My adoration for the Finnish storyteller Tove Jansson stems from a nostalgic sense of childhood and adventure that she almost magically weaves between her words and into her visual world.
I am a great fan of Jansson's work and this is just one of many original illustrations from her children's books focusing on the tales of a fictional family of creatures called 'The Moomins'.
Jansson's illustrations originally existed as comic strips in a Finnish political magazine (Garm), having the purpose of entertaining adults with political jokes, before being published as a series of short children's books by Jansson.
Tove Jansson's intention with her illustrations was to capture the world of Moominvalley. Although this could be achieved by words alone, her illustrations visually document the atmosphere and enhance the fantastical world that readers can experience through reading.
Moomin is still largely popular today, but the characters have since evolved to suit the ever-growing demands of her audience. Now, her illustrations (and reworked editions) exist as moving image in an animated series and as motifs for clothing and products.
I feel that the recent developments of the Moomin Characters have diverted and become highly commercial. I don't feel that these digitally printed images, adoring merchandise of all sorts and sizes, would please Tove Jansson's initial plans for the character. Although they certainly do have an audience and are successful in a commercial sense of art, these images no longer tell the stories as they did in their original context. I don't think that Jansson would be pleased to see the materialistic exploits of her innocent Moomin.
The hippo-esque form of the Moomin character that has become a signature for Tove is an example of her knowledge of her audience. She knew how to create a unique, mythological being that was so unusual, yet so natural and recognizable to become a timeless classic. Moomin is chubby and appears soft, even in illustrations in which he is a simple line drawing. Moomin is charming, he is universal and he is completely different to anything that has come before him. The Moomin stories have been translated into several languages and are enjoyed by audiences all over the world.
I think the legendary status of Moomin is the mark of a truly talented illustrator.
Jansson's own background and the context in which she produced the Moomin stories majorly impacted the illustrations that she created. She lived in Scandinavia and even inhabited her own island off the gulf of Finland, so her love of nature and the landscapes that surrounded her are evident throughout her work. Although Moominvalley is a fictional place, and the characters are also very abstract, it is easy to draw connections from these to her culture and Scandinavian heritage.
The pictures she creates echo the space she lived within and the world she wanted to see.
The first Moomin book was published in 1945, qualifying why Jansson was not using any digital media that we see dominating illustration today. It also explains the topics of her stories and the stereotypical gender roles she features within her work.
The medium she favoured was acrylic paints, but the expense and practicality of printing with multiple colours at the time demonstrates why so much of her work was printed on single colour plates.
She may have also liked to juxtapose between these murals of fully coloured scenes and completely monochrome shots in a deliberate conflict of emotions and tone of voice, depending on the story at hand.
The ideas behind her illustrations match that of her fiction works. Mostly adventures, these books often have a darker element beneath the surface. Jansson's stories discuss important issues such as human nature, death and betrayal. Disguised within innocent children's stories, she often had lots to say: teaching lessons and morals, from basic manners to the life cycle and the consequences of one's actions.
Her illustrations relate to these serious topics by featuring a very dark and tense atmosphere, almost unnerving at times, achieved by using highly detailed pen and ink drawings.
Some people have suggested that her characters were not simply reflections of family roles, but rather psychological states of mind or representations of Freudian personalities. The illustration above, in particular, gives me a similar inclination. Snufkin is drawn in complete silhouette, distant from the other characters and somewhat out of place in the scene; the connotations of this aesthetic is that Snufkin is growing apart from the others, that he is a loner or that he is conflicted in some way.
Perhaps it is the renowned Finnish introversion that lead Jansson to convey so many complex concepts within her work, a way of teaching without speaking. Perhaps this is why her books were so popular in Finland and parents relied on her books to offer their children the answers to their questions.
I think that the theme of ADVENTURE is so heavily repeated within Jansson's work and is conveyed so effectively within the depth of the above illustration in an attempt to appeal to the childish desire for exploration and make-believe.
I believe that it is because of Tove Jansson's skills in constructing dream-like scenes and delving so deep into the heart and soul of each and every character is why so many adults are drawn to her children's fiction as an act of escapism, to a world where things are better.
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