Andrei Rublev Linocut

Created November 2025

In honor of the Form Below Microcinema’s screening of Andrei Rublev (1966, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky), I created this linocut tribute to the religious icons created by the artist Rublev himself. This design weaves together the bookend images of the film, which starts with a figure who develops a sort of dirigible and experiences the momentary ecstasy of flight before plummeting to the ground, and concludes with the sui generis creation of a magnificent bell by the son of a deceased bell-caster. Andrei Rublev is a film deeply concerned with artistic creation at the intersection between religious inspiration and worldly suffering, the moments of ecstatic transcendence that only fleetingly greet us. We talked at the screening about the ways in which the ‘four elements’ of the world (earth, water, fire, and air) are used so dramatically in each of these moments of creative transcendence displayed within the film.