Pictorial Pretexts in A. Tarkovsky’s Works

The broad topic “Tarkovsky and painting” contains commonalities, such as the director’s citing of the paintings by Pieter Bruegel or Leonardo da Vinci, but there are also less explored aspects. The latter include A. Tarkovsky’s method of working with images based on the work principles of the old masters of painting; implicit references and allusions not just to individual paintings, often not yet described, but to the entire worlds of certain authors or movements; and a total commitment to quotation together with a skilful and deliberate disguise of the technique, also described by the director in theoretical works. Tarkovsky was an artist in the very first sense of the word — a student of an art school, author of film sketches and storyboards, paintings, and even art history works. However, the main thing regarding the topic “Tarkovsky and painting” is his application of the very vision of a painter in his own work. He worked with frame structures in complex ways, often appealing to the repetition of the recursion technique, like great artists did in their works. He used iconographic repetitions in plots, themes, individual images, details, and motifs of his works. He often implicitly alluded to reference pictorial sources in such a way that without the testimony of colleagues the reference is impossible to guess. He applied the entire philosophical concepts assigned to individual artists and artistic movements and was not afraid to mix eras, using the elements and techniques of his predecessors to create his own film painting, finely crafted but full of anachronisms.