Ari Tanhuanpää, PhD, Senior Conservator, Finnish National Gallery

—

On the reste that is not but which nonetheless remains

In this article, my aim is to approach the artwork’s being, taking as my starting point Jacques Derrida’s quasi-concept the reste (remains), and the neologism he derived from it, restance – especially as he discusses them in a number of his works. The essay consists of my reading of Derrida’s essay Athens, Still Remains (2010) (Demeure, Athènes, 2009)^[1], which Derrida wrote to accompany the photographs Jean-François Bonhomme had taken in Athens. But, to start, let us take a look at a modest, unsigned painting lying in storage at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum: a tiny painting from a series of four, depicting a dancer. A great deal of its paint has fallen off, which gives it a certain charm. It is as if the dancer is dancing in the middle of the ruins – or is it, rather, that she remains motionless while the blanks around her dance? This is a strange pas de deux. One has the impression she is just about to disappear, any time now.^[2] But the dancer seems to resist her total disappearance, just as the painting, even in its present, pitifully fragile and fragmentary state, as I claim, resists its complete downfall. I would like to suggest that both the dancer’s and the painting’s mode of being is not subsistence but rather restance – or, to use another word Derrida was fond of: demeurance/demourance (‘abidance’).^[3] In its current condition, the painting could be described as a ruin – however, it must be emphasised that it is not a reste, as the reste is not, whereas the artwork as a physical artefact undeniably is.

—

^[1] Jacques Derrida. Athens, Still Remains. Trans. Pascale-Anne Brault & Michael Naas. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010, originally published as Demeure, Athènes. Paris: Éditions Galilée, 2009 [1996]. Perhaps the most notable early occurrence of remain(s) in Derrida’s oeuvre is Glas – according to Charles Ramond, the ‘quasi-totality of Glas, from the first line, can be considered as a meditation on the remain(s)’. Derrida begins this book with a quote from Jean Genet: ‘what remained of a Rembrandt torn into small, very regular squares and rammed down the shithole.’ Jacques Derrida. Glas. Trans. John P. Leavey & Richard Rand. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 [1974], 1; Charles Ramond. Dictionnaire Derrida. Paris: Ellipses Édition, 2016, 200.

^[2] Georges Didi-Huberman has referred to somewhat similar phenomena using the term aperçue (a feminine past participle of aperçevoir, French for ‘to perceive’), see Georges Didi-Huberman. Aperçues. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2018.

^[3] Generally, le reste has been translated into English as ‘remains’, ‘remainder’, ‘remnant’, or ‘residue’, sometimes also as ‘rest’. Restance, in turn, has been translated as ‘remainder’, ‘remaindering’, or ‘remaining’. Derrida once said that he ‘cannot say whether or not remainder, by itself, adequately translates restance, but it matters little since no single word, out of context, can by itself ever translate another word perfectly’. Jacques Derrida. ‘Limited Inc a b c’. Trans. Samuel Weber, in Limited Inc. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1988 [1977], 52; Jacques Derrida. Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money. Trans. Peggy Kamuf. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1991]. For Derrida on translation as a whole, see his ‘Des Tours de Babel’. Trans. Josef F. Graham, in Difference in Translation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985, 165–207.

—

Featured image: Unknown artist, Dancers I–IV, oil on canvas, 19cm x 13cm.
Finnish National Gallery / Sinebrychoff Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Henri Tuomi and Hannu Pakarinen

…

Read more — Download ‘Res(is)tance of Remains’, by Ari Tanhuanpää, as a PDF

Download the article as a PDF >>

—

 

A Note on Osvald Sirén’s Connections with Italy through his Epistolary

Antonella Perna, PhD Candidate, University of Turku

—

A few years ago, I was visiting the Sirén Archive in Stockholm (Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities) researching the letters Osvald Sirén (1879–1966) had written to the Italian art historian Lionello Venturi (1885–1961).^[1] Sirén was a Finnish-born art historian who lived for most of his life in Sweden. However, he worked for some time as the art advisor to the Finnish entrepreneur and collector Paul Sinebrychoff (1859–1917). His expertise covered 18th-century Swedish art and Old Masters and thus he could secure some extremely fine examples that found their way into the Finnish collection. Today the works are part of the Finnish National Gallery Collection and can be visited at the Sinebrychoff Art Museum in Helsinki.^[2] With this article I aim to shed new light on Sirén’s international career and the impact of his professional networking on the Italian art history scene.

