A fragment of a conversation between Eero Epner and Kaido Ole held in the autumn of 2005. The full version of this conversation you can find from the catalogue of Kaido Ole which will come out in August of 2007

You have said… Actually, it does not come as a surprise; already before our first talk I assumed that you were very sceptical about romanticising things. What disturbs you most about it?

I believe that romanticism gives people too many illusions. It lies. (Pause.) I would rather have fewer, but real, things, than more illusory things. Maybe this fear… I know that I am very receptive. As soon as I yield… People like me are most harmed by romanticism. I am like a potential alcoholic: should I start drinking, I would ruin myself very quickly. If there exists an ‘average man’, then I have above average sensibility and ability for empathy, and romanticism offers more than enough chances for exercising them. If I already have an above average sensibility and sense of empathy, and I go amidst exuberant scenery, all will be over. It is much more rational to exercise one’s sense of empathy on a minimalist stage, which seems to be empty, but where an actor is still able to conjure life into things. Romanticism is like a jungle, where you can guess about things all the time, ‘Oh, what is beneath this leaf?’, ‘What makes this noise?’, ‘Oh, I did not hear, but perhaps it was a strange unheard-of animal – I believe it was, everything is so mysterious here!’ I am afraid of the jungle. It will not end well. Romanticism is an entertainment.

The providing of illusions that you accuse romanticism of was once thought to be a synonym for hope. And at the time of our talk you actually told me that the main content of your art is a situation when it is raining and you sit in an absurd flat in Lasnamäe. But do you exclude the notion of hope?

Naturally not. I start weeping when there is no hope. But I try to create hope in another way, to see hope in that typical panel house. I am serious right now.
Romanticism may collapse. It is easy to go from a barracks to romanticism, but it is very disconsolate to do it the other way round. An iron bed and a creaking floor. If you are used to the iron bed and creaking floor, then there will be no shock. Rather, life will be more interesting. Therefore, I want to find hope in situations that are as common as possible. This situation may be unfit for others, but it has to be fit for an artist. If you have already managed to develop something that should be dull and nasty into something interesting, then… it is. If you have changed dullness into something interesting with your hand (as in painting), this ability remains with you and you can use it in other situations in real life.
I am a born romanticist. I read adventure stories and imagined them in my mind’s eye; it was like a real cinema. I played such games where I could momentarily enter into their spirit and they seemed to be real. As a child, I needed very little to evoke my fantasy. What can I say? I am a typical romantic.

Do you feel even now that you are receptive to romanticism?

Yes. Maybe this is a matter of cycles: at one moment you turn romanticism almost off, but this may be an introduction to the next cycle, where you want to turn it on as loud as possible. (Thinks for some time.) Yes, this is a cycle. You tighten the screw all the time, until suddenly you let it all go…
Why don’t you like romanticism?

I may be a hidden romantic just like you. But at its worst moments, romanticism attempts to show a lot through scanty means and it is hollow and pathetic. It attempts to say a great deal, but does not say anything and spoils things. It is very difficult to speak of essential things after they have been spoiled with pathetic sighs.

Leaving aside sighs, this description fits modern advertisements quite well, too. Although they have nothing in common with romanticism, they are still extremely pragmatic.
The scheme is similar: the authors attempt to create illusions with a few stupidly chosen symbols and hints.

I believe that advertisements do not use these schemes by chance and people are very receptive to them.

People come to art with similar expectations. They still expect romanticism from art, and since the world is so pragmatic, they wish to find a balancing force in art. People think and have always thought that musicians, actors and artists do not think in a logical and sober way. But now it is revealed that they, too, are sober people!

I believe that you have said already, in your text in Vikerkaar, that painting cannot compete with other techniques in the perfection of representation and we should, rather, show its weaknesses. Have you followed this principle in your own work?

Yes, mistakes should be pointed out. For example, an expressionist painting, if done today, usually seems to be stupid; there is something Tarzan-like in it, the flags of freedom are flying and people shake off the burden of conventionality.
I want art to prepare people for everyday life. Because in the end, or at the very foundation, there is everyday life, it rains and people are sitting in their stupid flats in stupid districts of the town. And they have to be ready for that. Everything else is simply entertainment and varnishing over of simple facts, postponement of problems or hope that the problems will go away and never return.

I have to admit that, although you talk about mistakes and the lack of perfection in painting techniques, at least for me your works seem to be impossible to copy. They are technical masterpieces.

