'Chaplinesque gifts' – Jalmari Ruokokoski's mid-1910s self-portraits

Jalmari Ruokokoski (1886–1936) engaged in role play in an extensive series of his self-portraits dating from the 1910s. Most of these works date from between 1915 and the Finnish Civil War of 1918, around the time Finland gained independence and expectations of social mobility ran high. Evincing a working-class imaginary, the key works in this series are Ruokokoski's idiosyncratic portrayals of himself as a chauffeur. Interestingly, Ruokokoski's chauffeur self-portraits predate the canonical machine aesthetics introduced to Finnish modernism by the Tulenkantajat literary group, but they also invoke the early 20th century cult of the vagabond. The article reflects on the relationship between Ruokokoski's self-portraits and their politically and socially turbulent era. For all their carnivalesque qualities, the self-portraits are anchored firmly in the artist's personal experiences and the horizons of opportunity he perceived as unfolding before him.