history
The historical background of the Tallinn Applied Art Triennials
2006 | 2003 | 2000 | 1997
Tallinn Applied Art Triennial 1997
USELESS THINGS
Nice things that no one needs
Applied art must create useless things!
During the period of economical revolutions and global crises, when our thinking and acting is more than ever deter mined by the calculation of expenses and profit, a large-scale international exhibition has been arranged under this motto. Only a few years after the political revolution in Estonia, the touring exhibition of design and craft, initiated in Tallinn, called on artists to describe the way “from dreams to realty”. Is the present exhibition a regression then? Does it witness of hesitations or, rather, self-assurance?
On the contrary, the name of the exhibition has been chosen very smartly – first and foremost, it confirms widely diffused prejudices and raises banal associations, which, then, lead a person to crucial ideas simply by force. What are the truly useful and useless things in this world threatened by choking of its own overproduction? There are about 10,000 things in an average European household. How many of them are really useful? Has applied art been well advised, when it tries to make itself more usable, approaching the methods and goals of product design, and concentrating on large, market-orientated mass production? Or should applied art oppose itself to the dictation of usefulness altogether – like free art does -, and serve one’s mind and freedom, rather than fashion, market, and the desire to please?
It seems, most of the 304 artists from 26 countries do not participate because of the title of the triennial. More likely, they were influenced by an idea expressed in the circular, coinciding with their own experiences. Namely, the idea that the increasing amalgamation of the aesthetic and the conceptual in contemporary applied art no longer satisfies the traditional comprehensions of applied art as such.
Indeed, the present exhibition affirms that the tendency to divide art into free and usable is as obsolete as observing works of art on the basis of the methods of craft only. Who would still want to measure the quality of figurative expressions by the quality of craft and the proper use of material? Thus, the decision of the jury was based upon the question, whether the work of art under the observation was independent and new, and whether the materials and the technique were suitable for the execution of its artistic idea. From among 304 applicants, the international jury chose 79 artists of 16 different nationalities. Two thirds of them come from Finland and the Baltics. This can be explained, first and foremost, by their geographical closeness, as well as the tradition of triennials. But besides that, it certainly indicates the high level of applied art in this region.
The exhibition not only shows the convincing variety and artistic idiosyncrasy of the selected works, but also reveals a problem which occurs once in a while, when applied artists free themselves from the restrictions of the function of use and start dealing with free subject matters: some stay loyal to the craft acquired and the materials used and endeavour to express ideas with the help of these – although they might get better results by some other means. Free artists, however, are not so tied to their means of expression. In their work, idea always dictates material, and not vice versa. At this exhibition both approaches can be seen.
Although some of the works displayed seem to have no connection with the hidden purpose of the subject “Useless Things”, they are not in a wrong place. The jury has deliberately chosen them for the sake of their high quality of craft and expressive perseverance. And actually they hold fast to the subject matter, belonging to the kind of handicraft which is said to produce “nice things that no one needs”.
The content of this slapdash expression is quite general and is neither right not wrong, while it contains criticism which the latter has been dealing with ever since the beginning of the industrial era, and which cannot be avoided at the Tallinn triennial either. How should applied art react to the reproach of product designers, who consider this realm of art inopportune because it is made of unique and precious materials and, therefore expensive? And how could it get rid of the repute of an applied art which is constantly fighting for the same position as free art has? Neither do the buyers and admirers make it easy for applied art to reorientate, as they would prefer a little of everything. If applied art was to fulfil their wishes, commodities would be cheap like industrial goods and at the same time individual like works of art, as well as traditional and of high quality like decent handicraft.
Nils Jockel
Chairman of the jury
Useless redundant meaningless things
Relationships between man and object are definitely dictated by man. Without his or her will or activity no object is made, a thing is not realized: it cannot become corporeal. Thus, strictly speaking, a groundless thing made without proper reason, an unfunctional thing, cannot ever exist, as the maker of the thing must have had a wish or reason to make it, it was necessary for someone and thus, only for that reason, the thing was made, the idea was put into practise. Obviously the initiator is not necessarily the only interested in the completed object.
