Creative twin brothers Johani and Liimand
Heie Treier

	If the leading artists of Estonia in the 1930s, Andrus Johani and Kaarel Liimand, lived today, they would probably not be painters but video artists or conceptualists, and would effectively shape the local art life. They might additionally, form a group of artists. In the 1930s Johani and Liimand were good friends and, even more, there were an amazing number of similarities in their lives and destinies. They were born and died in exactly the same years, 1906–1941. Both studied painting at the Pallas Art School in Tartu, and were in the legendary class which graduated in 1933. Both travelled to the Soviet Union, as well as to the art capitol of the time, Paris. They shared principles in art and left-wing political views. Both young men fell in love with the charming graphic artist Aino Bach, five years their senior, who later became the wife of Kaarel Liimand. Both artists became leading figures in Estonian art in the 1930s, and both died, at the age of 35, fighting against fascism. Similarities continued even after their deaths – in the post-war occupied Estonia, ie Soviet Estonia, both artists were turned into fetishes of official Soviet art propaganda, which naturally put off art historians. Their paintings have not inspired too many critics, as it seemed impossible to write about them in any other way than the official approach. Hilja Läti did publish a monograph (1973) on Kaarel Liimand. Andrus Johani, however, would have been left without a book if his temperamental bibliographer widow Helene Mugasto-Johani had not managed shortly before her death, herself blind and suffering from cancer, to compile a collection of memoirs and articles, Andrus Johani in His Time. It was published in Tallinn by Kunst in 1998
	Exhibition as a milestone The true reason to take a new look at these two authors only came in 2006. This is a purely practical reason as well – a new history of Estonian art in several volumes is currently being written. Thus the art historian Tiina Abel compiled a Johani and Liimand exhibition at Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn [The exhibition is open until May 2007 – Ed], trying to wipe the dust of history from the paintings and pose questions that have not been of interest to anyone for a long time. Tiina Abel, as a curator, in fact, continues the concept of the collection Andrus Johani in His Time, where political aspects have been set aside, and both artists-friends are presented from a more human angle. Indeed, Johani-Liimand’s apolitical paintings primarily represent a general human aspect, where portrait, figure, nude, landscape, urban view etc dominate. According to the values spreading at Pallas in the 1930s, the artists turned their attention to the specific (ie inner) values of painting, such as colour, texture (painting with a palette knife and not a brush, following the Belgian style of painting) etc. Although many paintings are figurative, they lack their own narrative, just like the French impressionists who were greatly admired at Pallas. However, unlike the impressionists, the Johani-Liimand art lacks the element of enjoyment. Existing in the sphere of leftist intellectual influence, these artists sympathised with simple people who earned their daily bread with hard work, with the slum environment and everything that was a part of their own background. They, therefore, painted what they knew and understood best. Art historian Mai Levin called their manner of painting ‘poetic realism’.
	The problem of realism Throughout the entire history of modernist art, an artist’s political views have been primarily revealed by his choice of manner and style of painting. In the 1930s, both the Hitler and Stalinist totalitarian regimes determined their own official art policies. The key term of the Marxist aesthetics was ‘realism’, expressed here by Georg Lukács on the basis of the novels by Tolstoi and other writers. In the art theory of the 1930s, the ‘dilemma of realism/modernism’ acquired special sharpness, as the confrontation was analysed by Fredric Jameson. For Stalinist Russia, the only accepted style was ‘realism’, defined narrowly as the propaganda art of the state of workers, where only politically ‘correct’ scenes, odes to the working man and his joy, could be depicted. Estonian artists who cultivated the ‘modernist’ style during the Stalinist 1940s and 1950s, were arrested and deported to Siberia. Several committed suicide. Against such a background, Andrus Johani’s large-format optimistic painting (1941) becomes quite problematic. It shows a demonstration of the working people in Tartu, with red flags flying and the Stone Bridge (destroyed a few years later in the course of Soviet bombing raids), looking like a triumphal arch, in the background. Johani was killed by the Nazis before he managed to finish the painting. However, the painting does not, in a sense, represent ‘realism’ at all – the artist construed the mass scene, not on the basis of photographs, but from his own sketches, relying on his relatives and friends and other striking characters. The paintings was a construction, or wishful thinking, from the start, rather than a ‘realistic, photographic record’ executed via painting. On the basis of paintings by Johani and Liimand, we could argue about the essence of ‘realism’. What then is the relationship between ‘realist’ art and reality? How much is ‘realism’ a neutral recording and how much is it ideology or politics? And WHOSE ideology or politics? How exactly is ‘realistic’ art used or attacked by state structures and the institutions of power? What aspects of reality are recorded in ‘realistic’ art and what is rejected, and why? Is ‘realistic’ art realistic or is the term itself politically charged, as if suggesting the neutral recording of reality?
	Questions without answers Neither Johani nor Liimand were able to enjoy the personal benefits that the Soviet regime would have lavished on them in the late 1940s and afterwards. They never received their reward, remaining martyrs for the regime. In the 1980s, art historians simply regarded them as two hopelessly naďve people who did not know what they were really fighting for – the Stalinist regime’s practice of concentration camps and arrests. Maybe their early death saved them from the bitter collapse of their ideals, which quite a few others had to experience? Art history abounds with question and exclamation marks, and different answers are given to the same questions at different times. Problems inherited from WW II are again open wounds in Estonian society in 2006, with numerous aspects still not properly discussed, to say nothing of the lack of a consensus. The Johani-Liimand exhibition fits the general social current. Nevertheless, looking at their individual works, we have to admire the artists’ talent and sparkle, which has still definitely not faded, as well as the soul engraved in their paintings. Heie Treier (1963), PhD, art historian and critic, editor of the art magazinekunst.ee
	| Estonian Art 2/06 (19) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2006 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |