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Arts & Communication Dialogue of painting and cinema in The Age of Innocence

Bonitzer, and Fredric Jameson, in their research, intermedial image types as the tableau vivant and complex
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contribute to the development of the concept of subordinate intermedial figures based on word-image translations.
position pieces of painting and other visual arts take in Both types are evident in Godard’s films. However, in her
films when they argue that art functions in films to convey examination of Godard’s cinema, Pethó argues that in the
certain social views and ideas. Histoires de Cinema, Godard also shows how, by way of the

However, in the 2010s, the concept of painting as other intermedial “figurations,” cinema may reach into domains
was broken, in particular, in writings by the Israeli scholar that are intangible, infigurable, and invisible.
Hava Aldouby, who replaced it with a concept of dialogism, Alain Bonfand puts the discussion on a
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or heteroglossia. First introduced by Mikhail Bakhtin in phenomenological ground in his research of the dialogue
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studies on language and literature, the concept of dialogism between cinema and painting. While investigating the
has been successfully implemented into cinema-painting saturated phenomenon (something which is impossible to
theory, as exemplified by Aldouby’s research. Her analysis visualize) in film, Bonfand comes to the conclusion that
of Fellini’s art demonstrates how diverse languages are cinema, looking for its true essence, rediscovers at the same
incorporated in a single text, as a film is transformed into time the origins of painting and is thus aimed to produce
a painting, in accordance with the director’s idea of the acheiropoietos images (images “not made by the hand of
“total film.” As Aldouby 18, p.15 suggests, in Fellini’s films, man”). Subsequently, Bonfand declares that cinema, at its
cinema is “nourished” by painting, standing for “a conduit limit, rediscovers the essence of painting. Bonfand sees
to film’s foundational origins.” The relationship is mutually one of the best examples of this phenomenon in Godard’s
beneficiating: while painting enables the emergence of cinema. According to Bonfand, Godard considers the
novel formations in cinema, film transmedializes painting. canvas of the cinematic screen as “a sensible surface, a
The problem of cinema’s intermediality has been supporting beam in which something imprints itself” and
recently explored extensively, but it is still approached emancipates cinema from painting while going back to
today as one of the most topical and challenging. Romanian its very roots. The religious origins of the art of painting
researcher Ágnes Pethó, 20, p.489 who has studied cinema in rediscovered in cinema are also revealed in Bonfand’s
the context of intermediality, declares it to be emerging analysis of Tarkovsky’s films. Bonfand argues that in the
from the immanence of cinema’s multimedial texture Zone’s part of Stalker, the technical elaboration of the shots
and understands the cinematic image as a “constantly exactly reproduces the genesis and the technical process of
shifting terrain for the synesthesia of the senses and the making an icon.
interconnectedness of media.” Bonfand’s speculations elucidate yet another area of
Studies of the film’s relationship to other art forms the relationship between film and painting where the
and media have produced a new term in the specific film refers to and reflects on painting with an intention to
language of film studies – “expanded cinema.” The term, reconsider the true mission of art, which is to visualize the
first introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, is nowadays invisible. This idea correlates to the conception of cinema
widely used by scholars who study mixed artistic forms being a cultural means of reflection on painting as art in
of multimedia and intermedia and gain insight into the general.
“media-archaeological cartography” of the expanded
cinema. Bolter and Grusin examined how cinema 3. Cinema as a visual language
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displayed earlier forms of media and introduced the In my research, I follow the scholarly tradition of
idea of “remediation” to explain how cinematic forms are the Russian art critical school of The Cognitive and
remediated in other, newer forms. Communicative Potential of Visual Art established at the
Pethó distinguishes five models of intermediality Siberian Federal University, Krasnoyarsk. By applying
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that may determine the film’s relation to painting and the basic principles of the art theory established in this
other art forms and media. Intermediality in cinema is research school to the analysis of cinematic artworks, I
approached as a category of transformation (the model propose to examine cinema as a visual artistic language
best presented by Yvonne Spielmann in her analysis that develops in accordance with other art forms, which
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of Peter Greenaway’s cinema), as a reflexive experience together constitute an ever-evolving system of visual
(explored by Joachim Paech ), as a performative act art. In this system, dialogue between its elements occurs
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(exemplified by Dalle Vacche in her research of Godard’s regularly, not as a way of confrontation or struggle for
Pierrot le fou), as a transitory (represented, according to superiority, but as a mutually beneficial relationship
Pethó, by almost all Greenaway’s films), or as part of the essential for the evolution of the whole system and its
domain of the “figural.” The fifth model is present in such effective functioning.

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2024) 3 doi: 10.36922/ac.2090