Naturally, the issue does not lie merely in the maker but also in his time. Today we do not need an axe, not even a scythe: things are made and they disappear from everyday use when a better thing is invented to replace them. Stone-axes are not in use any longer, scythes are seldom used, chain-saws, lawn-mowers and combines are still in use. So far.
It seems that man has been selfish and greedy, inventing more “needs” and forever making more things to meet these needs. Among others, aesthetic beauty has been posed as a need. It could become a medium in its turn to express other needs: the need to show off one’s vanity or wealth, the need to air one’s political and religious ideas. Here the utilitarian is joined by the meaningful and the object obtains a double or even multilateral function. The meanings accumulate and still new ones can emerge. The modern designer, artist, any creative person with interests, dedicated to inventing and changing things, works on the level, which is dealing with certain functions more complicated than function of use – the conceptual level of a thing. To some extent the inventor has the role of a myth-breaker and, in his objects he realizes the proof of his preceeding theoretical line of reasoning. He himself and someone else need the object just as it is.
Where do the myths of utilization come from? The myths that are well-rooted in our language: a useless thing –a thing that cannot be taken into use – a thing that cannot be put into sensible use. Unless there is need, purpose and sense, our efforts will be in vain, no real thing will emerge. Such pragmatism, supposedly, comes from protestant ethics that overestimated work and its product. Protestant rationalism observed functionality in its narrow meaning that finally (about a hundred years ago) lead to Adolf Loos’ well-known comparison of ornament and crime. Modernism attempted to get rid of “non-functionality” but failed. Observing the development of Estonia we see that up to WW II we moved along the same tracks as Europe in general: even the new term applied art of the 1930s reveals the symbiosis of “protestant spirit” and modernism. Everything that was made was to be “applicable”.
In Soviet times, up to the end of the 1960s the term applied art was not opposed to its content. Problems arose as soon as the first photos of so-called art design objects were published in Western journals. Estonian critics of the time, as well as of the 1970s and 1980s, the undersigned among them, were not inclined to call the first locally made objects of the kind applied art any longer. (Hereby the exhibitions “Space and Shape” are referred to.) the English term art design was well accepted and adopted although one felt that the conceptual applied art i.e. the art design was to ask forgiveness for its existence from the applied art proper. The latter began to feel interior and acquired the complex that has, here and there, survived to the present times. It seems to me that we here in Estonia are not the only ones with the problem. This issue is: how much usefulness and how much else – idea, beauty, politics, erotics?
The Tallinn Applied Art Triennial “Useless Things” is a sort of summary (or intermediary report as time will tell) on the issue. It is also a manifestation that objects actually are made up of many various things of different use, things that are even not always “applicable”, the manifestation that there are no meaningless things whatsoever. The local life might get a message that beautiful things in shops are not always the most interesting ones (and not the most essential ones either). The local industrialist and designer might feel enraged that their sphere of activity has been made a moot point. As a result he might snatch the initiative for the next triennial exhibition that he then would call Useful Things without a play on words this time.
Krista Kodres
23.02.1997
A Few Ideas on the Necessity of the Unnecessary
Things and objects are neither good nor bad in themselves. They simply exist. It is only the human eye that gives them an appearance, a function, significance.
Every eye, however, is not capable of looking and thus it does not see. It cannot see the invisible world behind the visible objects, another visage of reality that we may wish of fancy to go away; we cannot switch it off, though.
In the invisible world the correlations are different. The visual idea can correlate with the sound here. The inner vision and the inner ear belong together as they can receive the same experience simultaneously. Visible things do not only show but allow us to listen to the harmony and beauty of every existing object.
