performance art Archives | Carol L. Douglas

November 21, 2016

Art is history

Photo courtesy of Olesya Lysenko, Russia

In an isolated field in northeastern Finland, a group of one thousand human effigies have stood watch since 1994. They are The Silent People of Suomussalmi, and they were the brainchild of artist Reijo Kela. Although his work is often called “site specific,” his scarecrow army actually wandered around since its birth in 1988—including a tour in Helsinki—before coming to rest in Suomussalmi.

The Silent People were created by Kela as part of performance piece, Ilmarin Kynnös, which documented the life of a farmer in Suomussalmi in the early 20th century. This period included the bloody invasion of Finland by Russian troops in the Winter War of 1939-40 and the subsequent depopulation of farm areas in the post-war period. At the end, Kela’s farmer fades into the people of history, the Silent People.

Photo courtesy of Olesya Lysenko, Russia

This part of Finland has been, until modern times, been called the Land of Hunger. The famine of 1695–1697, for example, killed a third of Finland’s population. The Silent People’s clothes hang from their frames in mute testimony to that.

Scarecrows are ephemeral creatures, made to last a season or two and be replaced. A scarecrow built in 1988 would be, in dog years, quite dead. Yet the Silent People remain meticulously dressed, their peat heads lovingly plumped up. They are maintained by the young people of Suomussalmi through the auspices of the Suomussalmi Youth Workshop.

Kela had initially intended the Silent People in his film to be played by actual humans, but was unable to hire actors. He then commissioned the first 240 stick figures to be made by the Youth Workshop, whose mission is to train local unemployed kids. That number of scarecrows corresponded to the number of unemployed youth in the town, which has fewer than 9000 inhabitants.

Photo courtesy of Timo Newton-Syms, United Kingdom

Each June, a group of kids and adults arrive at the field carrying replacement crosses and trash bags filled with clothing. The figures are stripped, revealing the Silent People to be a field of crosses. Some of the youngsters dig fresh peat heads for the figures (in lieu of straw) while others redress the figures in fresh clothing, which includes pullovers, shirts and undershirts. The old clothes are taken to the dump to be burned. In late September, the same group goes back to the field to dress the figures for winter.

The town works hard to maintain the figures primarily because it has economic benefit: the Silent People have become a tourist attraction. But there’s also identity involved. “To me, these effigies are the people of Kainuu. Life here has been so tough, they have been fighting to earn their living and their daily bread, really. So they are not people who make revolutions. They are humble, but they still, somehow they’re proud in their humility. They are not people who you can crush under your shoe,” a woman told researcher Karen Vedel.

Ours is a very young country in comparison to Finland, and yet I see our ancestors also marching away from us into a misty past. The challenge lies in telling our similar story without merely copying The Silent People of Suomussalmi.

August 29, 2014

That’s sophomoric

The Magazine Women Believe In was a spoof of style of 1950s publications. I painted it back in the day; I wouldn’t paint it today because my feminist thinking has matured. So has my painting style.

As a young person, my brain was fizzing over with half-cocked ideas. Some of my projects were musical—like writing a rock opera with my chum Michele, or writing and recording a cowpunk album with my husband. Some were literary. Most were visual. But some were just larks, like going on the Maid of the Mist in my bikini or going skiing in grease-stained Carhartt overalls—what today we might dignify with the label ‘performance art,’ if we could find funding for it.

I grew up in a time and a town which was too conservative for performance art, and my parents tended to cast a jaundiced eye on my antics. So I burrowed into the art form I knew best—drawing and painting—and gradually left the more conceptual stuff behind. I don’t think I’m any less creative at this advanced age, but my creativity is more yoked to what I do best.

Submission was painted during the first phase of the Iraq War and addresses the still-thorny issue of whether oppression or libertine impulses are more stifling for women. It’s one of the paintings that got my RIT show closed down.

Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity by economist David Galenson looks at the schism between the creativity of youth and that of maturity. Galenson says that some of us work by trial and error, and arrive at our major contributions incrementally, usually in old age. In contrast, there are conceptual innovators who make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas at an early age. Galenson puts Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Cézanne in the “old master” category, and Vermeer, van Gogh, and Picasso in the “young Turk” category.

Would I have painted The Beggar of St. Paul today, with its cynical depiction of Starving Africa as part of the money cycle? Probably not. I’m weary of hectoring people.

I think he has the division in thinking right, but not the outcome. We are all more daring thinkers when young, and more methodical workers when old. The difference is in when we’re discovered and what the society in which we live values. Today we live in a society which values audacity above craftsmanship, which tends to highlight the conceptual over the incremental.

Message me if you want information about next year’s Maine workshops. Information about this year’s programs is available here.

October 30, 2013

Personal performance art, revisited

Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875, Thomas Eakins. Who knew Eakins was such a visionary?

Yesterday, I had a minor medical procedure done, which—as is the nature of these things—will be followed by a slightly-less-minor medical procedure. While discussing scheduling, the surgeon mentioned that he could do it either at an outpatient surgical center or our local hospital.

“How about an art gallery?” I inquired. “It would be perfect. This has all the great narrative themes: love, death, gore, fear, sex, nudity, pathos.”

The Agnew Clinic, 1889, Thomas Eakins

He studied the papers in his hands. “Unfortunately, your insurance doesn’t cover you for performance art,” he answered. “However, after January 1, 2014, under the Affordable Care Act…”

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!