by Marja-Leena

Music in Finland

As a lover of opera and all things Finnish, I’m surprised and thrilled by today’s post on ionarts “Music in Finland”. Charles Downey writes about how active opera is in Finland today as well as its history: “It took the Finns a while to create their own national opera”, but now “Finland is probably the leading country for the production of new operas”.

I’m pleased also at the mention of Karita Mattila, a wonderful singer and actress, whom we were very fortunate to see in concert here in Vancouver about a year ago.

Charles Downey teaches music and art history in Washington, DC and his blog reflects his excellent knowledge and passionate interest in these subjects. My own music knowledge is spotty so there is a wealth of information here that I will be poring over.

Virtual Finland**, by the way, is an excellent site on everything about Finland, that I go back to frequently and have linked to before in certain posts.

PS. Note my comment on the Finnish language as being Finno-Ugrian not Magyar. See these pages in Virtual Finland**

** Virtual Finland sadly no longer exists and links have been removed.

August 20, 2004 in Culture, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Music 2 Comments »

by Marja-Leena

Meta-morphosis XII

MM-XII-(primo).jpg
Meta-morphosis XII (Primo)
Etching 76 x 56 cm.

MM-XII-(secondo).jpg
Meta-morphosis XII (Secondo)
Etching 76 x 56 cm.

MM-XII-(Terzo).jpg
Meta-morphosis XII (Terzo)
Etching 76 x 56 cm.

MM-XII-(passages).jpg
Meta-morphosis XII (Passages)
Etching 76 x 56 cm.

Statement on the Meta-morphosis series

August 18, 2004 in Meta-morphosis, Printworks 1 Comment »

by Marja-Leena

artmaking & myth

“Poetry happens when short-circuits of sense occur between words, a sudden regeneration of the primeval myths. . . . Not one scrap of an idea of ours does not originate in myth, isn’t transformed, mutilated, denatured mythology. The most fundamental function of the spirit is inventing fables, creating tales. . . . [T]he building materials [that the search for human knowledge] uses were used once before; they come from forgotten, fragmented tales or “histories.” Poetry recognizes these lost meanings, restores words to their places, connects them by the old semantics.”

– Bruno Schulz, “The Mythologizing of Reality,” in Letters and Drawings
(from Wood s Lot with thanks)

Substitute the word “art” for “poetry” (of course poetry is art ) and this quote becomes a kind of statement of my feelings about my art-making. It is somewhat similar in concept to this quote that is part of my artist statement for the TRACES exhibition held in Finland in 2002:

“Telling a story is a kind of prayer, a kind of meditation, a sacred act. It makes magic happen. Or is the story itself the magic?” – Erica Jong, “Inventing Memory”

August 18, 2004 in Concepts Comments Off on artmaking & myth

by Marja-Leena

World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples

“Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, will host the Fourth World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples from 15-19 August 2004. The theme of the congress is “The Youth Is Our Future” and it will bring together approximately seven hundred delegates, observers and guests from Russia, Scandinavia, and Central and Eastern Europe. The Congress aims at developing and protecting the ethnic identities, cultures and languages of the Finno-Ugric peoples; promoting the co-operation between Finno-Ugric peoples; discussing and finding solutions to their most urgent problems; and promoting the implementation of their right to self-determination in accordance with the norms and principles of the international law.”

This Congress is convened every fourth year. Previously it was held in 1992 in Syktyvkar (Komi Republic, Russia), in 1996 in Budapest (Hungary), and in 2000 in Helsinki (Finland). This event is currently underway with Finnish President Ms. Tarja Halonen attending along with other heads of states, guests from UNESCO, ECOSOC, the European Council, the Nordic Council of Ministers and so on.

This is interesting news for my Finnish, Estonian and possibly Russian readers, and anyone interested in linguistics and ethnology, and for me in that I did not know such important and extensive meetings have been and are taking place.

Some related links:

  • Official site of the IV World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples and the association pages.
  • A chart of Uralic languages showing the numbers of speakers, note how many are endangered.
  • More about Finno-Ugric people especially of Russia.
  • My archived articles under the category of ethnology, such as this on preserving languages and about Fenno-Ugrian people.

    UPDATE: Current news on this event, such as the opening address by Prof. Janos Pusztay
    UPDATE Sept.13.04: Speech by President of Finland Tarja Halonen – This is excellent – well worth reading!