Already Aristotle explained to his students that objects contain a deeper wisdom in them than books. The same was expressed by Joan of Arc at her trial. And Bernard of Clairvaux built his life experience on trees and stones considering them more real and realistic than the theories of philosophers. “The music of the world has been written into objects so that it could be heard. Everyone has to prepare himself to listen. Only one condition has to be considered and it depends on the self: one has to accept humility and be patient, one has to be ready to learn and listen, one has to be responsive to the “correlations” that echo the meaning of objects. They are not hard to find but they are hard to hear…” (Bernard Bro, La beauté suvera le monde, Cerf, Paris, 1990). Thus one should learn to see things. One must build up one’s vision to be able to see. “Look at my sculptures,” advised Constantin Brancusi, “so long until you begin to see them.”
Isn’t this just one of the troubles of our times that we are unable to stop, look and listen? Our bustling about does not give us an opportunity to get engrossed in things. It makes us perfunctory. It makes us pursue illusions that never make anybody happy, though. One of these illusions may be called meeting our needs. Basically, man is a hungry creature always needing something. Having met his primary needs he discovers or invents new needs, and to meet these he has to hustle anew and worry again. Objects, beings, even fellow humans are automatically divided into two categories – necessary and unnecessary. The first are lucrative and others go into a dustbin.
Linguistically it is interesting to note that the necessary can become indispensable but unnecessary remains what it is – useless. Virtually it does not even exist. It is non-existent like the pronominal endings of the negative in Estonian grammar. In case there is no action, why bother about the agent’s – the one that does not do – person?
Generally we are not interested in things in themselves but only in our relationships with them. If it gives or promises profit, it is necessary. In case we place profit first in our mind, the necessary will soon change into obligatory and eventually enslaving. And this is what is going on at present. The feverish production of new commodities, new objects promoted by the advertising industry.
Sociologist Jean Baudrullard who has attempted to analyze and classify man-made objects (Le systeme des objects, Gallimard, Paris 1968) claims that our consumer society is dominated rather by some magic mentality than by plain materialism. This mentality is a kind of fetishism, a neurotic attachment to objects that should give protection and energy in the struggle against anxiety deep down in the soul.
That is why reading the catalogues of large department stores has such a pacifying effect: you are given opportunity to approach objects not only by acquiring them in reality but in dreams – the washing-machine or computer you do not have yet but could have…!
Magic, however, is targeted on the material and thus the comfort obtained from objects does not endure long in the hardship of life. When an illusion shatters, it leaves an emptiness behind and this is quickly made use of by a businessman who suggests acquiring new commodities to get fresh pleasure.
We can get off the merry-go-round when we accept the meaning of objects, learn to see themselves, to become ascetic with a clean soul and spirit, cleansed from reactions of self-interest and self-gain. So that one could enjoy a beautiful adornment in a goldsmith’s shop window and not start considering the price; so that one could love objects and beings outside oneself, just for themselves!
Objects – especially these objects that do not meet our immediate needs – teach us about beauty of the world. These objects may be the blue birds made by a glass-blowers at Skansen, the Little Mermaid at the Copenhagen Harbour, Sandy Calder’s coloured flags in the wind; a spruce-cone on the roadside or a round pebble on the beach, washed by the waves.
Unless the objects were there, the world would be totally functional as a tyre-plant or an electric power station and where would the mankind be then? If it is true that “beauty saves the world” (Dostoyevsky, Bernard Bro), it goes without saying that the lack of it will help to send it to perdition.
Unnecessary objects may be luxury as the latter is something conductive to sumptuous living, an indulgence. In many a definition, though, a mercantile flavour can be detected: a luxury object must be expensive, should even not be attainable to everybody and express prestige above beauty.
Would it not be high time to apply a new meaning to the word luxury? To replace the price with finesses of forms and colours? To push aside all the temptations of prestige and consider only the beauty of an object? In this case it would not matter whether the object is “necessary” or “unnecessary”. The borderline between the two is not rigid anyhow. Only the aesthetic value and pleasure obtained from it would be essential. This kind of luxury would not be superfluous any longer, it would be the supreme object of necessity.
