“Precious Cargo: Three Paintings by Jarmo Ylänen”
- Imants Tillers.

“Whatever may be said of the art world, it is not rotten”,  Vincent van Gogh wrote in the early 1880’s. “Painting is a faith” he declared. It is “not created by hands alone, but by something which wells up from a deeper source
in our souls.”

Thus it was with great anticipation and a sense of excitement that I opened the modest wooden box despatched to us from Helsinki in February this year
by artist Veli Granö. It contained the three paintings which we decided to purchase with Veli’s help by Jarmo Ylänen, the partner of Anne Pajuluoma whose tragic but redemptive story is the subject of Veli Granö’s film Meet
you in Finland Angel. Apart from brief glimpses of Jarmo’s paintings in the film (and the three examples that were part of Veli Granö’s contribution to the exhibition Empathy: Beyond the Horizon at Artspace in Sydney in 2003 all
I had to go on in making my own choices were pages of minute ‘thumbnail’ reproductions of Jarmo’s work sent to me by Veli. Consequently, I was anxious to see how they measured up ‘in the flesh’.

Opening the box, unwrapping them carefully, I saw that they were beautiful, heartfelt and lovingly executed. The fact that to the unwitting observer they might appear to be imprecise, technically flawed copies of original works by Vincent van Gogh merely add to their power and charm. It would be a mistake to imagine that these paintings have anything in common with one of the major preoccupations in the contemporary art world of the 1980’s which
involved overt references to existing art works - usually iconic or art-historically crucial works of the past. As Thomas McEvilley notes, various terms were used to designate this practice, “some hostile and some
not - plagiarism, pilfering, scavenging, simulation, appropriation, quotationalism” and artists such as Julian Schnabel, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Elaine Sturtevant, Philip Taaffe and Mike Bidlo were at the
forefront of this approach.

But Jarmo Ylänen is not of that world. According to Veli’s film, he works in a menial job as a trolley collector, living off meagre tips. He never went to art school, he’s never even heard of postmodernism or appropriation art,
in fact he had never painted before - yet, at a certain moment in his life he had the (miraculous) idea and desire to paint van Gogh’s paintings all over again.

In a photograph he sent me, Jarmo sits proudly surrounded by his paintings which gleam like votive offerings from the walls of his apartment. His work is more reminiscent of Outsider Art - the works of artists like the American Alfred Jensen (1903-1981) or the incarcerated Swiss labourer Adolph Wölffi (1864-1930), now considered to be one of the greatest of these artists whose colored pencil on newsprint drawings ”put the damaged self in a cosmic context and thus transforms it.” In Jarmo’s paintings there is such a personal identification with Vincent van Gogh that he believes his works are in fact “collaborations” with van Gogh. When one views his Self Portrait (2002) which is painted after Vincent’s Portrait of the Artist with Severed Ear (1889) in the Courtauld Institute in London it is possible to see this painting as a portrait of Jarmo himself!

In a recent book The End of Art, the critic Donald Kuspit argues that contemporary art has become detached from its aesthetic and spiritual functions and has been transformed into a cynically ‘transgressive’ subdivision of the entertainment industry. Here he is no doubt thinking of artists like Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst and the yBAs. Kuspit uses the example of van Gogh to demonstrate what has been lost. For van Gogh, who felt doomed
and damned to failure in life, art was a way of triumphing over adversity. To him, art was the true religion which “preached universal empathy rather than blind obedience to aesthetic law.” Kuspit asks: “Which artist thinks
this way today? Which artist commits himself as completely to art as van Gogh did? Which artist experiences art as sacred? Which artist believes that making art is an act of faith? “Certainly no “postartist”, (which is Kuspit’s term for the kind of contemporary artist he disdains) “who sacrifices himself for neither art nor life, suggesting by the triviality of his response to both, that neither is worth the trouble.”

When the three paintings by Jarmo Ylänen were despatched Veli Granö wrote to us:“Jarmo was so unhappy just after we closed the box. He almost cried. It took a couple of days to pull himself together again. Now he is proud and happy.
Many people know about his success now.”

I am glad to be able to enjoy these three paintings today and grateful that Jarmo was able to part with them. They remind me of my very first encounter with art in 1960 when I was only 10 years old. My Latvian godparents presented me with the book Van Gogh: A Study of his Life and Work by Frank Elgar published by Thames & Hudson in London in 1959. His images touched something deep within me and perhaps sowed the seeds of my desire to eventually become an artist myself. Jarmo’s three paintings are illustrated in this book; Sunflowers (1888), Church at Auvers (1890) and of course Portrait of the Artist with Severed Ear (1889). Jarmo’s paintings also take me back to the moment when in 1996 I visited the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for the first time. I had of course seen van Gogh’s paintings in other museums but never in such quantity. I remember standing in the main gallery overcome by waves of inexplicable and irrepressible emotion and intense feeling for van Gogh and his art. Now in their own unique, humble but uncanny way the paintings of Jarmo Ylänen (in their new home in Cooma, Australia) have brought with them not only the images of Vincent van Gogh but also his spirit.”

- “Precious Cargo: Three Paintings by Jarmo Ylänen”, Imants Tillers, Framework: The Finnish Art Review, Issue 3, June 2005.

Imants Tillers is an artist and writer based in Cooma, Australia.

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JARMO YLÄNEN’S STUNNING ART AND EXTRAORDINARY STORY

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Jarmo Ylanen brings Vincent van Gogh to life.