This is a peasant’s smartness. If one stops striving for the absolute and perfection, he is amazingly skilful. The idea that art is something that demands an unprecedented amount of time and labour raises tensions. This prejudice has to be dropped; you should start in an easy way and say that the main principle of painting is easy and can be done with cheap tricks.
As a rule, the artist loses his nerve, thinking that painting requires a miracle. But I say that you will botch it up anyway; you will botch it up all the time and your only chance is to botch it up in a smaller way. You must calm down, wait for some time and then try again.
What do you mean by impossible to copy? They can be copied indeed, the brush strokes are in a certain system
and they can be figured out. Do you want me to teach you how to paint?

No, I don’t. It is much more comfortable and less dangerous just to talk about it. Painting would require such good ideas that I’m afraid that I would have only one or two such ideas in my whole life. There is no sense in studying light and shade in order to work with these two ideas.
But isn’t it sad to think that, although you may be striving for perfection, you will botch it up anyway?

(Pause.) Yes, there is a contradiction.

I don’t think there is.

How can a botched up thing be ideal?

I understand that it can be botched up in the technical sense. But the ideal is not about your painting technique being perfect.

Yes, this is true. (Pause.) You determine your place in the universe and this is a pleasure. You live within your means and do not attempt to widen them. The fact that you have recognised your place gives you pleasure. (Pause.) It seems to me that art is primarily a means of commenting upon things. Many people take a lower attitude and call themselves only observers. But when you are a commentator, you can say something and maybe even change something.
The idea of painting does not lie in technical virtuosity but in the understanding that you don’t have to train your language before you start talking. If you have more or less mastered the language, you can move to your main aim and start commenting. It does not matter what you comment upon, either the foreign policy of George Bush or failures of your own, but the door is open. You don’t have to devote years to studying the technique.

There really is no contradiction here. On the one hand, you say that you do not like the artist’s attitude and the belief that an artist is different from others. And you say that the mastering of painting technique does not prove that you are special, because everybody can learn painting techniques.
On the other hand, you still are an artist, even a member of the Artists’ Union and a teacher…

Well, this is no good. I thought that you were going to ask about commenting, whether it would raise me to a better position when compared to others.

Would it?

Commenting is an enviable opportunity for an artist, and the artist shouldn’t turn up his nose. Others also have the chance to do it and, for an artist, this opportunity is rather an obligation: he cannot do anything else.

In all, either general or personal, stories about art, we can always find a silent hint at the notion of progress. For example, it is said that the earliest works of an artist already contain some promise that will later develop and transform, and that the artist’s later works are principally similar to his earlier works, but more developed. Do you also look at your work as a logical series that always conditions a next stage? Or is it rather an organism, where you can change parts and reposition them from an earlier stage to a later one and vice versa?

I believe that you cannot reposition everything. Ideally, all your works are as clever as you are. I have developed slowly and, mostly, it has been a linear process. To some extent, we can talk about progress as well – my present works are no doubt better than those of my fourth year at the Art Institute, when I was more stupid and didn’t know how to lie cleverly.
I would say this is progress. On the other hand, a person’s life is a unity and the difference is that at different times, he understands the world differently. Therefore, there shouldn’t be ‘better and worse times’.

I am not sure, whether I meant this with my question. Rather, I wondered whether your works can be arranged in a logical series, or are there interruptions and shifts?

Yes, it can be done, but the series will only be as logical as I have been myself. There have never been true options, because of all possible versions only the most correct ones are carried into life. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be the most correct.
This organic logic is somewhat disturbed only by the fact that I have developed from one exhibition to the next. Since the number of works displayed at an exhibition depends on the gallery, the development of a subject or a theme has not been my own free choice; I have always had to fit it with the shape and capacity of the ‘container’. We could only speculate about what would have happened if the exhibition rooms had been of another shape and in a different order, about what ideas would have dominated and what it would have meant in my general development. Maybe it wouldn’t have had any meaning at all.

Do you have some works that you have never exhibited anywhere?

Yes, I do, but their number is very small.

Thus, you do not work to keep the pictures in your studio, but to exhibit them?

Yes, I have made a few pictures for sale, but the number has really been very small.

Have you experienced failures? Have you left some works unfinished?

Yes, there was a period when I took some four or five pictures in a row off the easel. I had no new great ideas. It happened after the Basic exhibition; I was in bad need of ideas and simply compiled some pictures from fragments. But an idea that would result in only one work is not a good idea at all. This is the opposite of the principle of simplicity, since it should be possible to express one important idea in one ideal painting. But I like it the other way round – if you have an idea, you should be able to stretch it over many works and it would only gain from it and grow on you.

