10 Questions by Lembit Sarapuu to Kaido Ole

	1. Did your relative Eduard Ole inspire you to become a painter? I have to admit that his role was immense, rather bigger than I would now like to acknowledge [Eduard Ole (1898-1995), painter, until 1943 lived in Estonia, then in Sweden. One of the most significant Estonian Cubists and Constructivists of the 1920s, later painted mostly portraits and landscapes. Brother of Kaido Ole's grandfather. - Ed.]. Fortunately I never tried to imitate his style, contrary to my artistically gifted father, who used to paint in his younger years, using the painting stuff left behind by Eduard. With the wisdom of hindsight, I seem to notice direct loans from my famous relative in the works of my father and in his practical advice to me - certainly no sin for an amateur. On my part, the fact of his existence in our family gave me necessary support and confidence. It added to the mysterious profession of an artist some security of being taken seriously by society, and my wish to become an artist was well received in the family. Without that I would have been much more hesitant.
	2. Do you intend at some point to continue your painting series of copper-head little men? Indeed I have abandoned them at the moment because that method became too familiar. I had a choice whether to change a bit or carry on in the same fashion as long as possible, in order to achieve a new quality. I chose the first option but I cannot exclude anything as far as the future is concerned. I like to complete a full circle and get back to the beginning.
	3. You attracted attention with your technically minimalist paintings. A clean table, minimal paint! Can we expect more painting-technical innovations from you? Let me say, without any false modesty, that these were no technical innovations. Or perhaps they were in a very narrow context. But naturally they were very important to me, because I attempted as a last resort to start painting from the very beginning and make only urgently necessary and personally perceived decisions. The reason, as every beginner knows, was the wish to achieve the essential sovereignty and separate myself from the huge organism of historical and contemporary art. Even if we take painting as merely a language or means to express something, it is still absolutely essential to get control over that language and tame it. That purpose requires a very strong talent and/or, to a certain extent, and in certain cases, a strong discipline and sense of the systematic. At first my hopes were based more on the talent but then it seemed as if everything would start dragging or would peter out altogether, and therefore I finally turned to the mind. Fortunately.
	4. Do you think that planet Earth is a suitable place for an artist to live and work? A good question. I'd like to mention that the Rapla lads, Marko and Kaido, alter egos of myself and Marko Mäetamm, offered a very straightforward answer to that by building a rocket in order to leave the Earth, as this was obviously no place to be be [Joint project of Kaido Ole and Marko Mäetamm was introduced under the name of John Smith and presented at the Venice Biennial in 2003 - Ed.]. After all, everything is different in the universe or, in other words, better. It is a matter of dispute how much irony the above-mentioned tale contains, but in any case it denotes one of the most extreme possibilities of replying to the problem you have raised. At the same time I am very keen on the greyest and most dismal everyday environment, and the ability of art to tackle it and make it more tolerable, not through its physical improvement but primarily through thinking or changing fixed meanings. This would be a certain ecological trend of happiness that focuses on the recycling of simple everyday intellectual resources. Amongst other things, the task of art there might be to reveal the value in gold of boring, uninteresting, uninspiring phenomena. Our planet Earth offers an unlimited choice of such phenomena, and their lethal embrace is one of the major factors that hinder the happiness of most citizens. In sum, on the way towards happiness, one should focus on the ordinary, which is an inexhaustible and recyclable resource, and not on the extraordinary, which is selfdestructive and therefore always insufficient. According to this reasoning, our planet is an ideal place to live.
	5. The onslaught of democracy and capitalism has brought along the ideology of the cult of violence, which an artist must accept. How, in your opinion, can an artist relate to art politics? 6. Do you think an artist should tackle the pseudo-social, topical problems or should he turn to more general, eternal subject matters? Or are both equally significant? I understand what worries you and I share with you the revulsion towards violence of any kind. However, the pressure on an artist, starting with curators and ending with society, is not at all bad; this is a normal inevitable environment where we must manage and maintain our principles. Nor do I believe that producing the 'wrong' art would necessarily lead to exclusion from the game. More important than the often too black-and-white disputes about the acceptability and topicality of certain themes, phenomena or even techniques, is the manner in which they are used and treated. What fascinates me about art is, first of all, its incredible flexibility and the infinite number of nuances concerning how to express what you think is important. This is a constant challenge to keep in good form, maintain your opinions, and at the same time retain sufficient communication (not a good word but I can't think of anything else at the moment). There are nearly always different strategies from wall to wall, and some prefer rigidity and a clear straightforward approach, which then seem perfectly credible to everybody; others enjoy producing multilayered and paradoxical texts that cannot be defined on the scale of 'for' or 'against'. On the whole I rely on the approach of our poet Alliksaar, who said that everyone, at birth, is given a specific time for self-realisation, and that an artist's most important task to his fellow citizens is to show how this knot of errors and contradictions can be unravelled while remaining a human being in the best sense of the word. In addition it seems to me that with every work the artist always takes a stand, both in the everyday and eternal dimensions, which are inseparable. It is inevitable - either a compulsion or a joy - to work with complete opposites, and only thanks to that can a good work contain unexpected value. Pretty and ugly, global and local, big and small, ad infinitum - they all exist only in pairs, and we cannot really talk about them separately, or the outcome would be a bad work. I hope I have managed to answer both your questions, as they seemed quite similar.
	7. Are you more an urban person or do you feel comfortable also in nature, which is not arranged by man? I must admit to being more a city person, which is where you and I probably differ a lot. Of course I occasionally 'visit' nature, pay it a visit, and I enjoy this enormously, but I like to spend the night in the midst of civilisation and not, heaven forbid, in a tent or something. Strangely enough I don't like to eat in the open air either: picnics, preparing food over a fire and similar undertakings are really not my cup of tea.
	8. Does a woman's beauty enrapture you and sometimes inspire you to create a work of art? It rather depends what you, old satyr, precisely mean by beauty and how much you keep concepts like beauty and sexuality apart when you talk about women? As far as I have ever used a woman for art, sexuality or sexual urge, and woman as its object, have always been paramount. Beauty in its more abstract meaning, as an association of forms and lines approaching an ideal, is too difficult to distinguish from the rest.
	9. You have travelled quite a bit. What country has had the strongest impact on you and where would you love to return to? Alas, the rumour about me as a globetrotter is deeply erroneous. I try to make a trip as seldom as possible, as I don't like travelling at all. I set off when I don't have a choice, and the biggest catharsis usually comes upon my return home. I do have nice memories of various trips, although even on those occasions the key to a good time is an excellent companion or companions, and then only as a reflection of that does a specific place acquire a pleasant colouring. As a human being, I am rather an 'ending' than a 'beginning' person, or in other words, I don't much like when everything is just beginning, has not been determined, is 'promisingly' fresh. Journeys, on the other hand, are not usually long, and a month or two is not really a considerable duration, not long enough to offer experiences of a new start. Using chess terminology, I prefer the middle game, and especially the endgame, which require a lengthy getting used to something. As you see, I am in no position to answer your question about specific countries and locations. I could instead name people with whom I would be prepared to go just about anywhere.
	10. Do you have any hobbies? I am an extraordinarily monogamous type, and as much as possible, consciously and unconsciously, I have tried to assemble and unite my activities rather than divide them. Almost all of the few things I do besides art that truly fascinate me are also art in a different form. For example architecture, from interior design to urban planning, is absolutely thrilling. How functionality becomes art and the other way round, or in layman's terms, how useful and useless form an inseparable whole. Another favourite is design. I have always made a tremendous effort and fussed about places where I have lived, to make them as close to ideal as possible. In the course of such do-it-yourself, I have discovered that I am perfectly able to build and produce more or less decent woodwork. In fact I have started enjoying such activities. Maybe this could be called a hobby? I have undertaken various works without any urgent need, tried to make something better, although there wasn't much wrong with it in the first place. I listen to records and collect them as well, so that there will always be something suitable for every occasion, because I prefer to do my own work together with music. Questions by Lembit Sarapuu. I hope the questions are not too stupid. Thanks for the replies! 26 October 2004 With respect for Lembit Sarapuu, his art and principles, Kaido Ole Tallinn, November 2004 Kaido Ole (1963), painter. In the 1990s became one of the most important painters in Estonia, whose works can be described as paradoxical, funny, conceptual, laconic. In recent years he has participated at the Venice Biennial (2003, together with Marko Mäetamm as John Smith) and at the 2nd Painting Biennial in Väsby, Sweden (2003). Has won several prizes for his works, incl Kristjan Raud prize (1998). See more here: www.hot.ee/kaidoole Lembit Sarapuu (1930), painter, exhibits since the 1960s. His paintings offer a highly singular interpretation of the mythological world where the hidden side of human nature and relations between male and female poles dominate.
	| Estonian Art 2/04 (15) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2004 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |