The Contemplative gesture in the works of kandinsky and Tarkovsky
neoplatonic intersections between painting and cinema
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.23925/1677-1222.2025vol25i1a10Keywords:
Andrei Tarkovsky, Wassily Kandinsky, Neoplatonism, Icon, ContemplationAbstract
This article aims to demonstrate a link between Andrei Tarkovsky's cinematography and Wassily Kandinsky's abstractionist experience, as material vessels - or "impressions" - of the transcendental. In this regard, I delve into the formal strategies that characterise the work of the two artists, considering the material specificity of both artistic expressions (cinema and painting) and the way in which they are employed in the interest of functioning as "impressions of the absolute", but also, and more importantly, to explore the theoretical foundations underpinning their written works – through which these artists sought to express an ontology of their own craft – under a Neoplatonic lens, drawing primarily on the ideas of Plotinus. I will base my reasoning on the recognition of a shared ethics between and on the concept of the "artist's responsibility" expressed by them, focussing on these two subjects’ ethical imperatives regarding the mediums in which they operate, with a particular emphasis on the potential of the contemplative experience.
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