    • August 17, 2004 in Culture, Ethnicity, Finland, Estonia & Finno-Ugric, Linguistics Comments Off on World Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples

    by Marja-Leena

    Smithson’s Spiral Jetty

    My daily newspaper The Vancouver Sun’s weekend edition has an Arts & Life section (subscription needed for online archives) which I often enjoy reading over lazy weekend breakfasts. The August 14th paper featured a fascinating article “Land art rises as lake shrinks” by Martin Gaylord for the Daily Telegraph. It is about Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake in Utah, built around 1970, and which has been submerged since a few years after. Now the water level is down to where it was and the Jetty “has re-emerged, transformed, glistening and white as snow”.

    Almost immediately after reading this article, I went to my computer to check emails and my favourite blogs, plus a few new ones that I had bookmarked to check out at leisure. One of these latter, From the Floor, would you believe, had this post:

    On the way to Spiral Jetty. Todd Gibson wrote about his plans to visit the Jetty with some great links, including to the original article in The Telegraph. Today he’s back with some photos and more to come. So go look for yourself and check out those links.

    The Spiral Jetty, having been submerged for three decades, has taken on the air of some ancient creation by early humans. Though Smithson supposedly was not interested in the spiral’s symbolism, I could not help feeling some connection to this symbol used universally by early people around the world. I have tried to search for interpretations for the spiral, but those are of course shrouded in time, and can only be conjectured.
    (thanks to Todd)

    UPDATE – Robert Smithson exhibition:
    This major exhibition begins its national tour in Los Angeles on September 12, 2004, at The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Los Angeles and remains on view through December 13, 2004. It will travel to the Dallas Museum of Art (January 14 to April 3, 2005) and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (Summer 2005). The exhibition features over 150 works, including paintings, works on paper, essays, photographs, objects, and films from 1955 to 1973.

    (thanks to Caryn at art blogging.la)

    UPDATE 2: See more Spiral Jetty photos

    August 16, 2004 in Art Exhibitions, Other artists 4 Comments »

    by Marja-Leena

    the artist in a gift economy

    I am really going to have to get my hands on this book: The Gift – Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde**. I am very intrigued and find the quotes really resonate with me as a lifelong artist who creates because of an inner need, rather than a need to sell (although of course I am happy when I do), and as an artist who blogs to share my thoughts and passions.

    Chris Corrigan has been reading and writing about this book periodically since July 20th. On July 26th Chris refers to the introduction of The Gift where Lewis Hyde is writing about how we receive the fruits of artistic gifts:

    The spirit of the artist’s gifts can wake our own. The work appeals, as Joseph Conrad says, to a part of our being which is itself a gift and not an acquisition. Our sense of harmony can hear the harmonies that Mozart heard. We may not have the power to proffer our gifts as the artist does, and yet we come to recognize, and in a sense receive, the endowments of our being through the agency of his creation…When we are moved by art we are grateful that the artist lived, grateful that he labored in the service of his gifts.

    On August 5th, Chris writes also about bloggers’ gifts:

    Bloggers offer immense gifts of time, reflection, engagement with each other’s ideas. My own thinking gets continually pushed and stretched by reading others and trying to respond to them. This quality of gift exchange provides a beautiful and powerful foundation for the community of people who share ideas freely on a myriad of subject areas. When bloggers form communities, it is around the cohesion of those who contribute to each other’s thinking. Don’t miss reading the thoughtful comments to this post.

    Read more for yourself about Chris’ analysis of “The Gift” in the posts of July 21st, July 23rd, July25th, and July 29th.

    Anna L. Conti also wrote about and highly recommended this book along with another one by Hyde called Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art** (Aug 10th entry). Here are some excerpts:

    A few years ago Margaret Atwood wrote a terrific review of these books for the LA Times […]: ‘The artist belongs primarily to the gift economy; without that element of creation which arrives uncommanded and cannot be bought, the work is unlikely to be alive. The Gift is the best book I know of for the aspiring young, for talented but unacknowledged creators, or even for those who have achieved material success and are worried that this means they’ve sold out. It gets at the core of their dilemma: how to maintain yourself alive in the world of money, when the essential part of what you do cannot be bought or sold.’ (Read Atwood’s full review)

    Lewis Hyde starts with the premise that a work of art is a gift and not a commodity, and goes on to explain the uneasy nature of the artist’s position in a marketplace economy. He leads the reader slowly and carefully to his surprising conclusion that “gift exchange and the market need not be wholly separate spheres.

    Thanks to both Chris and Anna!
    (**Available through Abe Books )

    August 13, 2004 in Being an Artist, Blogging, Books, Concepts 3 Comments »

    by Marja-Leena

    Art Appreciation

    An interesting discussion is underway over at Cassandra Pages about art appreciation. Yesterday, (August 11th) Beth wrote about arts support in Canada referring to some past comments I had made. Please read the new comments to that, and then go to today’s August 12th post. Joerg has already responded thoughtfully regarding art appreciation in Germany and the US.
    Beth and I would be very interested in your views!

