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THE ARTISTIC IMAGE IS ALWAYS A METONYM, WHERE ONE THING IS SUBSTITUTED FOR ANOTHER, THE SMALLER FOR THE GREATER. TO TELL OF WHAT IS LIVING, THE ARTIST USES SOMETHING DEAD TO SPEAK OF THE INFINITE, HE SHOWS THE FINITE.

Andrei Tarkovsky

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Andrei Tarkovsky
Age: 54 †
Born: 1932
Born: April 4
Died: 1986
Died: December 28
Actor
Biographer
Director
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Writer
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
Andrej Tarkovskij
Andrei Tarkovski
Andrej Tarkovszkij
And. Arsenʹevich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrey Arsenyevich Tarkovsky
Andreĭ Arsenʹevich Tarkovskĭi
Andrei Tarkovskij
Andreĭ Arsenévich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrey Tarkovsky
Andreĭ Arsen'evich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrej Tarkowskij
Andreiĭ Arsen'evich Tarkovskiĭ
Andrei Arsen'evich Tarko
Another
Greater
Substituted
Thing
Living
Finite
Something
Use
Smaller
Always
Speak
Uses
Artist
Artistic
Tell
Image
Art
Infinite
Shows
Dead

More quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

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For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged by an overriding passion.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I'd say that film is the sculpting of time.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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The film [Stalker] needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Art would be useless if the world were perfect.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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People who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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An artist who has no faith is like a painter who was born blind.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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An artist needs knowledge and the power of observation only so that he can tell from what he is abstaining, and to be sure that his abstention will not appear artificial or false.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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The Stalker seems to be weak, but essentially it is he who is invincible because of his faith and his will to serve others.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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History is not Time nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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Modern mass culture, aimed at the consumer, the civilisation of prosthetics, is crippling people's souls, setting up barriers between man and the crucial questions of his existence, his consciousness of himself as a spiritual being.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent for the moment it is nothing.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
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No 'mise en scène' has the right to be repeated, just as no two personalities are ever the same. As soon as a 'mise en scène' turns into a sign, a cliché, a concept however original it may be, then the whole thing - characters, situation, psychology - become schematic and false.
Andrei Tarkovsky