HV,A t\I t ,,,, as not. th e at hl eti c andartis tic alib i woul d merge, as with the otullipresent reproductions o classi cal statuary , disc us-throwers an d the liJ ;e tbat would remain a k ey t er m of tile gayimagiuary tOr generations. Similarly, it was no accid ent that , as early as the 1880s, the classi cal statu e o ra maratllOner in Ber li n s Ti ergarten be ca me the focus of an important g y cruising re (Andreas Stemweile>t, Kunst w schwiiler Alltag in Micl me B o U ~ e d EI4of {ulo; Homosexuelle Frauen und Manner in Berlin /{J50·1950. GeschieJue Alltag wuf Kullur (Berlin: FrOHch Kaufnmnn, 1984), p. 76). course, the artistic alibi had remarkable staying: power despite its sub.mersionby the athl eti c ali bi, supported its own crypto-gay publishing mini-industry in the 1950s and 1960s, and cont inues to have clear judicial n cultural Weight, as evidenced by the recent Mapplethorpe trial in Cincinnati. 1 Ricl:uud Dyer, Now You See it: Studies n Lesbian nd Gay Film London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 17-27. 18 Lin da Wil lia ms, Hardcore: Po we r Pleasure and tile Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley: University of Calif ornia Press, 1989), pp. 34-57. He describes time in tenns of human memory and life-pr ocesses. This scts up a du al it y where time is cormected to memor y and consciousl 1es s and intimately expressed through na tu re, This no ti on of li me a s memflI Y will lead to a brief discussion of Henri Bergson s concept of duration as a comparative term to help understand Tarkovsky s aesthetics. The connection to a now neglected early 20th century philosopher is not obscurantism if one remembers the impact Ber gson s thoughts had on mode rn art . With Berg soni sm in tbe ai r modem art beca me haunt ed by the quest for an aesthetic to represent the flux of time and m.emory. A nd as Erwi n Panov sky, Arnold Hauser an d other s bavc no te d, film is th e quintessential ti me -space art beea us time and space ac quire qua lities of the other. Throug b montage time loses its irre versi bili ty, it is Ti me, pri nt ed in it s fac tu al forms aod manifestations: such b the supreme idea of cinema as an art.. O n th at I build my working hypothesis, both practical and theoretical (63) Time an d the Film Aesthetics of Andrei Tarkovsky Andrei Tarkovsky was born in 1932, in Laovrazhe, the lvanova dislrict of the Soviet Union. He ie tIfty-four years later in 1986, only months after the release of hi s l as t film, The Sacr ific e. His prior films are iv ll s Childhood 1962, Andrei Rublev 1966, Solaris 1971, The Mirror 975 Stalker 1979, and Nostalghia 1983. Tarkovsky s fi lms form an intensely personal and con sis ten t oeuvre th at have accumuhHed a loyal following in the West and (slOWly) in the East. Tarkovsky s writ ten thoughts on film and art st m remain little discussed. This ess ay will look into Tarkovsky s aesthetics through both hisfUms and his scattered the ore tic al conject ure s col lec ted in Sculpting ill Time: Reflections on the Cinema (from which all subs equen t quot es by Tarkovskyare taken) . As t e title oftbe book ind icate s, time is the mo st imp ort ant working principle for Tarkovsky: DonatoTotar o
