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Biography
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Harro KOSKINEN
Born 1945 in Turku, Finland. Lives and works in Merimasku, Finland.
"Slow anarchy that lays waste everything old is the only way to a new, better
world." This is Harro Koskinen speaking in the late 1960s. At the time, there
was a lot of talk about utopias, a brave new world that would rise from the
ashes of the increasingly technological consumer society. A kind of utopia also
featured in the underground culture that made its brief mark on Finnish society
at the time. In that particular utopia, criticism was permitted, and those who
questioned things were not kicked off from the stage. Young Harro Koskinen's
work from that period were a combination of form liberated by Pop culture,
socially active, participating art, and underground's rude, boisterous contempt
for all established boundaries.
Biography
Harro Koskinen says he first became seriously interested in art at the age of
17, and he acquired a studio of his own on Piispankatu street in Turku two
years later. Koskinen's work was seen for the first time in a juried exhibition
of selected works in 1965. That year, he matriculated from the Coeducational
Lyceum in Turku and began studying at the Drawing School run by the Turku
Artists' Association. Since 1966, Koskinen was actively involved in an
underground movement in Turku, illustrating the movement's publication,
Aamurusko (The Red Dawn). His first solo exhibitions were held in Turku
in 1967 and Helsinki in 1968. In 1969, Koskinen's works, Pig Messiah and
Pig Arms, led to him being reported to the police and ultimately to him
being fined. In the early 1970s, Koskinen's art moved towards realistic
landscapes and portraits. In recent years, he has begun to increasingly use
photographs, especially digital images.
Since 1968, Harro Koskinen has written art reviews for several daily papers. He
has occupied positions of trust in ARTE ry, Turku Graphic Artists, and
Kuvantekijät ry, as well as the Artists' Association of Finland, and the
Art Councils of Turku and Pori. Since the 1990s, he has taught at the Turku
Drawing School, where his subjects include sculpture and digital imaging.
Article
Pop Art and Underground
Harro Koskinen's pig works are perhaps the most famous examples of Finnish Pop
Art. In the pictures and three-dimensional sculptures Koskinen produced in
1969, a Pig appears doing all kinds of things: Pig Strikes, Pig Peeps, Pig
Bathes, Pig Takes a Crap, etc. The dozens of works in the series depicted
the entire spectrum of life. The authorities and religion of this world were
represented by Pig Coat of Arms, Pig Icon, and Pig Crucifix.
In his series, Suomalaista elämänmuotoa (Finnish Lifestyle),
completed in 1970, Koskinen had left the pigs behind and taken up a new theme,
the state of his native country. In some of the works, the Finnish flag plays
the leading role. Through the flag, Koskinen voiced his ideas about nature
conservation - the works Noki (Soot), ESSO and SHELL - as
well as about the fate of the fatherland under the headings Suomi sulaa,
Suomi palaa, Suomi valuu, or Suomi repeää
(Finland melts, burns, flows or breaks apart). Koskinen's stands followed the
general trend among the youth of the time, global concern over the state of the
earth.
Koskinen has said that American Pop Art was especially important to him because
of the way it freed the form. His early assemblages, Kapitaalitratti
(Capital Funnel) and Viuru ja silitykset (Viuru and Pettings), as well
as Sikaperhe (Pig Family) and Noki, are good examples of this,
not only in terms of their form, but also their use of bright regular house
paint. In these works, the ordinariness and lightness of Pop Art is accompanied
by the socially critical and participatory approach typical of the late 1960s.
Their central theme is the stand they take towards consumerism, large-scale
industry, and the prevalent social values. Through his work, Koskinen shook the
clergy, representatives of the highest echelons of society, as well as the
middle-class, lulled into a sense of contentment and security, with the aim of
showing the smugness and indifference of society. The seriousness of the themes
did not preclude a certain playfulness - in much of Koskinen's work from the
1960s, the finishing touch is applied using humour. Although the artist
admitted that he sought, above all, an efficient, provocative visualisation, he
also wanted to infuse his work with constructive joyfulness and humour. For
example, the cartoon pigs in his Pig Family and the word play of
Soot, with its message defending pure nature, both exemplify, in their
own way, this particular side of Koskinen's art. The humour was also related to
the underground culture, which had arrived in Finland in the late 1960s, and
from which Koskinen drew his joyful courage to address such issues as the
outward appearance of the clergy, for example. Politics did not fit the
ideology of the U-movement; for it, all parties, whether on the left or right,
were equally bad.
The Pig Let's Time Go By
The Underground was a radical youth movement that was active, especially in the
1960s, in the USA. One of its most prominent achievements was comics. Led by
Zap Comics, a magazine published by Robert Crumb from 1967, it created
an imagery that jeered and slashed at the moral values of mainstream culture.
Harro Koskinen was involved in the Finnish underground movement from 1966,
especially in Turku. For instance, he illustrated Aamurusko, the
underground magazine published in Turku, and also actively followed American
underground comics. These activities also surfaced in his art, especially in
his Pig productions of 1969. Underground comics made much use of pigs, too. In
fact, the first version of Koskinen's Pig Messiah appeared on the cover
of Aamurusko as early as 1968.
In that incarnation, when the circulation of the magazine was only a few
hundred, the crucified pig did not attract much attention. The first time the
Pig Messiah attracted the public's attention was at the Young Artists
Exhibition at Kunsthalle in Helsinki the following year, and it was published
in the country's largest newspaper to illustrate a review of the exhibition.
Koskinen's other works featuring the Pig were concurrently on display at the
Kritikens val (Critics' Choice) exhibition in Sweden, where they did not cause
an uproar, however. In Finland, the published picture raised the Pig Messiah to
a provocative status, as a result of which the interrelations of art,
exhibition activities, and blasphemy were debated all the way to the highest
court. The work, Pig Coat of Arms, was also charged with defaming the
national coat of arms. In the final ruling in 1974, the artist, as the author
of the work, as well as the exhibition jury, as the responsible exhibitor, were
fined. An appeal to the President of the Republic for clemency did not change
the ruling.
"The entire system with its predilection for sucking up to the powers that be
and capital is so damned simplistic. My works are a form of positive
trouble-making. Through them, I want to box the ears of everyone set in their
ways; I want to punch them in the breadbasket. What I want is to be a spreader
of constructive unrest. The Pig myth plays an important role in this. The Pig
allows people to step back and look at themselves," is how Harro Koskinen
described his use of the Pig motif in 1969. The opposition, the organised
society had spoken, and dissent was allowed. In a way, Koskinen's utopia is
actually becoming a reality: time may well be a continuous form of anarchy that
finally changes attitudes.
Maritta Mellais