Rethinking the Nature of Art. Open Studio in Kütiorg
	Heie Treier

	There is a new cultural centre in a South Estonian primeval valley. It functions on the principle 'think globally, act locally' and has already been noted internationally. The founders of the centre, photographer Peeter-Maria Laurits and journalist Leelo Laurits, were in their 'previous life', i.e. before moving to Kütiorg, well-known figures in Estonian media. They spent a year in New York, where they gained remarkable success in both the art and media world at its highest level. Peeter Laurits' U-turn in recent years, i.e. his decision to focus on ecological problems, is all the more surprising because he introduced postmodernist, cynical photography into Estonian photographic art in the 1990s and is also a theoretician of photography. After the 'farewell exhibition' in Tallinn in 1997, the artist moved to the countryside. He lived amongst nature, in a place which initially even lacked electricity and where the buildings had to be prepared for winter living.
	Since the 1960s, Kütiorg has been known as a summer residence of Valdur Ohakas, a bohemian painter of the older generation. The Kütiorg motifs depicted by Ohakas adorn many a wall in Estonia. In his formative years in the early 1980s, Peeter Laurits was also among those to study painting with Ohakas. At the beginning of the 1990s, a skiing resort was built in Kütiorg and bulldozers were let loose in the valley. Ohakas could not put up with such barbarity and abandoned his beloved summer home. After standing empty for years, new life has finally emerged there.
	The Open Studio in Kütiorg functions in similar lines with the Wanås sculpture park in West Sweden and Pedvale sculpture park in Latvia. All such centres exist thanks to the enthusiasm of a few persons, whose aim is to unite a beautiful nature spot with contemporary high culture, and give artists a chance to work in the open air. The area's ecological problems are taken very seriously. In order to knowingly direct various processes, the people in Kütiorg co-operate with naturalists and local authorities.
	The Open Studio in Kütiorg has become a basis for study for the students of the University of Tartu and the Estonian Academy of Arts. In addition, various international projects have already been realised in which professional dancers, musicians, poets, photographers and sculptors have participated. In the summer of 1999, a small park was set up in Kütiorg to present sculptures of nature, through which artists have tackled the problems of nature and civilisation in an ironic, meditative or poetical key.
	On St. John's Day, 24 June, the German artist Anke Mellin completed her Observation Tower for Watching Beavers and Birds. The whole construction follows local ethnographical customs - it has been built of beams with not a single iron nail used to connect them. The observation tower, where one person at a time can meditate, stands on top of a hill in the middle of a field; it offers a panoramic view of the sky, forest and a small lake where beavers live. The seemingly simple construction incites strange processes pertaining to energy. The nature observer in the tower is alone, but not depressed as he learns to perceive harmony and establish good relations with the surrounding nature and his own body. The tower is a therapeutic object, the significance of which can be fully understood only from personal experience. Such an object of nature art inevitably makes one think of the mentor-figure Joseph Beuys, who has synthesised art and medicine. He also maintains that contemporary man must be TREATED with art. Numerous artists have mechanically imitated the visual form of Beuys. Anke Mellin, on the other hand, has taken into account the specificity of the place and found a creative solution to the essence of Beuys's teaching.
	Artists from different cultures each bring something from their own cultural context to Kütiorg. The English sculptor Paul Rodgers lives in Estonia. In building an elaborate nest box up in a tree, not for birds, but for humans, he addresses us with good old English humour or even irony. Pjotr Ryabov, a Finno-Ugric artist from Russia based his work on the rather unique anthropological and ethnographical environment of his country where there is a strong belief in nature (or paganism, if to follow Christian terminology) even today. He enriched Kütiorg with his forest gods - guardian spirits in the shape of wooden sculptures. The young Estonian sculptor Kalle Pruuden built A Labyrinth of Catching the Lightning made of wire. In the future, other Estonian sculptors like Terje Ojaver will hopefully contribute something to the centre as well. Nature art as such has not yet achieved full appreciation among Estonian artists. Although in the 1960s and 1970s young Estonian avant garde artists went along with land and body art of the time, the problems back then were different, as was the social context; those artists were looking for an outlet in the suffocating Soviet totalitarian society. At the end of the millennium, man is haunted by alienation and ecological problems. The Kütiorg Open Studio will hopefully motivate contemporary Estonian artists to rethink the relations between art and nature so that both can co-exist.
	| Estonian Art 2/99 (6) | Published by the Estonian Institute 1999 | ISSN 1406-5711 | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |