Hugo Simberg’s dream world (1873–1917)
Hugo Simberg’s work is an enhancement of the senses. He has created a dream world which requires symbolic means to interpret it. He composes metaphors with coherence and continuity. Subtle colours enter a mental landscape where movements are on the border of sleep and consciousness.World of ideas
I’m sitting on something big and shapeless; I don’t know what it is, it takes me somewhere, I don’t know where… The journey gets brighter and brighter, and I wake up more and more. Eventually I am fully awake, and I see something big and shimmering that will soon disappear. You know, that’s exactly what I feel when I watch the clouds pass over the moon on a moonlit night. If you experience something like this when you get to see my picture, I have succeeded. — Hugo Simberg in a letter to his brother
In Fantasy, the dream-heavy but lightly outlined figure has abandoned the outside world and is focused on the world inside. Only the dreamer’s fantasy offers her everything she understands to dream. Simberg’s goal as painter was in his own words to paint everything that makes a person cry deep in their heart. He processed with the unconscious which was the focus of psychoanalysis in the late 19th century.
Symbol and continuum
Syntheticism is a painting technique with wide uniform surfaces, alignments and contrasts, using colours to create an atmosphere rather than an impression of reality. Symbolism enters reduced shapes, intense colours and a lack of depth. Simberg’s colours are green, red, orange and yellow in their various shades. The colours initially differ according to principles of lightness and warmth, or darkness and coldness. Warm colours head outwards from the center and flood the borders closer to the viewer; the cold retreats away and inwards, closing in on itself. Yellow is the warmest of colours, blue the coldest. White increases the warmth of yellow, its movement out and towards the viewer, black emphasizes the retraction of blue, movement inwards. If more blue is added to yellow, the movement outward from its center and closer to the viewer is reduced; blue constrains it. The mixture of blue and yellow, green, is motionless, restful. According to Kandinsky, it’s the colour of summer when nature rests on the storms of winter and the tremendous growth of spring.
The wind blows where it wants. You hear it hum, but you don’t know where it comes from and where it’s going. So it is with everyone born with the Spirit. — John 3:8
Boundaries
What am I, and where have I come from; where will I go, and what will I do? — Pekka Halonen
Wounded angel is a compassionate work for the people – it portrays the reality of the disadvantaged in society. The picture does not reveal what has happened; it shows only the attenuated echoes of the tragedy, lucent reflections of an oppressive event. The angel cannot see, does not fly with its wings, which in Platonic symbolism means a departure from the original home, beauty, and an oblivion of the soul. The body loses its lightness, and becomes heavy, wingless. The subject of the painting awakens sexuality in puberty, pain in proximity, and the closeness of the death. The connection between memories breaks and the soul twists into itself – the real existence seems to be somewhere else. The wings elevate closer to beauty, to a world of ideas. The fragility of life enters symbolism by turning inwards, instead of imitating the external world, depicts visions, dreams and fantasies, based on subjective feelings, thoughts and experiences, with the aim of achieving a universal dimension.
When Simberg first exhibited the work at the Ateneum in 1903, he marked a long line of thought for the name, possibly aiming to let everyone see what they wanted. Interpretation by Helsingforsposten observed a feeling that prevails when something beautiful, something pure within oneself is crushed and Sakari Saarikivi: What was bad has already been left behind. The time for reconciliation and peace has come. The child’s faith and diligent respect to work and life will brighten the future again.
Only gardening is important
Simberg’s language arises from the realisation of the temporality and mortality of human existence. Simberg saw life as a cycle in which death only prepared for a new life. It is like a long hibernation, overwhelmed by the spring sun and awakening nature. When things that scare us are expressed, they become less scary and easier to understand.
The pace is hard, and I can feel the strong airflow hissing in my ears at the speed of the wind. During the journey, it turns white, and I gradually wake up like a dream. Finally, I am completely awake and now I see something big and great that is suddenly disappearing. — Simberg explains in his letter to his brother what he felt as he watched the red coloured moon rising behind the black forest and the passage of clouds over it
References
Huttunen, Samuli. Hugo Simberg etsi totuutta ja halusi lähestyä jumalaa maallisen rakkauden kautta – mutta voiko totuutta löytää?Kulttuuritoimitus, 29.8.2019.
Kokkinen, Nina. Totuudenetsijät: Esoteerinen henkisyys Akseli Gallen-Kallelan, Pekka Halosen ja Hugo Simbergin taiteessa. Vastapaino, 2019.
Kämäräinen, Eija. Merenpoika Hugo Simberg. WSOY, 1996.
Lahelma, Marja. Hugo Simberg – Ateneumin taiteilijat. Ateneum Kansallisgalleria, 2017.
Levanto, Marjatta. Hugo Simberg ja Haavoittunut enkeli. Valtion taidemuseo, 1993.
Levanto, Marjatta, Halme, Heikki, Olavinen, Anja, Paloposki, Hanna-Leena, Stewen, Riikka, Vihanta, Ulla. Hugo Simberg – Aapinen. Ateneumin julkaisut nro 24, 2000.
Stewen, Riikka. Hugo Simberg – Unien maalari. Otava, 1989.
Saarikivi, Sakari. Hugo Simberg – elämä ja tuotanto. WSOY, 1948.
Tarasti, Eero. Transsendenssista, narraatiosta ja musiikista Hugo Simbergin maalaustaiteessa / Ymmärtämisen merkit: samuuden ja toiseuden ikoneja suomalaisessa kulttuurissa. International Semiotics Institute, 2000.