Let us return to my question of whether the artist’s privilege is a commentary or, rather, the aestheticising of the commentary and the placing it into a creative form. Do you agree theoretically and in principle?

I am afraid that this is the inevitability of art, and sometimes, its woe and misfortune. For example, if in painting, aestheticising takes the accepted form, it immediately means that the painting is beautiful. When you know the rules, then even intentional mistakes are great and professional. A painting is always beautiful, no matter how it has been made. It is softened and positioned in a niche, which could, eventually, be its shortcoming.
For some reason I think that my geometrical and exact method will not grow outdated, because it will always create a kind of discord. A spectator can say that my picture is beautiful, but there is still some disturbance in it. If we wish to achieve such disturbance not through a narrative but through form, then other methods do not allow that. This is a kind of nasty rationality, which has always irritated crowds and it will always do so. At the same time, I cannot say that I do not like aesthetics and beauty – I have a weakness for beautiful things. But the beauty must not be snotty.

It seems to me that you have a deep fondness for material as something that can be perceived and processed without doubts.

Matter is very important. I trust matter, because any idea has to take a material form. Some people first perceive the form and only then realise the idea behind it. This does not mean that the idea was somehow inferior or bad; he simply sees things through their form, looking from the outside towards the inside. Regarding objects or materials, I become nervous in a good sense. I would really have made a good interior designer or designer (if we leave aside unpleasant kitchen design, which I do not like). Maybe I even make pictures just like I was making objects – eventually, I design them. You think about life, but then you think about how to design the idea of life, whether it is large or small, what it can be made of, and how you should put it together. It may be impossible and surely it is difficult, but I try to put together the natural and the man-made. I think that this was the most important thing for Mänd and the Volga-German, too; they did what they did, and this was the only way they could have done it. I have done what I’ve done, but it has been artificial. The question of how to achieve a result, where a painting is natural, absolute and beautiful, and at the same time contains human sweat, is ages old. I have the same question – I try to be natural, but not too natural. The main thing is to retain a human quirk – that of this man who sits in his flat and thinks (and his thoughts are small, routine and nasty). And the quirk cannot be realised by 90% of the people. This means that all things inherently contain loss and the only question is how these losses could be made into a victory and how to find a good foundation for them.

You said that, in your work, the material sometimes precedes the idea. On the other hand, you talked about the possibility and need of preserving a human mistake. Don’t you feel that these ideas are somewhat contradictory? And what’s more, you have often been described as a ‘machine artist’, whose art lacks the chance for mistakes.

It depends on what is called a mistake by different people. Many people may think that I really paint so well that they do not see the mistakes. I still see my mistakes, just like I did in my third year at the Art Institute. It follows that they are indeed mistakes, and only the viewpoints are different. Quite often, this is rather a technical question – a machine can draw a better line than a man can ever draw; a man cannot make, let’s say, a matchstick figure in such a way that its defectiveness would go undetected on close examination. If I draw better than a certain Toomas, it does not mean that the line could not be any straighter. Or a background which should be evenly grey cannot ever be made as smooth by an artist, because some brush stroke patterns always remain there.
Don’t get me wrong, defectiveness has never been of special value to me; if you can find brush hairs on a picture, it is not a noble picturesqueness, but a human shortcoming. These principles have determined the outward appearance of my works – if I painted in an expressive way, it would be impossible to tell where the mistake was – chance would be an organic part of the picture. With a ‘pure’ picture, it can immediately be seen how it could be done in a different or technically better way. Now this would be the moment when we should sigh romantically and say that this is why we love art – because it is made by a human being. But leaving the sentiments aside, we should still admit that an object can be represented in a better way. This has to be taken in its widest sense – some Other can do it better, but a human being, striving for the better, does it just this way. Maybe this is where I wanted to arrive at – to get used to mistakes.
Maybe this is rooted in my childhood. I saw how perfectly well my father drew – in my opinion, he was an ideal performer – and how badly I did it, although I had great and ideal plans, too. I always felt that I was yielding to plans; I had a kind of unhealthy wish to unite plans and performance in such a way that the performance wasn’t too much below the plans…

And how do you feel about it now?

