Inspiration and existence
Vappu Vabar

	Eduard Ole has been associated with Fernand Lòger who, in contrast to Picasso's approach to Cubism, was interested in the colours of a picture rather than in the analysis of form. In the 1920s, he used pleasant, pure shades of colour, forming abstract compositions of simple tubular shapes. Eduard Ole's constructivist pictures are founded on more recognisable motifs, however there is also something tube-like in his figures and even in his plates, polished to perfect roundness, and in the colourful symbolic fruit that relieves the emptiness of these saucers. Léger is a far more temperamental painter; his canvases are full of ribbon-like, blue-red striped forms, executed with a flourish. Eduard Ole's Table was on display at the 1925 Paris Salon Exhibition (Le Salon des Artistes Independants) and had reputedly been praised in the press. The artist himself reached Paris as late as 1927 when his style of expression was already veering towards the realistic. According to Viivi Viilmann, Cubism influenced Eduard Ole via magazines (Le Corbusier's 'L'Esprit Nouveau', El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg's 'Veshtsh').ê The conviction of young Estonian bohemian artists of that period that the new republic needed new art (distinct from expressionism, Art Nouveau and realism), strongly resembles the initial enthusiasm about avant garde in constructing culture in the neighbouring Soviet Russia. The quadrangular form of the table painted by Eduard Ole could easily be the reflection of the black square of Malevich. The ball-shaped clouds floating behind the window bring to mind the attempts of 'Der Blaue Reiter' members to squeeze natural phenomena into rigid forms by taming them, to say nothing of using pure colours, so cherished by the expressionists that we also mentioned in connection with Ole. The artist himself would not have accepted any comparison with the expressionists; he and his friends at the Group of Estonian Artists considered Cubism to be the best means of purposefully building up the republic, and not the expressionist 'ugly faces'.
	The uniqueness of creative work lies in the sly merging of influences, both the publicly accepted and the ones that have crept in unobtrusively, something the historian can easily miss. No doubt these offer abundant opportunities for speculation. The unique, the stereotypical and aspects of imitation all fascinated the end-of-the-century painter Kaido Ole, grandnephew of Eduard Ole, who promised: 'I'll make an exact copy of Eduard Ole's painting Table.' He first displayed his conceptual work along with the original, his copy and an accompanying text at the 1996 exhibition of the Art Museum of Estonia, 'Talking Objects'. The forms generalised by Eduard Ole inspired Kaido Ole to ponder on the scope of human activity in the widest possible sense. When he had finished the copy he wrote that copying and original work are extremities which help an artist to perceive the extent of the playing space and the lack of clean solutions. At the same time he verbally admitted: 'I was unable to exactly copy the places where Eduard Ole had slightly messed up.' Fatal words that should ring the alarm bells of all the art forgers in the world. He had to fill in the gaps as best he could, relying on his own skill and experience. Despite the meticulous work, the result was still an almost exact copy, by no means an identical one, however small the differences between the two paintings. It must thus be concluded that a personality emerges through one's mistakes and errors, just like one becomes tougher in difficult situations where human abilities are put to a test. In art practice, both extremities have already been tried out: the abstractions from one level to the other in addition to plunging into the lap of inspiration, the sister of error. Trusting himself to it, the artist goes through a test of courage like jumping into water in an unknown place. Expressionists used the path described above; those who founded their work on geometry, approached the opposite extreme. Completing a picture according to the plan devised before, resembles, to a certain extent, the process of copying. When looking at other works of 1924 by Eduard Ole his plate with its red fruit acquires for me an improvisational character, or at least the quality of a theme repeated in music. The motif travels from one painting to the other, then to the third, cropping up in various contexts and making the viewer believe that it must convey a significant message. The motif in Kaido Ole's copy, however, lacks this kind of significance (similarly with the claret red curtain and the round clouds seen from the window). They no longer make you want to know on which day the picture was painted, in which street of Tartu or Tallinn, in which house and room, converted into a studio (plus all the other questions that may arise while looking at a picture). There is no curiosity, because this was not Kaido Ole's purpose. He is not painting a form that used to be an apple, but copies precisely and in a straightforward manner, stating: 'I was interested in the experience of identification, whatever that may have been like. And why not exhibit personal games?' The plates, the curtain and clouds in his picture are not objects, even the picture itself is not an object, but an exhibited idea; a statement which does not only question the identification and originality, but the existence or the right to exist of a picture once painted by Eduard Ole.
	| 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 |