The Estonian absurd

Unlike Latvians, who share their smiles sparingly, Estonians really like absurd humor.

After crossing the Latvian-Estonian border, a crowd of strange creatures make you stop at the edge of the village of Lilli. The various gnomes, dwarfs and ghosts were probably driven across the border by rational Latvian thinking, and then they had a rest on the edge of the first garden, sniffing lung-expanding portions from the magical-absurd Estonian air. You can see here forest and water elves, banana monsters and walking demons, one of which even carries a witch’s house on its head. Even a child’s little plastic motorbike has been incorporated into one of the figures, molded from concrete and then painted. This is the first show we enjoy of unbridled Estonian imagination and creativity.

Arriving in the small town of Viljandi, we see cats everywhere on the side of the road. They are also made of concrete, and their purpose is both to increase the fun and to prevent unwanted parking.

Following the cats, we reach the pride of Viljandi, the Museum of Naive Painters. It was actually the residence and studio of only one local naive painter, Paul Kondas (1900-1985). The latter has been preserved furnished, with his paintings on the walls. In the middle of them, facing the entrance, hangs his self-portrait, which is so similar to Ceaușescu that I suggested on FB that perhaps the Conducător did not die, but hid here after the fall of his regime as an Estonian naive folk painter. But I overestimated my readers, many of whom took the suggestion seriously, so I will not push it any forward here.

In addition to local Estonian myths, Kondas was interested in several other mythical and absurd topics, especially space travel and demons.

If you look at the pictures alone, you can see in them the evidence of the private mythology of a depraved mind. But the situation is more complicated than that. The nurses – I mean the young ladies in charge of the museum – turn on a ten-minute film in which a friend of Kondas analyzes his most important paintings. The analyst is also a phenomenon, with a funny goatee, a flattering voice in which he convincingly spouts the most absurd things, while, next to the analyzed pictures, we also see him sometimes dressed in cheerful colorful shirts, standing in the doorways of Estonian wooden huts, with palm trees made of paper on either side. These ten minutes convince us that we were wrong. The museum is the product of the private mythology of two depraved minds, one of whom, through his qualifications and professional jargon, managed to convince the local authorities that the other was a great artist to be taken seriously, and the whole of Viljandi has been saying so ever since.

The film is only in Estonian, and although my Finno-Ugric mother tongue of course immediately enables me to understand it, nevertheless the few-page English excerpt that the nurses give us before the film is of a great help in understanding the subtleties. I will quote a few sentences from it to each image.

Strawberry Eaters (1965) “Fifteen years after completing the painting, Kondas felt that the strawberry eaters’ eyes had been executed in a very «primitive technique» and needed urgent repair. As a result, the men’s and women’s eyes became maddened, ideally suited to reflect the fears of marriage.”

In Taara’s Holy Grove (1957) “The topic of Kondas and religion is a fascinating one. It can be said that he did not like anything ready-made and did not believe in the church as an institution. This painting was displayed with two other works by Kondas in the Viljandi Museum in 1960. The local newspaper Tee Kommunismile (Road to Communism) published a review which said: «Unfortunately, there were some works at the exhibition, which had been copied from old-fashioned picture postcards». The artist was deeply insulted by the comment, and this remained the only time in Kondas’ lifetime that his works were publicly displayed in his home town.”

Life (1960) “Clearly recognisable in the painting conducting the funeral service is Georg Rosenberg, the pastor of Suure-Jaani, with whom Kondas did not have a good relationship.”

U.N.! (1960) “This painting acknowledges the perennial problem of inherent animosity between the members of the United Nations. In the painting, the so-called primitive peoples are fighting against the world’s most prosperous countries. Kondas managed to turn the theme of pointless warfare exhausting the globe into grotesque.”

The Encounter (1966) “This painting is an irony of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s maize cultivation policy. Kondas painted the maize people, or Russians, on an impossible mission on the Moon. It soon becomes clear that maize does not grow on the Moon. As a result, they are weak from hunger and apparently have also eaten their clothes. Fortunately, a US space rocket lands on the Moon, and the Russians greet them as lifesavers.

Santa Claus fishing (1981) “This is Paul Kondas’ last autobiographical work summarising his life and work. Santa Claus was one of the few positive characters to him, a ritual figure associated with expectation and sharing. He does not expect much, does his job and leaves, but hopefully returns next year.”

Thanks to the effective laudation, not only did Kondas’ studio survive, but the rest of the premises are also used as exhibition halls for the works of other naive artists – painters, concrete sculptores, concept artists, trash house builders and others –, a perfect illustration of “one fool makes many”.

But Estonian humor does not end with the museum. Entering the neighboring café, we see a multitude of coffee mugs on the wall by a local artist which directly continue the psychedelic line of Kondas.

And when leaving the café, a group of half-naked street warriors with sculpted bodies march past us in a tough, patriotic manner. The grotesque thing is that many of them use crutches or wheelchairs. The town’s water tower floats above them like a house on duck legs.

As I write this in the garden suburb of Tartu, in the former Jewish quarter, looking out the window of a hundred-year-old wooden house, I see a burly man of about eighty years coming shuffling down the street in a pair of underpants, holding a Coop bag full of goods in his hand. While I think about how he went to the Coop in a mere pair of underpants, walked through the supermarket, sorted the goods and put them in his basket, paid at the cash, and everyone took this for normal, I see him again shuffling back, now with an empty Coop bag.

It’s not exactly precise to say that Estonians love absurd humor. In Estonia, absurd is the clef of life, and even a foreigner will learn to read life in this clef in a day or two.

I would like to read an Estonian art history handbook. I am sure that Bosch’s paintings are classified as realism.