Art by Marianne Monto

Originally published 21st of December 2024

Today, boys and girls and others, I want to talk about appreciating art. Not from the angle of current events, where it is clear that the current government is willing to gut it, as it is clear that they do not understand why art should be appreciated.

Art can be found in your everyday life, all around you. It’s not just something on your wall. It’s the design in products you buy, it adorns pages of your comic book. It’s print on your clothing, pattern on your jumper and socks. Why? Because it’s clear people yearn for it. You could have all the products in similar grey boxes, product information in the same font. But it is not, as soon was discovered that adding colour, pictures, even different fonts made the product sell better. Why? It’s still the same product. Ugly sweater is as warm as a pretty one. Why do you choose the pretty one?

One way to say it is that our souls yearn for beauty. Our spirits bend towards aesthetically pleasing.

Less poetic way: we can define ourself through our choices. What print and what colour we choose. Are we dressing in yellow or black, is our home flamboyant or minimalistic. We need art to be ourselves. 

ps. Ok, little about current events. Gutting the financing from arts and art associations makes it close to impossible for new talents to rise. Supporting arts will give opportunities for a wider scale of talent. Without it, several talents will not be nourished to their full potential. Only the rich can choose art as a career, not the talented ones. The effects of current actions are shown in the future. We will not have new Marimekko, or Moomin, or that Finnish design we are so proud of. On what cultural things can we build our national pride and use our specific brand to import, when we have none? Maybe we need to try to make boring and mundane cool.

And those who go “Well, the truly talented can live on selling their art…” are thinking of established artists. Not starting ones, who have not established a customer base, are competing about those very limited spaces where they showcase their work, have to have some other job to buy art supplies and who have very limited time to do the art AND get better at it. Current cuts are hitting the future artists hardest.