Naturally, not everything unnecessary can become a luxury. Uselessness or needlessness also produce trash, the place of which is indeed, a dustbin…
The 20th century has sometimes tried to claim that trash is art. More often than not, it was caused by the lack of fantasy, the craving to create something fast, to make something extraordinary, to catch the public attention at any price, to shock, to anger because it was not in the creator’s powers to make them admire. The result may sometimes be interesting, surprising but certainly not always pleasant.
As said before, our attitude to objects depends on ourselves. Objects have a meaning and they symbolise something. They may express denial as well but they do have a meaning. To perceive it one does not need philosophical training. Mental approach to objects might be far clumsier than an emotional one. Are we aware of the fact that deep down in us “the immortal instinct for beauty” (Baudelaire) is hidden? It should help us distinguish between the necessary and the unnecessary on a higher level. It might open our spirit, elevate and develop our personality or, as it is preferred to say nowadays, structure it.
There are objects that love us even when they have no direct use, even they do not serve us or meet our everyday needs. This love is expressed through beauty. Beauty is a big mystery as Paul Valèry has written; the same mystery perhaps, that according to Einstein stands by the cradle of both, the authentic art and the authentic science.
Fanny de Sivers
Participating artists:
Christel Allik / Estonia
Katrin Amos / Estonia
Hanne Bertelsen / Denmark
Irena Biechonska / Israel
Dorota Bielas / Israel
Alvaro Botella / Spain
Eglé-Ganda Bogdaniené / Lithuania
Esther Brinkmann / Switzerland
Gatis Buravcovs / Latvia
Astrid Bärndal / Germany
Bjarne Christensen / Denmark
“Ciempiés” – K. Kinnander / Spain
Jadwiga Drewinski / Germany
Gabriela Felgenträger / Germany
Felix Flury / Switzerland
Ulla Fogelholm / Finland
Elita Freimane / Latvia
Ona Grigaité / Lithuania
Gudrún Gunnarsdóttir / Iceland
Eero Haikala / Finland
Sari Hedman / Finland
Mirja Mikkonen-Huhtela / Finland
Rytas Jakimavičius / Lithuania
Inese Jakobi / Latvia
Kaarin Bonde Jensen / Finland
Raija Jokinen / Finland
Elna Kaasik / Estonia
Aino Kajaniemi / Finland
Silvi Kalda / Estonia
Viivi-Ann Keerdo / Estonia
Kaarina Kellomäki / Finland
Signe Kivi / Estonia
Vladimir Klein / Czech
Eve Koha / Estonia
Karol Krčmár / Slovakia
Anka Kröhnke / Germany
Marita Kulvik / Finland
Janis Kupčs / Latvia
Minako Kusama / Japan
Ülle Kõuts / Estonia
Ivi Laas / Estonia
Eero Lintusaari / Finland
Åse Ljones / Norway
Velga Lukaža / Latvia
Sara F. A. McDonald / England
Iveta Miháliková / Slovakia
Judith Morgan / Australia
Eija Mustonen / Finland
Kadri Mälk / Estonia
Lennart Mänd / Estonia
Irene Nordli / Norway
Baiba Osíte / Latvia
Marja Palmujoki / Finland
Kaie Parts / Estonia
Katrin Pere / Estonia
Marjukka Pietiäinen / Finland
Valda Podkalne / Latvia
Ulla Pohjola / Finalnd
Paulina Eglé Pukyté / Lithuania
Zaiga Putrama / Latvia
Mari Pärtelpoeg / Estonia
Ülle Rajasalu / Estonia
Kaire Rannik / Estonia
Timo Rytkönen / Finland
Mare Saare / Estonia
Livia Slizova / Slovakia
Anu Rank Soans / Estonia
Junko Tanaka / Japan
Ulla Torop / Estonia
Annaliisa Troberg / Finland
Irmeli Vaher / Estonia
Maria Valdma / Estonia
Larissa Vanninen / Finland
Vesa Varrela / Finland
Dzintra Vilks / Latvia
Õnne Õunap / Estonia
Dorothee Wenz / Germany