Sirén and Venturi had shared an interest in Italian art history, and in particular the Italian Primitives. Among the letters I read, there was one that caught my attention, although it was not especially pertinent to my primary interest. It was addressed by Sirén to his Italian colleague.^[3] In it a rather moved Sirén wrote to Venturi, both an old friend^[4] and the spokesman of the Faculty, expressing his gratitude for the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa he had received from the University of Rome La Sapienza.^[5] Sirén explained to Venturi that he was glad that his ‘contributions in the fields of Oriental and Italian art’ had been acknowledged as important. He also added he especially appreciated such recognition because of his personal ‘intellectual connection and artistic devotion to Italy’.^[6] The official motivation for awarding the honorary degree, granted by the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy^[7], emerges in another letter sent by the dean Angelo Monteverde: it was granted for the ‘high merits reached in the field of art-historical research’.^[8] These facts alone, however, do not explain the reasons and the events leading to the award. I thus became interested in understanding the circumstances surrounding such recognition in a country where Sirén had neither maintained any institutional position nor any official role.

—

^[1] The research was connected to my doctoral thesis which deals with the relationship between Sirén and Venturi in the 1920s and will be examined in 2019.

^[2] The collection was donated and belongs to the Finnish State.

^[3] Copy of the letter from Osvald Sirén to Lionello Venturi, 26 February 1959. Collection of Sirén’s letters. Sirén Archive. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.

^[4] The circumstance of their first encounter is uncertain. However, the two scholars were part of the same network of intellectuals involved with Italian Primitive Art, including Bernard Berenson and Adolfo Venturi. Antonella Perna, ‘Osvald Sirénin matka Italian taidehistoriaan.’ In Teppo Jokinen & Hanne Selkokari (eds.), Italiassa ja Saksanmaalla. Taiteilijoiden ja taiteentuntijoiden matkassa 1840–1930. (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011), 267–75.

^[5] Copy of the letter from Osvald Sirén to Lionello Venturi, 26 February 1959. Collection of Sirén’s letters. Sirén Archive. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.

^[6] Copy of the letter from Osvald Sirén to Lionello Venturi, 26 February 1959. Collection of Sirén’s letters. Sirén Archive. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.

^[7] Both the departments of Art history and Eastern studies are still part of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy at the University of Rome La Sapienza. While it had been possible to study art history from 1896 onwards, the curriculum of Eastern studies (Eastern Religions and philosophies) was inaugurated only in 1932. More specifically teaching on Eastern art history was available starting from 1953. https://web.uniroma1.it/diso/chi-siamo (accessed 4 September 2017).

^[8] Letter from Angelo Monteverdi to Sirén, 20 March1959. Collection of Sirén’s letters. Sirén Archive. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm.

—

Featured image: Bodhisattva, Qi Dynasty, 6th century, donated by Osvald Sirén to the National Museum of Oriental Art in Rome. Museo di Arte Orientale di Roma
Photo: Museo di Arte Orientale di Roma

…

Read more — Download ‘”A Satisfaction to the Heart and to the Intellect” ─ A Note on Osvald Sirén’s Connections with Italy through his Epistolary’, by Antonella Perna, as a PDF

Download the Full Peer Reviewed Article as a PDF >>

—

Kari Tuovinen, MSc [Econ], independent scholar

—

Many important art collections have arrived at their current state through division processes. The critic Clement Greenberg, for example, regularly made donations from his private art collection as well as selling off parts of it;^[1] after his death the collection was sold to Portland Art Museum but his family kept a number of works.^[2] The famous Russian collections of early French Modernism in the Hermitage and the Pushkin museums are the result of splitting up industrialist Sergei Shchukin’s private collection.^[3] Such divisions are common in the corporate world. For example, when the ING Bank in the Netherlands was split into insurance and banking operations, its corporate art collection was divided between the two.^[4]

The Kouri Collection at the Finnish National Gallery / the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki is also a prominent collection that has gone through a division process. Pentti Kouri (1949─2009) was an investment banker and Professor of Economics at the Universities of Stanford, Yale, and Helsinki. While living in New York in the late 1980s he built up a private collection of about 250 works by artists such as Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, Julian Schnabel, and also many less well-known artists.^[5] Through a complicated process, 61 works from his collection were transferred to the ownership of the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki.

