Tove Jansson's Paradise
The magic and enduring lessons found in Finnish artist Tove Jansson's work.
Trilliumaires not billionaires // show people you’re an artist at work
Hello friends,
In October 1944, Tove Jansson wrote a letter to her friend Eva Konikoff.
“I’ve never dreamt and planned as much as I have in these past few years. Not as a game – but as an absolute necessity.”
Jansson was living in the midst of a wartime reality and art wasn’t a luxury, it was a matter of survival.
Helsinki had been subject to Soviet air raids that year, and the city had suffered. It was the same year that she stepped into the role of lead illustrator of Garm1, the satirical magazine where Jansson openly criticized the war-time powers and boldly expressed her anti-fascist stance. As Jansson put it, through this style of art she could be “swinish,” towards Hitler and Stalin. In fact, she was once censored for her depiction of the Soviet leader.
Aside from her political illustrations, Jansson was engaged in her art practice, and she had just found refuge in a beautiful tower studio. It was cold, there was no central heating, not even a kitchen. Yet finally Jansson had a space of her own. A space not just to live, but to create.
As she wrote about it:
“The first time I came into the new studio there was an alarm and the artillery gave me a salute of welcome. I just stood and looked, and was happy. The wind was coming in through the broken windows and chimneys, and big piles of rubble were lying under the cracks in the walls. Twelve windows reaching out to the light and as high as a church. I planted my easel in the middle of the floor, I was utterly happy.”
As war come to an end in Finland in 1945, Jansson published her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood. This first story of the much beloved Moomin family finds them on their way to seek out a house to shelter in for the winter. To do so, they have to make their way through a dark and frightening forest. As Moominmamma kindly tells Moomintroll, “Everything looks worse in the dark, you know.”
A rainstorm ensues, causing a flood so great that Moominpapa has to be rescued from high up in a tree where he has taking shelter from the water. Yet when the waters recede, the Moomin family finds themselves in a lush and verdant valley, their new home. After the darkness and the storm, something new and beautiful blossoms.
Jansson had written the story during the Winter War, between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939-1940. As Jansson later wrote about this period:
“One’s work stood still; it felt completely pointless to try to create pictures. Perhaps it was understandable that I suddenly felt an urge to write down something that was to begin with ‘Once upon a time.’”
I got to see the Tove Jansson: Paradise exhibit at Helsinki Art Museum this month. As an adamant fan of hers, it was serendipitous that the show was on while I was in town. Even more serendipitous that the new film The Summer Book2 was playing in the theaters and I got to spend an afternoon immersed in that world—whenever this ends up playing outside of Finland, you absolutely must go see it.
"I’ve got to become free myself if I’m to be free in my painting."
- Tove Jansson
I like to think of Jansson like a personal patron saint of sorts, a creative guide who serves as part inspiration, part compass. To have this kind of admiration feels a bit strange. I’ve never been one to seek out gravestones of famous people, I’m not so interested with the ins and outs of celebrities’ routines and habits.
And yet there I was with a friend walking down the street where Jansson had her famed studio (and that is kept intact3 just as she had it), the pink wall marked with a plaque and a small sculpture of her face.
Walking around the streets of Helsinki I thought a lot about Jansson’s experience of the city, both during and after the war. Jansson was an outspoken pacifist, an adamant voice for peace. The dark years of the war had informed her work—she wanted to create an imaginary world that was different. As Asta Kihlman writes, “escapism was Jansson’s way of enduring the horrors of war. Dreaming of colours, warmth and faraway places was her coping mechanism.”
But it’s not an escapism that blocks out reality. In Jansson’s world, fear and play, the grim and the vibrant, dark and light, they all coexist.
The exhibit featured many of the murals that she had created in the post-war period. In a bombed Helsinki, there were many programs that created opportunities for artists to help with the reconstruction, and Jansson was one of them. In the 1940s and 1950s she created a wide variety of works that found their way onto walls and public spaces.
Seeing the large-scale pieces up close like that was powerful, but what I found even more moving were her sketches. Rolls of paper that featured her ideas. The blueprints for what would be captured on a wall.
To stand looking at a finished piece of art in person offers a visceral connection between the viewer and the artist. You see the brushstrokes, the lines, the colors. You might contemplate what they were thinking about when they stood in front of the empty canvas, how they built up the piece.
But to see the sketches that informed a final piece are like having the artist standing next to you.
Sketches capture a raw energy and essence, and as they were never intended to be the final piece, there’s something more personal to them. They are more vulnerable, more intimate. These weren’t rough sketches, they were the preparatory pieces to guide her murals. Even so, they had a very special energy to them.
Standing in front of enormous pieces of drafting paper with rough charcoal lines of joyful characters, animated forests, and playful scenes—it felt like Jansson was in the room.
I could read about Jansson and look at her work all day long. She was so ahead of her time, and it often feels like she created art that we need right now in this moment. I think that’s because she understood an essential truth about what it means to exist as a human in this world, and therefore her work has a timelessness to it. We can all find a piece of ourselves in it.
Her work never gets boring. That’s because she created such an abundant world, one with so many angles, so much depth.
A world in which imagination is encouraged. A world in which play and joy are a radical antidote to fear.
A world in which dreaming is essential. A world in which art is a refuge.
-Anna
- interviewed about the release of her new book, We Need Your Art and when asked about the state of her workspace, Amie had her partner describe it for her. I love it so much because I felt seen… “Her desk is filled with detritus. A never ending hell pit of loose paper, coffee cups, monitors on monitors, and nick knacks that could serve no possible productive purpose. Khaos, the primordial god of the void state in Greek mythology, could not have conceptualised a less organised laptop.”
The woodwork of Didi NG Wing Yin, which I got to see in person at Lokal Gallery and it was stunning.
Women in trees. (thank you
)- on the power of cinema.
Can a Finnish sauna improve society? I am going to say yes.
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You can at least enjoy the trailer for now.
Thank you so much for this Anna. Very much needed at this time of turmoil and carnage. Sometimes, I just forget to make my way back to art for grounding and beauty because I am in overwhelm. Thanks for reminding me.
Patron Saint Forever ❤️❤️