characteristic thing in Christo's works is perhaps their communality, the joy of a shared experience. I hope that the inhabitants of NYC will yet have the chance in future to push forward together through joy's guard of honour formed by the cloths of Christo in Central Park.
| "When I was a child, |
| I spake as a child, |
| I felt as a child, |
| I thought as a child: |
| now that I am become a man |
| I have put away childish things" |
Christo hasn't.
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Well, then, what did Christo and Canetti have to do with each other in the end? Was there something more essential they shared than their native country, social class, emigration, profession and initial letter? Yes! There is a common factor: Masses. Masses. Masses.
"Masse und Macht", the main work of Elias Canetti, yet to be translated into Finnish(!), is about power and instinctive behavior of the masses, the terror of which the author became to experience already as a child in Vienna before the First World War.
The masses seduced by Christo, however, gather in a more positive spirit, though at the same time, doubting and wondering, into unruly meetings...
Christo and Jean-Claude Projects, Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland 13.1. - 31.3. 1996, Works From Lilja Collection. Education for Visual Arts Critic, Exercise n:. 6, Kankaanpää Art School 1996. Translation by Minna Marttinen 2006. Quote from the Holy Bible: Revised version, London; Cambridge University Press
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OPENING SPEECH IN KIASMA THEATER 9. SEPTEMBER 2003
AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE NORDIC ART ASSOCIATION
in the Nordic Conferece Art in Architecture&sustainable development arranged by the Nordic Art Association of Finland.
Dear Audience: Kära Vänner från alla nordiska länder, Ladies and Gentlemen, visitors from the Nordic and other countries and all over from Finland - architects, artist colleagues and especially the people from all levels of construction work - and - of course, all lecturers and speakers for this conference. All You Very Important Persons. Everybody.
At last after quite long preparation time I have this honour and joy as the President of Nordic Art Association to say to all of You: Welcome! - you are so warmly welcome to Helsinki, to Kiasma and to this conference.
The Finnish Parliament Member and former President of Nordic Council, Ms Outi Ojala has unfortunately been unable to attend to this conference. So, the real opening words will be said by two people: first, the Member of the Nordic Council's Education and Culture Committee and Member of the Finnish Parliament , Mr Mikko Alatalo (who is also a performing artist) and then, as in the programme, President CEO, Mr Mauri Niemi from SKANSKA Incorporated.
But I have a few words to say before them. It has been very interesting moments during the building days of this conference. This theme, art connecting with architecture has raised up very strong and powerful emotions and passions in people connection with it - and - still does. That's good. We can't reach anything new without enthuasiastic attitude.
But how art is connecting with the sustainable develoment?
Usually, in our society, when people are planning remarkable projects, in building industry, too, they naturally are also trying to remember everything, that should be included - but still they forget the arts. When I have read about the visions for the third millenium, I have not seen in those writings or heard in those speeches anything about art - or, if anything is mentioned, it was so little, and certainly not in main clause, that I don't remember it. That's why our title is what it is. We want to say that there is no sustainable development without including art - that we can't forget art when we are planning our housing tracts and public buildings, our life and living environments for the glorious new century.
The subject of every lecture here should illuminate this point from many different viewpoints.
In Finland, we have highly professional people with highly professinal skills - constructors, architects, officials and artists - they can do their jobs well (if I can say in this way), but the difficulty is coordinating their skills together - that is, co-operating well! This is surely the most important issue and problem, we can notice it everywhere in different circumstances; so it's not no sense to try avoid the problem here, either. Still, if there is a problem, there is also a solution for it! And if there are many problems, there are many solutions, too. How the difficulties has solved in the other countries, what we can learn from our neighbour lands?
I hope You will enjoy of these September days in Helsinki, and I hope that we, perhaps, can catch together some new ideas and reach, some, new understanding to go forward with this issue.
But now it is time to introduce Nordic Council's and the Finnish Parliament representative, Mr. Mikko Alatalo; You are most welcome!
This English text is checked by MaryJane Gregory 2003
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