andrei rublyev

saw andrei rublvey again today. it is easily the best film on art i have seen. i cant think of any other that manages to touch upon so many aspects regarding the process of the creation of art- its role as a medium towards fulfillment, its problematic relationship with power and patronage, the urge of the artist to create and his self imposed penance by renouncing his art, the jealousies of peers, and the struggle to find ones responsibility to oneself and to society through the work, and so much more- all of these in allegorical episodes from the probable life of a 15^th century icon painter in churches. tarkovsky probably saw his own struggle with the act of creation in soviet russia mirrored in rublyev’s difficulties in reconciling his role as a painter of religious icons in a society where the church and the state used and abused art and the artist as means to gain power.