In Perspective Artist Henrietta Lehtonen
"There's nothing really going on here", Henrietta Lehtonen begins her introduction to the video work.
Infant is a simple and super-positive work: a sweet baby smiling irresistibly in a video image projected on the wall. According to Lehtonen, "Infant is one of those works of art which are intended to flirt themselves into the viewers' hearts and start to talk in there".
As an artist, Lehtonen has been regularly re-creating herself, producing something completely different from what she has done earlier. Consciously feministically geared, This Girl (1990) teased the viewers with an enticing video image of the artist herself. When branded a priestess of feminist art and an envoy of delicate beauty in the early 1990s, however, she began to feel like a worm-ridden Shirley Temple - and changed subject. Dirt and ugliness were equally interesting means of expression; in fact, her most beautiful creations are haunted by an ominous emptiness. The installation Porcelain Tower (1993) was created during the phase when Lehtonen felt that not all things can be talked about by using beautiful events. As background to Infant, she wants to tell about her previous works dealing with childhood and innocence.
Early Drawings (1996-1999) is one of Lehtonen's favourite exhibitions. It contains her own drawings done between the ages of 2 and 14, which her mother has kept. The artist wonders at the portraits, cats and landscapes drawn by the teenager, as alienated from them as the viewer. The power of the drawings lies in their simplicity. Making a drawn cat look as natural as a live one is a delightful problem. Pictures of cats are not necessarily in high regard in a professional artist's exhibition; "but the actual artwork was to exhibit them in an art museum. I have no illusions about having been a child prodigy. There's nothing special about those drawings. They only emphasise the yearning for innocence."
In order to really get close to the fundamental questions, Lehtonen participated in a hypnotic session and recorded the Hypno video (1997), encountering her inner self and core personality in the process. "My core answered through my mouth questions I had prepared for myself. The questions were elevated, the answers less so. For instance, the question 'What is a perfect work of art like?' received the answer 'It doesn't matter!' And the question 'What would the right course of action be for me?' got the reply 'Don't ask questions but act first and think afterwards.' Despite these being the words of wisdom of an adolescent, I feel happiest when I act according to them."
The idea of real construction and architecture inspired the work Pesä (The Nest. "The reconstruction of a nest I built when I was five years old. At the age of 18 I began to study architecture", 1995). Unspoilt architecture is present in the self-made nest which is entered armed with torches and a packed lunch. As a work of art, The Nest is - according to Lehtonen - an uncommunicative piece which people do not even realise is a work of art. Instead they sit down on the sofa under which the nest is placed.
The kind of art Infant represents could perhaps be best described in the artist's own words: "It's not an intellectual task that you can solve through mutual effort. It concerns things which require you to tune your aerials towards a certain galaxy and wait for the incoming message".
In this case the viewer does not need to wait long for the message. The plump baby triggers an immediate spontaneous smile and primeval protective instincts. But even though the instincts do their best to blot out the whirring of the video projector and to override the encumbering adult consciousness, seeing the infant and understanding the received image is more difficult than we think. Marjatta Bardy, who has researched into infancy and childhood, has described childhood as a reflecting surface on which the adult projects his/her own image in order to see himself/herself, and only then tries to see the child. The attempts to understand childhood are always adult-centred, and childhood is covered over by the adult consciousness. However, childhood is important both for the individual and for society, and understanding it has played a crucial role over the centuries. When attempting to achieve a child's way of experiencing things, art and literature in particular have invented new means of expression. The reformer of the literal depicting of childhood and the whole idea of childhood, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1788), believed that man cannot know himself before he knows the nature of the child.
INNOCENCE OR ORIGINAL SIN
Bardy takes a look behind the first impression through the lens of childhood research: "After the spontaneous smile, people experience a wealth of different emotions, ranging from pleasure to bitterness. They fill the picture with their own memories. One is filled with longing, another with bitter memories. Throughout history, the child has been seen in very different ways. When the idea of original sin was dominant, the child was supposed to be immediately moulded and educated to turn away from evil. Man is born evil and one must do his utmost to change that. During the Romanticism of the 19th century, the child was seen as an unspoilt, pure creature whose capabilities intellectuals strove for. In other words, any ideology is applicable to this image".
Henrietta Lehtonen created Infant originally for the church of San Giovanni in Bragora, in Venice. The image was projected right behind the crucifix, in the middle of the wealth of ecclesiastic objects and imagery. The idea was inspired by the atmosphere inside the church; its dim lights seemed suitable for the infant image. "At first the church officials opposed the idea of introducing modern art and video into a church, but when we got the chance to show what we meant, they immediately embraced the idea. It overcame all their suspicions about modern art trying to get a foothold in their church".
From Marjatta Bardy's perspective, there is nothing simple about Infant being shown in a church. "Here a simple image evokes an enormous historical context. The whole history of the Church. First you smile, and then the associations start to crowd around you. You begin to think about the Christian faith and the child Jesus having the same history as we all do. He came into the world and wanted to join everybody around him, then Christianity developed into an entire institution, in which goodness and light have evolved into good vs. evil. Here lies before being sacrificed the baby Jesus, who was worshipped by the Christians and underwent all kinds of suffering".
Bardy also sees in Lehtonen's production a consistent effort to reach the original imagery: "In innocence, you might look for original or basic imagery. The longing for innocence is linked to a romantic longing. Actually, romancism is no sluggish word, it has ignited many idealistic battles. It drives at fundamental themes. When you talk about how you've traced innocence, to me it is not about naive innocence. The projected image of an infant on the wall is a fantastic original image, it requires a great deal of abstraction and vision. The image is not in that sense innocent and naive. I claim that a very innocent and naive person could not have invented this image. Finding a original image is an emotionally demanding task. There's nothing innocent about it".
"Infant is like being fired at, being attacked at a racing pace, unless you use your intellect to curb it. This firing gives birth to original imagery. I wouldn't talk about innocence. Praising innocence, possibly associated with childhood, simplifies things: wouldn't it be wonderful if we all were like children. And still that wouldn't stick completely. It wouldn't be wonderful, but horrid and monstrous. It's great that a person grows up; it's also great to grow old, to gather more knowledge and understanding. When longing for our childhood, we possibly long for something about the way of experiencing things as children. A child lives as if in the middle of fireworks, unshackled by reason. Childhood images may be a means of getting close to certain core experiences; they are universal images that everyone is able to read".
Childhood being out of our reach, our not being able to remember our first years, nourishes cultural mythology and constitutes an inexhaustible source of creativity. Bardy's writings deal with precisely these themes. Although childhood is constantly present in everything, understanding it is barred by the wall of childhood's conclusion. When a little child acquires language and reason and can talk about childhood, he is no longer able to say anything about it. Earlier ways of experiencing things are wiped out and the new way of thinking is incompatible with the past. Lehtonen has dealt with the same issue: "Controlling your feelings, delimitation, is the opposite of innocence. The silent knowledge which comes from within, the things that a Baby knows, must be spoilt in order to become utterable".
Jyrki Simovaara
Henrietta Lehtonen and Marjatta Bardy met at Kiasma on 28 December 1999.
Henrietta Lehtonen's works Infant and Porcelain Tower are displayed in the exhibition Nordic Post-modernism until 2001.
Marjatta Bardy, docent in social polices, is a senior researcher at the National Research and Development Centre for Welfare and Health (STAKES). She has worked for the utilisation of art in social development and in making use of human resources within the STAKES project Kasvokkain (Face to face), which aims at preventing marginalisation and promoting multiculturalism.
