He was one of the most influential Soviet artists, acquiring a cult following in the West at a time when his work was almost ignored in his home country. Unlike contemporaries who painted the cruel realities of the Communist dream Andrei Tarkovsky’s greatest film, Andrei Rublev, was a dreamily beautiful reconstruction of the life of Russia’s medieval icon painter. Other films, including Ivan's Childhood and Nostalghia, revealed the artist's need to return to his roots, to step into a different time zone.
But Tarkovsky’s artistic inheritance is still vitally important, both in the West and in Russia, says his son, also called Andrei – in London for the opening of an exhibition of his father’s photographs at the White Space Gallery ahead of a retrospective of his films at the Curzon Mayfair.
The exhibition is comprised of a moving series of Polaroids – family, dogs, landscapes – all rendered in the faded blue-ish hues familiar to all who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition is housed in a church – fitting for an artist whose work had such religious overtones.
‘I found it quite appropriate,’ Tarkovsky explains. ‘The images themselves are quite private and quite special but they have this spiritual side which is quite evident. Every work by my father does.’ He adds that it feels odd for an audience of strangers to come and see his family album, yet he can see why those who love his father’s films are interested.
‘All my father’s work is based on autobiographical episodes – his dreams, his memories, the idea of the house and the family members. Everything is taken from his life. He didn’t divide his life from his art; it was a really creative environment in the house. That’s why I think those Polaroids are so popular, because it’s really private and small family memories but still they have this universal meaning.’
Next year will see the publication of his father’s diaries in Russia for the first time, 75 years after the director’s birth. Tarkovsky hopes the diaries will remind Russians of their rich cultural history.
‘There are many books about him in Russian – usually “Tarkovsky and me” or something like that,’ he laughs. ‘In Russia, it was after his death that he became famous. Many people know Tarkovsky’s name, but maybe he is a painter or…’
The diaries will tell their Russian readers an incredible story. Tarkovsky’s career under the Soviets was dogged by bureaucratic difficulties and he only made a handful of films. Amazingly, his work was never shown at Soviet film festivals and the director had no idea of his popularity beyond the Iron Curtain until he left Russia for Italy in 1982. He died of cancer four years later.
‘My father left to shoot Nostalghia and I waited four years to join him. I was kind of a hostage of the Soviets. For him and for us it was quite, quite sad. But finally we met and it was…’ His face breaks into a smile.
Putin’s Russia is no longer a place where the Soviet era is something to be ashamed of - even Stalin is viewed with a certain amount of nostalgia. And although Tarkovsky eventually fled the Soviet Union, his son insists that he loved Russia deeply.
‘He was quite patriotic about Russia, he never abandoned his Russian roots and he really needed Russia to create. His stay abroad was quite hard - he was a really bad immigrant. He always needed Russian land and Russian space. That’s why I don’t think he was ever considered a dissident – even by the Soviets. They never took away his passport. Never. So he only was mistreated while he lived there.’
Yet his son is far from complimentary about the new Russia, with its culture of conspicuous consumerism: ‘Now there’s no culture, there’s only vulgar display of money.’
He is quietly scornful of the idea that any contemporary Russian filmmaker could inherit his father’s place as a true Russian auteur. Of Andrei Zvagintsev (The Return, 2003) he says:
‘Ok it looks like Tarkovsky, but why? Why not something else? One can be inspired by his films, but it’s wrong to copy. It doesn’t work.’
Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark, 2002) comes a little closer to the mark:
‘He’s really far from Tarkovsky, but many have compared them. I think their work is opposite, although Sokurov is really strong and has his own language.’
Tarkovsky junior has himself become a filmmaker - he now makes documentaries, despite initially wanting to avoid the ‘heavy luggage’ of the Tarkovsky name. But he has no plans to work in Russia.
‘I used to go there more often but Russia has changed, everything changed. I don’t think it changed in a positive way. Especially in art and in movies, there’s a huge drop in quality.’
Perhaps, he says, one should never go hunting for one’s childhood – yet this is precisely how some of his father’s greatest work came about:
‘Yes. He opened the door whenever he wanted and walked through all the time. This was his genius.’
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