One of the most unusual works in Konrad Mägi’s entire oeuvre decisively smashes Realist values and establishes a modernist supremacy of form. In the lower two-thirds of the painting in particular, aspects related to the form of the painting (colour, brush pattern, texture) have become the defining problem. This work is also exceptional bearing in mind the art of the Nordic countries in that period, where in addition to Realist and Impressionist works, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, National Romanticism and otherwise literary textured works set the tone. To a conspicuous and extraordinary degree, Mägi has almost completely broken free of narrativism, instead rendering nature abstract, stylizing form and manipulating space.

At the same time, this painting also brings up interesting problems connected to the painting’s ground (Boden) that frequently came up in artworks of that time. In analysis of Eastern European art of this period, the depiction of ground (landscape) was also associated with national identity building and seen as a political act. Yet on the other hand, some ways of depicting the ground can also be seen as loss of one’s footing and an inability to find one’s identity.

In Mägi’s works, the depiction of the ground is conflicted when it comes to identity politics. On one hand, he focuses on Estonian landscapes in many of his works, giving attention to various characteristic elements of the vernacular scenery (forests, lakes, seashore, cropland and so forth). In one of his early letters, Mägi declares: “I am a son of the Nordics and everything in me is nothing but a part of the entire nation and nature.” This might lead us to see in Mägi’s work the artist’s desire to perceive himself and his art not only as a “part of the entire nation” but also as instrumental in defining and creating the nation. An artist does not express just his own subjective urges but rather broader typical facets of a people – and does not only express them but also creates them.

On this painting, the ground in the foreground is cancelled, and replaced by an arabesque ornament, and if we are tempted to view the foreground as an anchoring of his artist’s sense of self, then in this case it is moored to the discipline of painting, not to the symbolic homeland soil. The landscape in the distance is just as barren when it comes to national identity building; there is nothing there that would generate an epic or emotional bond.

Thus, in terms of identity building, this painting has moved beyond political and national mechanisms, passing on to an existential level, where the self-perception of the artist, picture and thereby the viewer is not fastened definitively to any fixed signifier but offers up a viewing experience that has been made very abstract and which has no need to deal with defining anyone’s agency. Mägi does not find identity nor does he lose it: he is simply uninterested in it.

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