Between the Two Visions. „The Ascent” by Larisa Shepitko and „The Cinema” by Yuri Raksha
Marcin Zgliński
zglinsky@wp.plInstitute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0662-5306
Abstract
In the article author discusses Yuri Raksha’s triptych The Cinema (1977), which is a painted commentary to the film The Ascent (1976) by Larisa Shepitko, based on a war novel by Vasyli Bykau. Being also the art director of the movie, Raksha created an allegory regarding as much the film itself as the phenomenon of cinema in general, the ethical and aesthetic choices of an artist facing external, mainly political conditions and restrictions. The multilayered work combines multiple tropes and appeals directly to the viewers’ emotions, drawing them in a way into the world of fundamental moral and existential dilemmas, through allusions to the great religious tradition of European art, both of the East and the West, as well as referring to Andrei Tarkowski’s films. Both in the painting and the movie, the supremacy of the spiritual element over materiality was expressed in specific shots of the characters’ faces, which evoke strong emotional resonance in the viewer.
Keywords:
Yuri Raksha, Larisa Shepitko, Soviet cinema, Soviet paintingReferences
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Authors
Marcin Zglińskizglinsky@wp.pl
Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0662-5306
Art historian. Graduate of the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, where he obtained his doctorate and where he heads the Department of Fundamental Research in Art History and is the editor-in-chief of Katalog Zabytków Sztuki w Polsce [Catalog of Art Monuments in Poland]. Since 1996 he has also lectured at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, at the Department of History and Theory of Art. His research concerns early modern and 20th-century art, especially of the eastern territories of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Since 1994 he has participated in field research, documentation, and inventory work in churches and monasteries in Belarus, as well as Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine. He co-edited numerous volumes of the Catalog of Art Monuments in Poland. At the same time, he works in the area of broadly defined musical iconography, as well as relationships between music and visual arts. He has published numerous articles on historical music organs and organ-cases, as well as the monograph Nowożytny prospekt organowy i jego twórcy [Modern Organ-Case and its Creators] (2012). His research also concerns the influence of political and denominational conditions on musical iconography.
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Copyright (c) 2020 Marcin Zgliński
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