MARCH 3, FRIDAY

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART KIASMA

On Friday we walked to the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma housed in a large shiny metal clad building in the center of Helsinki. On the first Friday in the month it is free. It was also crowded with with people of all ages including lots of school kids. I took photographs of some of the art work and also photographs of visitors to the museum. What I was most struck by is the difference between the way I responded to people through my photographs and the way that contemporary artists respond to the world around them in either sculptures or paintings. I respond to people because they touch me viscerally in some way. I feel the presence of people and respond to them. It is a form of feeling and touching.

But it seems to me that many of the paintings and sculptures are not a feeling response to the world of the artist. Instead they are a statement about the state of the world, generally a negative statement, and almost always an abstract statement.

This painting with a number of letters and symbols is an example. The artist is not touched by these symbols and letters, instead the painting seems to me to be a statement about symbols and letters, an abstract and intellectual response. Instead of being concerned with feeling a response, the artists is making an intellectual response, instead of feeling, the art is concerned with meaning. Since I took photographs of the art work without reading the printed descriptions on the wall I have no idea what the meaning of most of the art work is. My feeling response to abstraction was to feel alienated and immobilized by most of the art. On the other hand, my photographs were entirely feeling responses. I was most intrigued by a group of men and women with broad brimmed hats and chains around their necks and medal like attachments on their jackets. Why they were dressed this way I have no idea but the strangeness of their attire attracted me.

We ate in the museum cafe where for ten euros you could have as much soup (potato/leek) and as much of a variety of salads as you wanted and for 5 euros more a delicious thin pork filet with a tasty sauce and delicious scalloped potatoes. It was a great experience.