POINT OF VIEW: Spaghetti pistol and humaning – pop art through the eyes of children

I invited the Heiskala children from Helsinki to Kiasma to see art and comment on it. I had prepared for the interview with Sonja (12), Ville (10), and Antti (5) by preparing questions about Kiasma and the works of art, with the plan of the children answering them in the exhibition rooms. Reality proved different. The questions were forgotten. A tour around the Popcorn and Politics exhibition triggered such a fascinating burst of thoughts and ideas that nothing became of the original planned interview. Instead, lively talk and new questions emerged in front of the artworks.

We begin our tour in the first exhibition room on the third floor, displaying many classics of pop art: Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, Reuterswärd.
Ville: A nice pistol that one. (Points at a lithograph by Reuterswärd, with the barrel of a gun tied up in a knot.)
Antti: That’s James Bond’s spaghetti pistol!
Ville: Wow, what a match (Oldenburg). It’d be nice to see the giant that dropped it.
Antti: (from the next room.) Hey, come and see! A car’s been wrecked when a bus hit it. Here’s a picture of the crash and the actual wreck itself. Hey, what’s that picture?

The drop effect

Led by Antti, we gather around Drop by Heikki Ryynänen. The children circle the work and study it from different angles while commenting on it.
Antti: This ball didn’t float after all. From afar it just looked like it was floating, but it hangs from the ceiling on a fishing line.
Ville: Ah, look, they’re in order. Just like a movie.
Minna: How did you guess, it shows stage by stage how a drop hits a surface.
Ville: Well, I don’t believe a drop stays round when it rises back to the surface. No offence to the artist, but I think there could’ve been more drops here. It’d seem more realistic.
Sonja: That same drop effect occurred when I was making Sacher cake at home. But it happened the other way around. (Tilts her head and looks at the work upside down.) The chocolate sauce ran into the other sauce and it looked the same.
Antti: I think that one thing looks like a king’s plate. It’s got the crown and the plate.
Ville: Where’s that phone’s ringing coming from?

Hello

We follow the sound of a ringing phone and end up in the next room, looking at the video Telephones by Christian Marclay. It consists of phone scenes cut from Hollywood films. The children are glued to the screen for a long time, no one says a word.
Antti: (laughing) This is good! Hello, hello.
Ville: I know a lot of these films. I’ve seen that one! And that. And that!
Sonja: I’ve never noticed how much people talk on the phone in films.

An age limit to looking at pictures?

Antti notices Markus Heikkerö’s paintings Mickey Mouse’s 40th Birthday, Donald masturbates, and Conspiracy of Pegasus. He moves on to look at them. The others are still watching the video Telephones. Sonja notices that Antti has switched his object of attention.
Sonja: Antti’s looking at those paintings because they’ve got lots of colours and slightly strange elements. (Sonja, too, moves on to look at Heikkerö’s paintings.) Is that varnish on the surface of the painting because it’s so shiny?
Minna: Maybe, or maybe it’s shiny because the light catches the paint. But what’s in the paintings?
Ville: These pictures contain all kinds of things. All these well-known characters.
Minna: Which characters do you recognise?
Ville: All kinds of characters. Mickey and Jesus.
Antti: Here’s Donald Duck!
Sonja: Is that Jesus?
Ville: The artist could’ve got a death sentence for that picture of Jesus in different times.
Sonja: The artist must feel good, if he succeeds in provoking. An artist is happy with any publicity, including bad publicity.
Ville: Didn’t that artist have anything but one thing on his mind?
Minna: Meaning what?
Ville: -
Minna: Do you mean those penises?
Ville: Yeah.
Minna: I’m sure he had lots of other things on his mind too. I think he might have had an absurd dream, where anything can happen. Have you sometimes had crazy dreams?
Sonja: Yeah, but not the same kind as that artist. I’m not bothered by what’s in the paintings, but on the other hand they feel oppressive because they’re over-colourful and unnatural.
Minna: Should there be an age limit for looking at them?
Sonja: I think children should be allowed to look at these paintings freely with grown-ups. Not that these are somehow bad in themselves, but if the children feel that there’s something strange in them, they can talk with a grown-up.
Ville: I agree.

We continue our tour towards Harro Koskinen’s Pig family. Along the way, the eye meets interesting works of art. First we stop at Heli Rekula’s Hyperventilation.
Ville: She looks a bit weird.
Antti: An alien.
Sonja: If she blew out, she’d either burst or faint.
Antti: Her stomach would have a hole.

In the next room, Tiina Ketara’s doll, lying on the ground, shouts for help.
Antti: We’re not going to help you!
Sonja: If I met her in the park, I’d fetch my mum.
Ville: I’d also find some sensible adult. She’s nuts.
Antti: Completely nuts.

Humaning

We arrive in the living room of the Pig Family, where I had planned to end up the tour.
Minna: Does this pig family resemble your family?
Antti: Yes. There’s mum and there’s dad and Ville and Sonja and…I found a fifth one!
Ville: Antti’s that small black creepy-crawly.
Sonja: It doesn’t resemble our family in that our house is a little more non-colourful and the landscape more everyday.
Ville: Yeah, that landscape reminds me of a Lapin Kulta beer ad.
Sonja: Those pigs’ve got somehow mad eyes. Do they spread foot and mouth disease?
Ville and Antti: (laughing) I’m sure they do.
Sonja: Ville sometimes calls me a pig… if there’s such a thing as pigging, there could also be such a thing as humaning.
Antti: Yeah, maybe humaning is when mum and dad make spaghetti …
Ville: …and no-one burps.
Antti: Yeah. And then someone in the pig family will say: ”You pigs, I mean, humans”.
Sonja I once saw it on TV how they gave a pig’s heart to a boy.
Antti: If a pig’s heart wasn’t working, it could have a human heart …

Minna Raitmaa