I feel that, although the paintings have not been executed as well as they could have been, a kind of compromise has been reached, almost up to the highest point that a human being can reach. I have remained true to my brush, because it is clumsy enough and prevents my pictures from becoming too beautiful. By using all kinds of sprayers and pulverisers, you have recruited a machine’s help, but you have to remain honest. When painting, your human contribution has to be as large as possible.

Do you want to say that, in a sense, a painting is a project that cannot be ultimately realised? One has to strive for the perfect all the time, but should not be embarrassed by his mistakes.

I hope that this nightmare will go away and, eventually, I will innocently make happy pictures.

But why should such a theory be proved just with the help of painting?

I notice these problems better in the case of matter than in the case of an abstract thought. The problem can be more easily recognised when dealing with concrete material. I am prepared to make an effort, but each time, eventually, I see that I cannot make a perfect work – there are too many components and entropy will always rise to launch a successful counter-attack.

Since you have already realised that you can never have control over all things, you can, as well, do only as much as you really can, and not always attempt to move towards the areas you know you can never control?

Yes, but where is the boundary between them? The borderline marking the limits of your free will is very hazy. Naturally I would like a clear boundary separating my works from nature and chance.

I ask once again, why should one voice a masochistic demand for perfection, although he knows fairly well that it will remain unattainable?

I remember how, in my childhood, I realised now and then, just for a brief moment, the essence of the absolute and it was frightening to think that some things could be made in an absolutely perfect way.
The trouble with the art of painting is that it may get out of hand. I want to get used to mistakes, and mistakes will hold tension for spectators by being a distraction to comfortable viewing. This is like a French-style park, which is very beautiful, but at the same time also somehow disturbing, as trees have been cut into cones and bushes into balls. This seems to be unhealthy, like a pervert’s dream – wonderful, but silly.

Would you say that the art of painting can inherently contain the absolute and human mistakes in a better way than, let’s say, architecture or poetry?

I do not believe that. I personally like manual activities more and poetry is too abstract for me – I can not perceive its problems well. Architecture is better. I like architecture very much, but I would want to make a work from the beginning up to its completion; this is very important to me. This may also be the reason why I do not want to engage in video works – the amount of manual activity, in its direct sense, is very small there. Videos lack the lowest level of manual handicraft which can be found in painting.

But you do not conceive of the absolute as something entirely contained by art – perfect harmony of colours, perfect balance of composition. Does it have to have some relation to life?

For me, art is compensation, a shadow life and a parallel second life. If my art is very good, it will rehabilitate my messing up in real life. An analogue holds here: the small life should contain the same kind of physical activities as the so-called real life, where you cannot simply sit in your flat and think all the time. Art has to resemble life quite closely and I believe that it has to be quite complicated as well, in order to compensate, with its success, for the failures of real life. Art is made complicated only by manual activities. You have to follow the nastiest road, from the beautiful pure idea to its faulty realisation and, then, you will know exactly where you made those mistakes. You have to live with that knowledge and finally be content with it, always trying to be better and better.

Thus, your work has an automatic prerequisite – art compensates the failures of real life. But wouldn’t you like it happily to copy the successes?

It does copy them anyway. Success is not a problem in itself; therefore, I am not worried about this aspect of my life and I do not talk about it. The problem is embedded in what precedes and what follows successes – these are the weak links of the chain. But I think that each good work of art is just like life in all its wholeness, with all its aspects, whether they are discernible or whether they are in the form of a negation. Unconsciously I know that I cannot solve all my problems in life or in art. I know how I want to relate to my parents, how to talk with my colleagues, how to be honest and responsible, against what I should fight etc. But usually, perhaps because of laziness or something else, I cannot follow my ideals.
Have you been tormented by such thoughts too?

Have you been tormented?

No, not much, actually. This simply is adult life. It seems to me that I have become more or less an adult just during the past decade. There were times when I wished to have problems, but I did not have them. Then there came a moment when I realised that problems existed, but I did not know how to solve them. It could become more interesting in the future – you get used to life, you start arranging your life and… That is why I do not want new and interesting beginnings. When everything is new and interesting, I am never able to see the core of problems. I have to have time to get used to things, and things have to become regular in such a way that their surface will not dominate any more and I will be able to understand essential relationships. Some people have a clear eye and they can grasp everything at first glance. I am not like that; I almost always err in my first judgements. This is also why all kinds of changes are only the postponement of problems for me. What is important is the emergence of dullness.
The main things are revealed only when life has become monotonous. From seasons up to meal times, most of human life has been built upon monotony, but usually, this is considered to be very bad. Actually, it is not logical to call dullness strange and unnatural.