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Apocalyptic Imagery in Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, acrylic on canvas, 2023
Drawing inspiration from the final shot of the film “Andrei Rublev,” the artist creates an impressive painting where the distant sea, the intermediary mountains, and the dynamic foreground of brightly lit, impressionistic grasses compose a melody of happiness. In contrast, the movie scene is not as cheerful. It features a horse lying on its back, struggling to stand. However, painter Maxim captures the eschatological essence of the scene with the horses and presents it to us in two consecutive scenes. In the first, he conveys a sense of turmoil and anguish with the horses abandoned in a downpour. In the second, he portrays the horses in Paradise. This two-part visual analysis is ingenious, allowing us to delve into the ontology of cinema. While cinema may initially seem like a collection of fleeting moments, it actually shows us that these transient moments (i.e., history) do not just disappear into nothingness but are preserved in the ontology of the End Times. This is exemplified by the transition from black-and-white film to the transcendent shadows and enchanting bright colors in the subsequent Rublev images, marking a significant shift. — Stamatis Skliris
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