Finnish director Kristian Smeds has succeeded in staging an impressive production about the painter Vilho Lampi. It is surprising and provoking – and lasts nearly four hours.
Finnish artist Vilho Lampi in "God Is Beauty". Photo: Martin Kaufhold
Splinters of wood fly through the air as the painter Vilho Lampi is seized by inspiration and thrashes an ax into a piece of timber. Sweat drips relentlessly, and it seems as though this man is drawn to his artworks with urgency, as though he has been kissed by desperation instead of a muse. Kristian Smeds’ “God Is Beauty” is based on the story of Vilho Lampi’s life, as recorded by the Finnish author Paavo Rintala in 1959. However, this is not a biography, but rather “a book about beauty,” Smeds quotes the author’s words shortly before the performance begins. True to this motto, the protagonist’s excruciating search for the divine and beauty pervades throughout Smeds’ staging of the artist’s biography, which begins in Vilho Lampi’s youth.
Painting for cows
This is depicted on stage through scenes of the young Lampi whipping a rope above his head, frantically dancing to klezmer music, speaking to imaginary people in matchboxes and attempting to reinvent art with his paintings. The role of the painter is divided among Kristian Smeds’ fantastic ensemble (Katja Kukkola, Tarja Heinula, Timo Tuominen, Taisto Reimaluoto, Tuomas Rinta-Panttila); Lampi is played by three men and two women. The artist’s craving for expression and sensuality thus takes on many forms and cannot be assigned to one particular gender. With extraordinary, idiosyncratic aesthetic devices, Smeds portrays Lampi’s psyche as that of someone wracked between delusions of grandeur and self-doubt – appropriate for Lampi, who, gripped by youthful fervor, jumps from one painting to the next and one day resolves to only paint for cows instead of gallerygoers. In depicting this, however, the performers’ pace is a little too leisurely at times in the props-laden room. For example, as their working space occasionally requires tidying, the ensemble members take the time to clean it during an extensive scene change.
Episodes of sensitivities
“God Is Beauty” definitely requires willingness to engage in Smeds’ unusual style of directing. Though Lampi’s biography extends throughout the plot like a red thread, the story seems, all things considered, less like a play and more like an expressive succession of episodes of sensitivities. The style is rather bold in light of the fact that Smeds has his performers convey Lampi’s expressionistic paintings through overwhelming displays of physicality. For the painting “The Executioner,” for example, Lampi, who took his own life in 1936 at age 38, smashes heads of cabbage and screams his heart out. The impressions he gains during a stay in Paris culminate in a comical parody of a French playboy. Smeds and his ensemble are full of surprises as they embark on their own unique search for true forms of expression. They string movements and materials together in associative, often hilariously bizarre ways: The stump of a tree is transformed into a hotel, an edition of the “Wiesbadener Kurier” newspaper becomes a filthy pair of underwear. Accompanied by a three-person band, the multiple Lampis dance, rage and rant their way through the world or indulge in the poetic soundscape of their own safeguarded reality. With the help of matches and individual spotlights, Smeds is able to create vibrantly ponderous moments, which he savors as close-ups of Lampi’s soul.
Not even the audience members are completely safe. For example, when Lampi begins to chop a block of ice in a winter landscape, sending a massive chunk of ice sliding off the stage. And after finishing his last work of art, Lampi jumps into the audience, sits down next to a spectator and asks her how she likes it. In combination with the impressive length of the production, “God Is Beauty” is an evening reminiscent of performance art, which is often too excessive. However, the formal aspects actually do justice to the exuberant content: Towards the end, the nearly insane Lampi has almost been devoured by his desperate search for beauty, and his dejection is expressed in the painting “Youth Portrait.” Lampi chooses two insubordinate children as models, and the actors’ refreshingly convincing performance make the whole thing work. At the end, Lampi’s suffering culminates in him exiting the stage and carrying his own artwork – an abused wooden carving – through the audience like Jesus bearing his cross. As he is ultimately crushed under the weight of his self-imposed burden, the artist’s perpetual wandering and search for identity come to an end in a quiet final scene.
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