The First Decade of Modernism
	Tiina Abel

	A year after the birth of the independent Republic of Estonia in 1918, the Ministry of Education, all worked up by the enthusiasm of building the young nation state, organised a grandiose art exhibition in Tallinn. In the rooms of the present English College, a retrospective of Estonian art was exhibited. On the one hand this was a propaganda event, clearly emphasising the national ideal. On the other, it was a summary of the development of Estonian national art from Academism to the newest art trends in Europe. The whole 1919 undertaking, although hastily assembled and pursuing diverse aims, was nevertheless most significant in our cultural history and, in hindsight, quite instructive. Alas, the exhibition suffered the typical fate of all official art events. After the enormous efforts of the organisers, only a few were entirely satisfied with the result. Because of the state-imposed interpretation of what nationalism really meant, the public was surprised to find embroidered and woven items sneaked in among the most avant-garde examples of Estonian art. The display thus demonstrated great eagerness rather than a concept that followed art processes professionally. The latter fact inspired several modernist literati to produce aggressive critiques in protection of innovative Estonian art where quite a few "art generals were demoted to simple soldiers". The fury of progressively-minded art people against 'mitten-pattern' dilettantism at times swelled into an unfair opinion-terror, but was nevertheless based on the sincere wish to provide young artists with the necessary spiritual space for free creation. While stressing the potential of progress, the critics turned a kindly eye upon both the young representatives of symbolism-national romanticism (OskarKallis, Aleksander Uurits, V. Tuul, BalderTomasberg) and the sympathisers of the truly avant-garde trends in art (Ado Vabbe). At the time when independent Estonia emerged, there were hardly more than three generations of professional artists of Estonian origin. By the early 20th century, local art culture lagged behind modern European art by several stages. In the course of the next few dozen or so years, Estonian art went through a so-called accelerated development period where a complete structure of art life was worked out. Museums were built, exhibitions became regular, artists' associations were founded. The paradigm of the development of culture that was valid, at least until the 1940 Soviet occupation, was articulated with astonishing perceptiveness by Gustav Suits, one of the spiritual leaders of the Young Estonia movement. His slogan for the 1905 movement was: "Let us remain Estonians, but become also Europeans!" The experience of modernism was thus selectively acquired over the first few dozen years and woven into the cloth of national self-realisation. The 1919 exhibition-related subjective art literature that was quite unfair towards many artists (including several early modernists) reflected the difficulty of becoming European as well as the complicated circumstances of the emergence of modern art.
	Quite understandably, no single original art movement has ever sprung up in Estonia. This fact inevitably makes creative reproducing one of the most significant problems in the development of modern Estonian art. In the tension of the accelerated catching-up process, different form-innovative ideas accumulated in the first decades of the 20th century: Estonian artists were simultaneously cultivating impressionism, divisionism, post-impressionism, art nouveau, symbolism, expressionism and national romanticism.
	None of these movements, however, reached Estonia in its pure form. These 'isms' often turned up in Estonian art in several modifications, transformed over time by newer trends; and they mutually diffused the boundaries and features of style, intertwined and magnified. For that reason we find in the work of the first generation of Estonian modernist artists - Konrad Mägi, Jaan Koort, Nikolai Triik and Aleksander Tassa - the infinite possibilities of the reflection and absorption of all the mentioned trends. To break out of Academism was naturally the calling of the entire new generation but, like elsewhere, this was not connected with just one wild experiment with form, moving away from nature for good. Mägi, Koort, Triik, etc. were urged on by an instinctive, unstoppable wish to join the modernist perception of life. For the first modernists, abandoning the ancient land-based way of life of the peasants meant giving up the idea of staying put. The art of the Young Estonia movement hid a hectic big city, understandable for the viewer with an experience of urban life. After St. Petersburg, the place where they first studied, the young artists travelled on to the then art capital, Paris. The intoxicating sense of expanse was aptly described by their contemporary, writer Friedebert Tuglas: "How many plans were made at our bohemian gatherings at that time, how much fantasy, irony was displayed, how many castles in the air we built! We dreamed of transferring the entire Young Estonia movement over to Paris, publishing a magazine in Paris, without in the least considering the ridiculous state of our circumstances. The borders were pushed even further: in our minds we travelled through all lands of culture, painting and writing, publishing our works in Paris, Rome, Alexandria or Calcutta."
	Without feverish movement into the future in all aspects of life and mind, real contemporaneity was unimaginable. The personality and lifestyle of the first generation of Estonian artists-modernists also included traces of dandyism, so typical of the modernist attitude. The story of Konrad Mägi, the most sparkling colourist of his generation, is an especially vivid example of how important was the careful polishing of a personality at the start of Estonian modernism. "He had fixed principles in clothing," wrote a chronicler of the bohemian life then. "The edge of his hat had to be slightly turned down in front, colour nuances of the tie and socks could by no means vary too much. And most importantly: the gloves and coat must not be too new! In Mägi's opinion, only shop assistants walked round with brand new gloves, meaning people without the remotest idea about good taste." To the artist's man-about-the town image were added sarcasm and illnesses (One must be healthy like the others, but one may be ill in a completely different way!), creating the picture of a sensitive type of artist, opposed to the bourgeois world and enjoying the spirit of the times. Such a decadent artist, able to turn tension and anxiety into creative work, had little chance of finding support among the viewers with a prevailingly peasant background. Art criticism of our early modernism is full of alienation between artists and their public.
	The early 20th century development of Estonian art was characterised by the organic intertwining of the ideas and forms of different art trends. The usage of colours as bearers of psychic states typical of German expressionism often cut into the colour harmony ideas of Fauvists. Eternal topics were depicted in art nouveau language of form and in colours that carry symbolic meanings. Late contacts with the development of modern art, at least initially, almost entirely excluded impressionism, which flourished here as late as the 1930s. Due to some not easily defined instinctive conservatism, the most radical art trends such as cubism and futurism never reached Estonian art during the first decades of the century. More commendable are the early attempts at abstract art by the young Ado Vabbe that remained the only ones of their kind for dozens of years, e.g. Paraphrases, created in 1914 in the spirit of Kandinsky. Vabbe's unexpectedly radical moment of creativity could only become unleashed outside the country. At the start of the independent Estonia, the atmosphere necessary for free creation still needed some encouragement. By the 1930s, the intention of building up a nation state had finally levelled the creative destructiveness of the artists.
	| Estonian Art 2/00 (8) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2000 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |