Shock Tourism in Kuressaare
Kädi Talvoja

	Kaja Kärner is one of those artists of the Soviet period whose fame seems to rely more on legends than actual works of art. Her earlier collages and abstract paintings, dating from the 1950s and 1960s, have not been displayed often, partly because of circumstances and partly because of the artist's own choice. They have therefore not developed into art icons that would evoke in the public a joy of recognition, which has become, to some extent, a feature of quality. At the same time her reputation as a radical avant-garde artist is not backed by her better known, rather realistic, urban views in weird synthetic colouring and her pictures of everyday life painted with near-grotesque humour, which she produced at the same time as her abstract works. Such narrative pictures of everyday life should be read in a totally different key - considering the phenomena of place and location, in which fascinating tales of Estonian life and even of little dissident games in Estonia of the late 1950s and 1960s are revealed. Kaja Kärner's case shows clearly that the small local community of artists contained no clearly defined opposition between the radical avant-garde and conservative attitudes that wished to continue traditions. Kärner's status as a dissident artist even now depends more on incidents in her life rather than on her work; a more detailed analysis of the latter is yet to be accomplished. Myths about Kärner are enhanced by her belonging to the fraternity of young Tartu artists, some of whom (Ülo Sooster, Henn Roode, Valdur Ohakas, etc) were sent to prison camps in 1949, while others were expelled from the public art life - Kärner herself was compelled to exchange her respectable drawing teacher's career at the Tartu State Art Institute for the far more modest job of painting labels and signs at the Tartu Economic Council. Perhaps a more important fact is that in 1960 she took part in the legendary and scandalous non-official art exhibition at Tartu 8th Secondary School, which was regarded as the first manifestation of a generation of artists devoted to the avant-garde in post-WW II art history.
	Occupants in Kuressaare is an exceptional painting in terms of its acuity, or rather in terms of the obviousness of that acuity [Kuressaare - capital of the biggest island in Estonia and the Saaremaa county. In the Soviet Union the town was named Kingissepa after a communist revolutionary - Ed.]. Kärner regarded herself as critical of the authorities, but as a rule she hid the sharp meaning of her pictures in neutral titles, which were translated back into dissident language in the early 1990s, when Estonia regained independence. Occupants in Kuressaare was softened into Sailors during the Soviet period. However, to an exceptional degree, in this picture the message lies in the picture itself and not in its title. The painting shows the yard of a military headquarters. At first sight, the artist's attitude seems to be documentary rather than offering any sort of comment. The edges of the picture, which cut objects in half, are associated with something occasional, which provides the painting with a certain cover of 'objective' reality. Some details and compositional devices nevertheless reveal Kärner's attitude. The picture contains anxiety - the high fence around the warehouse behind the light building with tiny windows and the military machines close off the horizon, crushing all hope of finding a single optimistic allusion. The central characters are sailors (the previous title, after all, refers to that), hardly discernible from the beige background, and they walk, hands in pockets and caps boldly pushed back, towards the headquarters. However, what first attract the attention visually are the officers in dark uniforms sitting rigidly in the open lorry, and then one of the most intriguing characters of the picture - a female figure in a revealing dress and provocative posture, whose dark clothes symbolically connect her with the 'dark knights'. Another symbolic fact is that Kärner painted the woman on the edge of light and shadow, and shows the tree in the yard behind the fence without leaves, although the season does not justify this. The year of completion of the painting (1957) was in the midst of Khruschev's 'thaw' period [The Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev loosened the grip after Stalin's death, bringing about a more liberal atmosphere in the cultural life of the 1950s. The so-called 'thaw period' was nevertheless strictly regulated and censored. - Ed.], which nevertheless did not bring about any freedom of the word or picture. Kärner's courage in associating the faithful followers of the occupying forces with the theme of declining morals is thus more amazing: according to official sources there was no prostitution in the Soviet Union. In art classics, it is always interesting to find out how the works function today, whether they can achieve more than merely an illustration of some moments in the author's biography, whether they can describe aesthetic ideals or the everyday reality of times past. Occupants in Kuressaare passes the test admirably, showing the situation half a century later with extreme sharpness, which could easily set an example for many a contemporary artist with a critical eye. Time has turned everything upside down. Kuressaare and the whole of Saaremaa, as the westernmost edge of the Soviet Union, and thus a potential place for possible escape abroad, was a closed zone with border guards. To get there, even mainland Estonians had to present an invitation or a written permit. This has now been replaced by a situation where a day in the Russian army is advertised and sold as entertainment for those keen on shock tourism. Thus Kärner's painting also starts functioning in a different manner - forcing us to abandon the roles of accusers and martyrs, and asking us instead to exercise some self-criticism. All we have to do is imagine the real situation, which of course seems completely inconceivable considering our recent history, where Estonian young men, hands in pockets and caps boldly pushed back, drive to a crisis area on a peacekeeping mission, with the following words on their lips: "Farewell, dreary everyday life". Kaja Kärner (1920-1998), one of the major female painters of post-WW II period. In 1948 graduated from the Tartu State Art Institute, but in the conditions of censure only reached her first personal exhibition in 1971. In the 1950s Kärner was sacked from her job as a lecturer and expelled from the Artists' Association as she refused to follow the Soviet art norms. Belonged to the so-called 1960-group with her fellow students, including the Moscow-based Ülo Sooster, one of the major Soviet avant-garde artists. Within narrow circles and at rare exhibitions they focused on the inner innovation of art. Kärner also experimented with abstractionism. In later decades again concentrated on urban views and landscapes. Kädi Talvoja (1974), art historian, MA student of art history at the Estonian Academy of Arts, since 2002 works at the Museum of Estonian Art
	| 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 |