I have my wife to thank for my appreciation of Tove Jansson, and our exhibition visit on 20/01/18.
My
wife, you see, has been a fan of Jansson's most famous creations, the
Moomins, for years. But not me, I feel almost embarrassed to admit. No,
I'd always found these cartoon trolls a little bit creepy, probably after watching the TV series as a child.
But
my opinion began to change a couple of years ago. Knowing my wife loved
the Moomins, I bought her a couple of books for presents. After reading
them myself, I began to understand exactly why generations had fallen
in love with Jansson's creatures. The books and comic strips are
intricately illustrated, and Jansson's writing is incitefully wise. The
Moomins can make you laugh and make you cry - what more could you want?
I also bought Tuula Karjalainen's biography, Tove Jansson: Work and Love, and it was by reading this book that I realised how the Moomins were just one part of Jansson's impressive output.
Jansson
was an extremely gifted illustrator and artist for many years prior to
her creation of the Moomins, but that work has always been overshadowed
by the huge popularity of the Moomins. Karjalainen's book does a
fantastic job of putting the Moomins in context of a lifelong passion
for all things creative.
It's a great credit to the
Dulwich Picture Gallery that for the very first time in the UK an
exhibition has attempted to pull together a cross-section of Jansson's
work, rather than focusing solely on the crowd-pleasing Moomins.
Tove Jansson 1914-2001
includes a lot of Moomin illustrations, naturally, but also rooms
filled with magazine covers, abstracts and self-portraits. There's
something for everyone. And for me?
Well, it's only in
recent years that I've taken up drawing and painting, which I've found
to be incredibly satisfying and therapeutic. As a result of my own
attempts, for the first time I've been reading up on major artists such
as Picasso and van Gogh, and have become much more interested in seeing
great paintings with my own eyes.
And so I think Tove Jansson 1914-2001 was possibly the first exhibition where I was genuinely excited to see an artist's paintings in the flesh.
The
exhibition met my expections immediately. I love Tove Jansson's
self-portraits most of all (they remind me a little of van Gogh) and my
two favourites were there: Self Portrait (Lynx Boa) and Self Portrait
(1942). The exhibition was extremely busy, and unfortunately the
self-portraits were in the first room, which was quite cramped, but I
spent as long as I felt able to, just taking in the brush strokes, the
colours, the sheer presence of these beautiful paintings...
The
rest of the exhibition was fascinating, don't get me wrong - I couldn't
quite get over how small and precise the Moomin drawings were - but I
think I would have happily stayed in that first room for an hour.
Getting to the exhibition required a weekend away in London but it was worth every penny.
So thank you, Dulwich Picture Gallery. You made my day.