There is much research literature on art collecting, but very little research into the processes of dividing up art collections and their outcome. In order to help bridge this gap, this article examines two questions. First, what were the phases and characteristics of dividing up Kouri’s collection, and how were the works selected? Secondly, what was the outcome of the division process, in other words, what are the differences between the original private collection and the current Kouri Collection now in the Finnish National Gallery / the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma?

—

^[1] Wilkin, Karen, 2001. ‘Clement Greenberg: a critical eye’, in Karen Wilkin and Bruce Guenther (eds.), Clement Greenberg, A Critic’s Collection. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 25–26.

^[2] After the widow’s death 12 works were auctioned, https://www.christies.com/features/The-Collection-of-Jenny-and-Clement-Greenberg-7319-1.aspx accessed 4 June 2018.

^[3] http://www.artnews.com/2017/02/21/an-embarrassment-of-riches-the-shchukin-collection-at-fondation-louis-vuitton-in-paris-overflows-with-modernist-masterpieces-and-offers-dark-parallels-to-our-plutocratic-present/ accessed 1 June 2018.

^[4] https://www.ing.com/ING-in-society/Art/ING-Collection.htm accessed 4 June 2018.

^[5] Kouri admits that he made ‘very many mistakes’ before finding his ‘line to follow’. Interview with Kouri in Rossi, Leena-Maija, ’Taide on ainoa alue, jossa henkiset arvot ovat vielä jäljellä.’ Helsingin Sanomat, 25 May 1992.

—

Featured image: Mario Merz, Untitled (Igloo), 1989, wax, rock, neon, glass, metal, diameter 823cm
The Kouri Collection, Finnish National Gallery / Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma
Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Pirje Mykkänen. © Kuvasto 2018

…

Read more — Download ‘Art Collections Born through Division ─ Kouri Collection Case Study’, by Kari Tuovinen, as a PDF

Download the Full Peer Reviewed Article as a PDF >>

—

Nordic Art History in the Making: Carl Gustaf Estlander and Tidskrift för Bildande Konst och Konstindustri 1875–1876

Susanna Pettersson, PhD, Museum Director, Ateneum Art Museum

First published in Renja Suominen-Kokkonen (ed.), The Challenges of Biographical Research in Art History Today. Taidehistoriallisia tutkimuksia (Studies in Art History) 46. Helsinki: Taidehistorian seura (The Society for Art History in Finland), 64–73, 2013

—

… “så länge vi på vår sida göra allt hvad i vår magt står – den mår vara hur ringa som helst – för att skapa ett konstorgan, värdigt vårt lands och vår tids fordringar.

Stockholm i December 1874. Redaktionen.”

(‘… as long as we do everything we can – however little that may be – to create an art body that is worth the claims of our countries and of our time.

From the Editorial staff, Stockholm, December 1874.’)[1]

 

These words were addressed to the readers of the first issue of the brand new art journal Tidskrift för bildande konst och konstindustri (Journal of Fine Arts and Arts and Crafts) published in Stockholm over two years in 1875–1876. One of the founding members of the journal was the Finnish academic and cultural activist Carl Gustaf Estlander (1834–1910), whose professional ambitions fit well into the picture.

I will argue that Tidskrift för bildande konst och konstindustri provided the Nordic editors of the journal with a platform to manifest their concept of art history. They developed a method of communicating the contents through a specific set of articles. The journal was a perfect 19th-century example of a project showcasing the development of a profession in the making and the use of professional networks. For Estlander, this was a gateway to the Nordic and North European art-historical discourse, and strengthened his position as the leading Finnish art historian of his time.

—

[1] Tidskrift för bildande konst och konstindustri 1875. Stockholm: C. E. Fritze’s Bokhandel, VIII.

—

Featured image: Johannes Takanen, Carl Gustaf Estlander, 1883, plaster cast, height 66cm.
Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum. Photo: Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen

…

Read More — Download ‘Nordic Art History in the Making: Carl Gustaf Estlander and Tidskrift för Bildande Konst och Konstindustri 1875–1876′ by Susanna Pettersson

Download the Full Peer Reviewed Article as a PDF >>

—