Quotes by Andrei Tarkovsky

About Andrei Tarkovsky:

Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky was a Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn't 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 w...

Andrei Tarkovsky

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a ...

Andrei Tarkovsky

El artista no tiene ningún derecho moral para dejarse llevar a un abstracto nivel medio, para hacer que su obra sea más comprensible, más accesible. Esto no acarrearía otra cosa que la decadencia del arte, cuando en realidad esperamos su florecim...

Andrei Tarkovsky

Allí donde alguien se orienta deliberadamente por el público, estamos ante un producto de la industria del entretenimiento, ante shows y espectáculos de masas, nunca ante el arte, que indefectiblemente tiene que seguir sus leyes internas, inmanent...

Andrei Tarkovsky

La única comunicación adecuada con el espectador es ésta: permanecer fiel a sí mismo. Sin concesión alguna a ese ochenta por ciento de espectadores de cine que, por motivos indescifrables, exigen de nosotros, los directores, que les entretengamo...

Andrei Tarkovsky

Hay que dejar totalmente claro que las normas ordinarias del cine comercial y las producciones televisivas al uso corrompen al público de forma imperdonable, porque le roban cualquier posibilidad de contacto con el arte verdadero

Andrei Tarkovsky

Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.

Andrei Tarkovsky

What moved me was the theme of the harmony which is born only of sacrifice, the twofold experience of love. It's not a question of mutual love: what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any...

Andrei Tarkovsky

...art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal t...

Andrei Tarkovsky

When less than everything has been said about a subject, you can still think on further. The alternative is for the audience to be presented with a final deduction (...) no effort on their part. What can it mean to them when they have not shared with...

Andrei Tarkovsky

The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise.

Andrei Tarkovsky

The director's task is to recreate life, its movement, its contradictions, its dynamic and conflicts. It is his duty to reveal every iota of the truth he has seen, even if not everyone finds that truth acceptable.

Andrei Tarkovsky

My purpose is to make films that will help people to live, even if they sometimes cause unhappiness.

Andrei Tarkovsky

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be...

Andrei Tarkovsky

The artist has a duty to be calm. He has no right to show his emotion, his involvement, to go pouring it all out at the audience. Any excitement over a subject must be sublimated into an Olympian calm of form. That is the only way in which an artist ...

Andrei Tarkovsky

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

Andrei Tarkovsky

If you throw even a cursory glance into the past, at the life which lies behind you, not even recalling its most vivid moments, you are struck every time by the singularity of the events in which you took part, the unique individuality of the charact...

Andrei Tarkovsky

In the case of someone who is spiritual receptive, it is possible to talk of an analogy between the impact made by a work of art and that of a purely religious experience. Arts acts above all on the soul shaping its spiritual structure.

Andrei Tarkovsky

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, hi...

Andrei Tarkovsky

Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.' In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to 'fly upwards

Andrei Tarkovsky

Author Bio

  • NameAndrei Tarkovsky
  • DescriptionSoviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director
  • AliasesAndrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky; Andrej Tarkovskij
  • BornApril 4, 1932
  • DiedDecember 29, 1986
  • CountrySoviet Union
  • ProfessionFilm Director; Actor
  • Works