On Jumala on kauneus
By Elizabeth Richardson
What is beauty? Plato said it is an ideal, a form, perfection. Social
psychologists say beauty is both objective and subjective, desirable and
dangerous. Kristian Smeds' play Jumala on kauneus translates God
is Beauty. Is beauty God?
Smeds' production transforms the stage into the canvas of a painter. The
materials Smeds selects to create the painting are minimal and raw: ropes,
cabbages, paint, spears, an axe, a tree trunk, ice, the actors' bodies and
clothes. Natural materials remind us of the natural world and also the story
of God's Creation. As the play progresses, more and more objects accumulate
filling the canvas-like stage until the final scene when an actor sits in
the midst of tree branches, melting ice and paper snow. He cradles a rope,
holding it in his arms with such tenderness it seems clear that he loves
it, and through this act of love the inanimate object becomes art.
Art need not be beautiful, but this art is, at least to its creator. The
beloved is always beautiful to he or she who loves. Art, like God, is personal
and mysterious. It means something different to each audience member even
though they interpret the same story.
An artist's love for his or her creation mirrors God's love for humans and
the Earth. The loving artist creates beauty, and if God is beauty, art can
be an image of God. Is it any coincidence that the cognitive capacity to
believe in God and the practice of making art evolved in humans at the same
time?
Art enables us to attach the intangible to the concrete: it is a way of making
symbols. If God is beauty, God is visible. Perhaps the part of each person
and object is that is sacred and beautiful is God. The artist seeks that
part elevating the mundane to symbolic and finding beauty and God in everyday
things.
Jumala on kauneus
Photo credit: Miska Reimaluoto
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