Axel Gallén (later renamed himself Akseli Gallen-Kallela), entitled ‘Building’, of 1903 (Art Museum of the Ateneum, Helsinki).

“The painting depicts a family building at the forest edge. Behind the new building, we see stumps of felled trees in a gray-green and brown landscape, with low ground-covering broken occasionally by large stones. This is undoubtedly, a landscape uncultivated and poor. The felled trees make a clearing at the forest edge. To the right we see a lake reflecting sky. To the left, we see the darkness of the pine wood forest, where the edges of the painting fade into a black wilderness. Trees have been felled; they remain stacked, raw with bark. The wood for building is stripped of its bark. The built walls define an interior realm, distinguished from the forest beyond. The painting depicts the spare moment when nature is converted into culture.

In the painting, The father wields the axe and works on the dwelling. Wooden logs are refined and squared; we see the logic of construction evident in the joint. Around the man, we see woodworking tools: a means of measure and a means of cutting and carving. Around the woman, we see a thick shawl, a red and black woven pattern. She is breast-feeding the child, a primal vision of the maternal role (a primal act of caring for – the beginnings of human culture).

The painting, although only a moment in Finnish life, is epic. The painting stretches horizontally in landscape format. The Finnish landscape fills the frame, extending beyond the edges at left and right: rocky landscapes rising from lakeshores to thickly wooded forests. The sky is not depicted; the landscape alone serves as background to human endeavor.

Gallén’s painting depicts a spare attachment to the land. It provides for and sustains life, yet it is harsh and leads eventually to death.11 The painting pictures the lapse between nature and culture; a human cosmos subtracted and refined from the natural; the human realm ends where the uncultivated landscape begins – yet they coexist, such that each shapes the other. From Gallén’s painting we understand that the land shapes those who inhabit it .”

cited from The Nascent Sense: Alvar Aalto and Preserving the Finnish Cultural Myth

WILLIAM T WILLOUGHBY,Louisiana Tech University School of Architecture)