Tarkovsky on Art
Before defining art or any concept, we must answer for the broader question, what is the meaning of man's life on earth? May be we have to enhance ourselves spritually. If our life tends to be a spritual enrichment then art is a means to get there. This of course in accordance with my definition of life. Art should help man in this process. Some say art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don't believe in the possibility of knowing. I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from the main purpose of life. The more we know, the less we know. Getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man's own spiritual capacities and he can then raise above himself to use what we call "free-will".
6 comments:
Ah! Tarkovsky! He really is an "evolved" filmmaker. "Stalker" is my all-time favorite film.
I liked Andrei Rublev and wish to see many more of his films. When he talks about cinema as art, he is really passionate.
Well!! I am a non-entity as far as discussions on films are concerned. Its just that I follow your blog because of the way you describe your understanding of a perticular film and that is quite wonderful.
However, I would like to make a point here (on Tarkovsky's comment). I am not sure if I can generalize, but I have mostly found people having a fashionable disdain towards 'knowledge'. Somehow, people always consider knowledge and education (perticularly in some science or tech discipline) synonymus. I wonder if Tarkovsky is trying to follow the fashion trend here when he compares Knowledge and Art. Infact he distinguishes them to an extent that he goes on to say that Knowledge narrows ones thinking span whereas Art raises a person above all.
Why is it that Art is not considered simply as a type of knowledge? Infact, I would say, poccessing knowledge about anything and putting it to use is itself an Art. One just cann't distinguish between Science and Art, can we?
-- sorry I am publishing my comment as Anon. I forgot my passwd
Rushikesh :)
Rushi, I do believe that lot of things can't be understood and calculated with formulae, but that should not deter us to seek a reasoning and logic to them. This is not to say that knowledge is useless or not worth having. I am sure one can't understand art without knowledge, it is an essential requirement to understand art, but can all art be understood on reasoning or by too much understanding, we lose it somehow. Probably what Tarkovsky wanted to say is, art transcends knowledge, not necessarily it is up and above knowledge, which might be a right or wrong. I too had a doubt about this when I first heard Tarkovsky's views, I feel really good that you brought it up here.
I would go with Rushi. The point here is if we are in to the listeners arena then it is just an art. From the creators perspective it is and it should be knowledge. If Cooking is an art, gluttons dont think of what are the ingredients. Might be he might get to know some of the ingredients, but does not bother about the whole things that it went through. But the cook knows exactly what are the details. Might be he becomes accustomed after doing the things many times and does not concentrate much about the process. The same here, when we create, its knowledge that is creating art and art is just a child of knowledge, certainly not above it.
with art and science we are talking of two different types of knowledge. With science it is the objective knowledge, knowledge about the world which is independent of subjective experience but with art it is this subjective experience.
Tarkovsky perhaps thinks that this artistic truth is more important but that need not be so.
We know that the beauty of a flower is because of chemical pigments and it evolved to help it in pollination but this knowledge doesn't stop us in appreciating its beauty or its capacity to invoke complex feelings and thoughts !
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