    August 12, 2004 in Being an Artist, Culture Comments Off on Art Appreciation

    by Marja-Leena

    Meta-morphosis XI

    MM-XI-(primo).jpg
    Meta-morphosis XI (Primo)
    Etching, Engraving & Drypoint 76 x 56 cm.

    MM-XI-(Secondo).jpg
    Meta-morphosis XI (Secondo)
    Etching 76 x 56 cm.

    MM-XI-(terzo).jpg
    Meta-morphosis XI (Terzo)
    Etching 76 x 56 cm.

    MM-XI-(Passages).jpg
    Meta-morphosis XI (Passages)
    Etching, Engraving & Drypoint 76 x 56 cm.

    August 12, 2004 in Meta-morphosis, Printworks Comments Off on Meta-morphosis XI

    by Marja-Leena

    Warhol at VAG

    lenin72.jpg
    Lenin by Andy Warhol ( silkscreen – from Artchive)

    Another destination visit with our European visitors was to the Vancouver Art Gallery and its main summer exhibition Andy Warhol: Prints and Drawings from the Warhol Museum.

    Warhol’s work continues to be shown around the world almost to the point of over-exposure. This VAG show even merited a report on Art Daily (no longer publishing, but archives are still on line), and of course, at The Andy Warhol Museum site. We have all seen lots of Warhol’s work in the past, including here in the VAG and in Europe, so we were pleased to see a number of pieces here that were new to us: some very early works, many drawings and a few prints like the above portrait of Lenin, which I rather liked more than many of his works that have become too common.

    Another exhibition Baja to Vancouver: The West Coast and Contemporary Art presents the hottest contemporary artists working on the West Coast of North America today. Although Vancouver and Los Angeles are internationally recognized art centres, the West Coast has never before been the subject of a major survey exhibition.

    Most memorable works for me were the installations by Liz Magor (including “Double Cabinet” shown here), Brian Jungen’s First Nations masks and a wall piece made from red, white and black Nikes, and Russell Crotty’s wonderful hanging Globe Drawings.

    Speaking of Brian Jungen, the Vancouver Art Gallery received a $50,000 (U.S.) grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for the purposes of organizing a major touring exhibition of works by this Vancouver artist. Read more via this PDF. I wonder if this is why the VAG presented another Warhol exhibition in less than 10 years. Vancouver gets so few major international exhibitions that I felt disappointed in this decision, the result of budget constraints as usual.

    August 11, 2004 in Art Exhibitions, Other artists 2 Comments »

    by Marja-Leena

    Museum of Anthropology at UBC

    totem.jpg
    (detail of totem in Great Hall – I love the circles of figures wrapped around the pole)

    For the past few days we have been showing off our lovely city to some family visiting from Europe. One of the highlights was The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

    The building alone is wonderful to see, designed by renowned Canadian architect Arthur Erickson**, who took his inspiration from traditional northern Northwest Coast post-and-beam style architecture. The Museum’s soaring glass walls and spectacular setting – on the cliffs of Point Grey overlooking mountains and sea – are uniquely suited to the Museum’s extraordinary collection of massive Northwest Coast totem poles, carved boxes, bowls and feast dishes, as well as diverse objects from around the world.

    I always love revisiting the Great Hall beneath which stand towering totem poles from the Haida, Gitxsan, Nisga’a, and other First Nations and especially the Rotunda, where Bill Reid’s massive sculpture, “The Raven and the First Men” is displayed. Take a peek around the MOA with this Virtual Tour.

    There is a great deal to see at MOA, but another particular favourite was Robert Davidson: The Abstract Edge, Recent Works by Renowned Haida Artist. This exhibition, put together with the National Gallery of Canada and others, show his sculptures and paintings. Davidson’s statement resonated with me: My passion is reconnecting with my ancestors’ knowledge. The philosophy is what bred art, and now the art has become the catalyst for us to explore the philosophy.

    His contemporary work moves between the abstract and the old traditions. The creative freedom he grants himself comes from his experience in helping to restore the place of art within ceremonial practice – and with it the understanding that ‘culture’ can be both inherited and newly imagined. (museum statement)

    Then, to finish on a high note, an exciting moment in MOA’s bookstore, I found this beautiful book:
    Inuksuit: Silent Messengers of the Arctic     by Norman Hallendy. I could not resist it after just recently writing about Inuit Places of Power.

    ** Additional links of interest on Arthur Erickson:
    some great buildings
    a fan’s site

    August 10, 2004 in Anthropology, Art Exhibitions, Other artists 1 Comment »