Father and son

FEW RELATIONSHIPS have been publicly discussed as widely as the mother-daughter relationship. In recent years, it has also been fashionable to pay attention to the mother-son relationship. Least attention has, thus, been given to the relationship between father and son. In his art, Henry Wuorila-Stenberg has always drawn from the most personal and private realm. In a series of watercolours not publicly displayed before, he openly deals with his relationship with his father. Often the images are not unlike double portraits: both the father and son appear in the image. In the context of the artist's work in general, these watercolours are small-scale and narrative. The watercolour technique is dry, detailed and based on the interaction of the lines. In that sense these small images are reminiscent of Wuorila-Stenberg's large paintings. Strong, pure colours dominate. This is perhaps closer to drawing with a watercolour brush than lavish painting. The hidden texts of the images require this clarity for the narrative to be clear and interpretable. In a sense you could say that they are subordinate to the content, even though that is not entirely true, of course.

The image which to me seems to unite together the entire series is the one which the artist has accompanied with a text that tells about how close the father and son were, but also about the son's disappointment because when he truly needed his father, he was no longer available. This could be judged as a bitter son's yearning, but I think it quite simply tells about longing, about the son's need of his father's presence, of the presence of a trailblazer and authority.

The series as such is rather coherent, homogeneous. The images are surrounded by a strong presence of masculinity, male power. What most images have in common is that the artist has chosen to speak freely about his father's illness, his disability. The father is dependent on various devices to be able to move: wheelchair, crutches and support. In spite of his defect, he remains the tall strong man, who entirely and fully dominates and controls the images. Masculinity is emphasised, although that is hardly necessary, by displaying the father without trousers, naked from the waist down. This has to do with his disability: it was more comfortable for him to be naked. Nudity becomes a central theme in the images, and the male sex organ is a very loaded symbol. When both father and son appear naked in some images, you can see it as an expression of solidarity, male bonding, where what they have in common — maleness — is emphasised. In order to make it quite clear who has the power, the artist has also chosen to depict more complex forms of co-existence. Images in which the son lies on the father's naked lap and gets spanked on his bare bottom are those which in this context most profoundly question those readings one might have formed on the basis of the other images. No more undemanding togetherness, no more natural coexistence. Brotherhood has been replaced by a power apparatus: it is quite clear on whose terms the coexistence takes place and who dictates the forms it can assume.

Henry Wuorila-Stenberg's private images of himself and his father may be a method of dealing with them, a medium of progress and perhaps development of personal experiences and using them for corresponding relationships. Art has the potential to take itself on a deeper level than what one can consciously deal with. Feminist research has noted that the most private can be the most universal: series like this support this view. In these images everyone can choose what meanings to attach and consequently use them for the same purpose as the artist: to try to understand.

Berndt Arell, translated from Swedish by Laura Mänki