There’s currently an exhibition called “Surrealism & Beyond” at Tennis Palace Art Museum in Helsinki and I was mightily impressed by at least a dozen paintings they have on display there, as opposed to my normal “easily unimpressed”-mode where I find maybe 1 or 2 items per an exhibition I visit slightly interesting, hastily shuffling through room after room full of paintings artists have shed their passion and agony into, for casual viewers and thankless ingrates like me to quickly glimpse upon while wondering what the gift shop might have on offer.

This exhibition was something else and I strongly recommend it to just about everyone. ( Just as strongly as I recommend the Kalevala exhibition at Ateneum I’ve seen twice now and have entirely failed to write anything about in this blog although I found it very intriguing and inspiring. It’s still on for several weeks before it’s replaced by a Picasso exhibition). The first artist to catch my attention was Joseph Cornell. I had never heard of him before and was most entranced by his beautiful cut and paste works. Some of his wonderful collages can be viewed here. A flash presentation of his “visual poetry” can be seen and experienced (if you don’t get lost among the waves of hard-to-locate links) at Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination.

Cunningly placed on top of the stairs leading to second floor of the exhibition was this:

It looked stupendously huge and oppressing, hanging there and sucking in my attention and I was flabbergasted by its’ visual force. It’s a René Magritte painting called ”Castle Of The Pyrenees” and, needless to say, made such an impact on me that I had no other choice than to purchase a book of Magritte’s works at the gift shop. Disappointingly this particular painting is not included in the book but it’s not exactly the only impressive thing he’s done so I’ve enjoyed some quality time while leafing through its’ pages. Just take a look at ”The Human Condition”. Pictures like this pour a generous amount of bliss into the heart of the spectator, whether he wanted it or not. Pictures like this and digging up some background information of them also takes surprisingly large amounts of one’s time if one is not careful. I just realised that I’ve spent hours writing this entry and reading about the things I’ve written about, instead of preparing the lasagne and decanting the chianti I was supposed to be doing so I need to wrap this up quickly now before I starve to death. A lot remains unsaid of what I planned on saying, about the subject of surrealism and generally about how I experience art. Maybe I’ll say it in future blog entries if I haven’t (surrealistically) forgotten by then.