Andrei Tarkovsky on Art and Life
"Beauty is in the balance of parts." /Andrey Rubliov/
We were surprised that movie "The Passion According to Andrey: Andrey Rubliov" (1966) was completely different from the one shown behind the iron curtain over twenty years ago. Little did we know that the move was suppressed for about the same length of time, until the altered version was presented to the soviet public in the late eighties. Even the altered version had caused a controversy in those times. And yet, everyone who was thirsty for truth and inspiration flocked to see it back then.
In my view, the main idea of the movie is maintaining one's humanity even in most inhumane surroundings, during atrocious, horrible times. This challenge is eternal and universal. No one generation, nationality, nation, or country can claim that they do not face such issues in modern times.
As usual, we watched all the extras on the DVD. Among them where the video excerpts from the documentary Andrey Tarkovsky: A Poet in the Cinema [Un Poeta nel Cinema: Andreij Tarkovskij] 1984 - Italy (CIAK) / Director: Donatella Baglivo .
As usual, we watched all the extras on the DVD. Among them where the video excerpts from the documentary Andrey Tarkovsky: A Poet in the Cinema [Un Poeta nel Cinema: Andreij Tarkovskij] 1984 - Italy (CIAK) / Director: Donatella Baglivo .
Thoughs shared with us by this extraordinary artist are timeless like true Art itself. The following is a partial transcript from the above mentioned documentary::
About his movie "Andreay Rublev:"
"An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work would not exist, for the artist doesn't live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist: the artist exists because the world is not perfect.
Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as men wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it.
Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in "Rublev": the search for harmonic relationships among men, between art and life, between time and a historical moment and history in general, that's what my film is all about,
In this film my message is that it's impossible to pass on experience to others or learn from others. We must live our own experience, we cannot inherit it.
Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as men wouldn't look for harmony but would simply live in it.
Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in "Rublev": the search for harmonic relationships among men, between art and life, between time and a historical moment and history in general, that's what my film is all about,
In this film my message is that it's impossible to pass on experience to others or learn from others. We must live our own experience, we cannot inherit it.
People often say: use your father's experience. Too easy: each of us must get our own. But once we've got it, we no longer have time to use it and the new generations rightly refuse to listen to it: they want to live it, but they also die. This is the law of life, its real meaning: We cannot impose our experiences on other people, or force them to feel suggested emotions. Only through personal experience we understand life."
Q: Andrei, what is art?
A: Before defining art - or any concept - we must answer a far broader question: What is the meaning of man's life on Earth? Maybe we are here to enhance ourselves spiritually. Art has to serve it. If our life tend to this spiritual enrichment, the art is a means to get there. This, of course, in accordance with my definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Art has to help people to mature spiritually.
Some say that art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don't believe in this possibility of knowing, I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our purpose in life, The more we know, the less we know: getting deeper our horizon becomes narrower of our life and world.
... Art is simplicity without gaudiness. If one is ignorant, isn't it better to be guided by one's heart? In much wisdom there is much grief...
...and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
... Art is simplicity without gaudiness. If one is ignorant, isn't it better to be guided by one's heart? In much wisdom there is much grief...
...and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Q: What would you like to tell young people?
A: I don't know. Learn to love solitude more, to be more alone with themselves perhaps? The problem with young people is their carrying out noisy and aggressive actions not to feel lonely. And this is a very unpleasant and sad symptom.
The individual must learn to be on his own as child for this doesn't mean to be alone: it means not to get bored with oneself, which is a very dangerous symptom... almost a disease (danger).
Hey, beauty, come here! (looking at a horse in a pasture). How beautiful!.. Fabulous animal. How nice is the sound of a horse passing by..."
***
***
It was so great to find much more good reading on Nostalgia.com - a tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the most significant filmmakers of the 20th century.
Vadym Skurativsky
"The director's grandfather Alexander Tarkovsky was Ukrainian. Tarkovskys are probably descendants of the Crimean-Tatar migrants to old Lithuania and Poland."
ter
