Exhibit review: Tove Jansson: Paradise

 reviewed by Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan, University of Calgary

Tove Jansson: Paradise. Heli Harni, curator. HAM Helsinki Art Museum, October 25, 2024 – April 6, 2025. https://www.hamhelsinki.fi/en/exhibitions/tove-jansson-paradise/

Photos are by the reviewers except for Bird Blue (detail) which is from the Museum's website.

It is all but impossible for visitors to Helsinki to avoid the influence of Tove Jansson. A Moomin shop occupies a prominent location in the airport, while two competing Moomin shops can be found in close proximity to the central train station. Moomin figures can be found in bakeries and candy shops and bookstores. The Moomins can be found peddling chocolate-filled peppermint candies, organic oat snacks, coffee mugs, cutting boards, can openers, stuffed toys, t-shirts, and wool socks. They are everywhere and they are on everything. Unsurprisingly, therefore, they were also in HAM Helsinki Art Museum.

From October 25, 2024 to April 6, 2025, the top two floors of Helsinki’s primary art space were given over to Tove Jansson: Paradise. Billed as an in-depth look at Jansson’s public paintings, the show included a large number of Jansson’s pre-Moomin paintings from the 1930s and 1940s while focusing extensively on her career as a muralist.

Jansson’s first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, was originally published in 1945 to no great success. Prior to that time, Jansson, the daughter of a sculptor father and an illustrator mother, spent most of the 1930s in a succession of art schools in Stockholm, Helsinki, and Paris. Following in the footsteps of her mother, she published illustrations in Garm, a Finnish-Swedish satirical magazine from 1929 to 1953 while, at the same time, exhibiting paintings in group shows. Jansson’s first solo painting exhibition took place in 1943, two years before the first Moomin book was published. Two years later, she painted her first mural at the Strömberg factory in Pitäjänmäki, Helsinki. Tove Jansson: Paradise is interested in combining all of these aspects of her career: the paintings from her student period through her early professionalization, her career as a muralist working in public spaces, and the early years and then rapid success of the Moomin books and comics.

Jansson’s first two solo shows were arranged by Leonard Bäcksbacka at his Konstalongen gallery 1943. The successful first show provided a boost for the young artist, but the second solo exhibition in 1946 was not well received by either critics or art patrons. The first several galleries of the exhibitions are given over to a selection of her paintings as well as the contemporaneous illustration work for Garm. Jansson’s paintings of this period are not immediately recognizable as the work of the Moomin author but demonstrate a strong influence of mid-century European modernism with their thick brushstrokes and moody palette, while the illustration work – often topical and political – shows stronger traces of the material that will develop in her children’s books.

Following the display of her early easel paintings, the final room on the first floor of the exhibition hosts two large frescoes as well as studies for the same. Commissioned in 1947 by the restaurant in the basement of the Helsinki City Hall, the two painting are titled Party in the Countryside and Party in the City. These works begin to synthesize Jansson’s modernist and folklorist aesthetics, providing a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of an artist determined to become a critical and commercial success.

Party in the Countryside depicts eight figures frolicking in lush vegetation. The images are cartoony in their representational simplicity and subtle pastel colour scheme - an abrupt departure from the tone and style of her paintings following the unsuccessful second show. The city scene is no less luxurious, depicting couples in gowns and evening wear dancing on a flower strewn balcony.

The two works, the artist’s first attempts at frescoes, participated in the massive post-war reconstruction effort across Finland that provided unprecedented opportunities for young artists. Jansson, who came from a well-connected family of artists, benefitted tremendously (one might even leave thinking overtly) from this social and political network.

The only public commission known to have been awarded to Jansson on a competitive basis was the Aurora Hospital murals intended for the new children’s ward. Alone among the murals on display, these clearly capitalized on her growing fame from the Moomin series. Play, painted in 1956, presented a series of Moomin characters in the stairwell and the EEG room of the hospital. It was later recreated at the Helsinki University Central Hospital when the pediatric ward was relocated in 1997. At HAM, the mural was recreated once again on the central staircase leading visitors from the first floor of the exhibition to the second.

The second floor of the exhibition was much more impressive than the first. A vast open space with vaulted ceilings broken up by temporary dividers, this floor showcased the immensity of the murals. Display cases of her sketches and highly detailed notebooks invited viewers to contemplate the artist’s process. Jansson typically produced preliminary sketches on paper and then worked through colour schemes on cardboard before concluding with a 1:1 charcoal tracing that would be transferred to the wall. Examples of each of these stages were on full display here (most impressively the enormous cartoon of The Ten Virgins with its pinpricks for the charcoal transfer readily apparent).

Bird Blue, 1953 (detail).
© Tove Jansson Estate.
Photo: HAM / Maija Toivanen.

            Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, Jansson produced public art for restaurants, hotels, several schools, the Nordic Union Bank and an altar piece for the Teuva Church in Southern Ostrobothnia. She worked in fresco, fresco-secco (pigment applied to dry plaster), watercolour on glass, and oil on canvas. Over time, these works increasingly came to resemble work for which she is best known, and even to incorporate elements of the Moomin universe at the margins.

As Canadians of a certain generation most of the waves of Moomin-mania missed us, so we have no sentimental attachment to Jansson’s work. This turned out to be a benefit as the exhibition is not about the Moomins really but about the artist behind the phenomenon. There was no hiding Jansson’s sexuality, her sometimes craven ambition, and her canny working of her socially powerful contacts in both government and the art world. While Moomin die-hards might come away mildly disappointed, the casual visitor gained incredible insight into mid-twentieth-century Finland as it sought to distance itself from its complex wartime status into an independent nation with its own distinct visual culture. And, for those die-hards, there are Moomin mugs and mittens in the bookshop.

Sketch for the Bird Blue mural, 1953. Commision for the canteen at
Kila Swedish-language elementary school (today Karjaa co-educational school). 

Exhibit Review: Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles

Moomin Animations – Thrills and Cuddles, Minna Honkasalo. Washington D.C.: National Children’s Museum on September 3, 2021-January 9, 2022. https://nationalchildrensmuseum.org/

 reviewed by Mike Rhode

In 1945, Finnish writer and illustrator Tove Jansson created her Mumintrolls for a children's book. The Moomins look like hippos crossed with the Pillsbury doughboy, but have proved popular enough to make her the Scandinavian equivalent of Walt Disney. She eventually wrote or drew 9 books about them. In 1947 she started a comic strip with the characters, which started appearing in English in 1954. Her brother Lars Jannson joined her on the strip from 1959-1961 and then he took the strip over until 1975 when it ended. Reprints have been published by Canada's Drawn & Quarterly. There have been multiple animated versions of her characters, and that is what this exhibit focused on.

The NCM has had some rough years, closing off and on while searching for new locations. In 2020, it finally wound up just off Pennsylvania Ave, NW in a plaza behind the Reagan building. They had to shut again almost immediately due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but reopened in September 2021 with the Moomin exhibit among others, and are aiming for an attendance of a half million people per year. Note that you have to visit with a child; unaccompanied visitors need to make an appointment, and throughout my tour of the exhibit, I was accompanied by a staff member. The museum is actually largely underground; one enters at ground level and then moves downward through an unfinished concrete warren. The guide is probably necessary for more than the main reason.

The Embassy of Finland has brought over a version of Honkasalo's original exhibit from the Moomin Museum that is completely composed of reproductions. It has several sections - a wall on Jansson's life, stills from various animations, 4 screens showing cartoons, and several activity areas for children. An average American viewer might have no knowledge about the Moomins, in spite of the fact that there have been so many adaptations. This exhibit focuses on animated versions and includes episodes from 1959 (West Germany), 1969 (Japan), 1977 (Poland), 1990 (Japan). Obviously, none of these would be particularly easy for an Anglophone to find, but the 1969 one in particular was surpressed by Jansson, as noted in the exhibit catalog - "She felt that Momin was too far removed from her stories' world and atmosphere. Elements foreign to Moominvalley had been inserted into the tales, including cars, money and weapons. For example, a few episodes show Snork driving around in a car, Moomintroll makes money by busking, and weapons feature in several episodes." "She did not want them to reach international distribution, so they have never been broadcast outside Japan. Today, they are hard to find even in Japan, on account of complicated copyright issues connected with the [1900s series]." The exhibit catalog is unfortunately not available, except for a few copies lying in the exhibit, but I recommend it highly if you can find it.

Jansson has been the focus of recent attention including a documentary, two biographies, and an edition of her letters. The wall on her life is written for children, but includes the basics necessary to have an idea about her as a person and as a creator. To the exhibit's credit, the segment on her life does not shy away from her love of another woman, even though it was socially unacceptable at the time. "A soul mate. Amid the hustle and buslte, Tove meets Tuulikki, the woman who will become her life partner for the rest of her life..." reads part of the panel.

The wall of stills would probably have been of more interest in the original exhibit, as it apparently included some actual artwork by her. Here, understandably, it's all reproductions and screen captures. A fan of the characters might be interested in seeing how they evolved in different animations. There are also some areas for children to draw, hang things on a tree, or take a picture with cardboard standups. There is also a small selection of gifts in the giftshop. Also of interest from a cartoon perspective are a STEAM-centric exhibits about creating animations featuring SpongeBob and his cast, and another on Paw Patrol.

All the images, except for "Exhibition space 4" and "Tove Jansson," are courtesy of the Embassy of Finland in Washington, D.C. The two are courtesy of the NCM. The exhibit catalog cover is taken from the copy the staff gave to me. A version of this review also appeared on the ComicsDC blog. My photographs can be seen here.