I produce collages from time to time, simple pictures, doing it to the best of my abilities, like this:
The bust below in the picture above is a portrait of Petronius according to the information, which I found on one website. Also today, I present one collage which is not mine, and which is a brilliant work of one artist who is no more:
Author of the collage is Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990), a Soviet Armenian film director and artist, widely regarded as one of the 20th century's greatest masters of cinema.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4e/Parajanov.jpg
Retelling the article on Wikipedia, I can say the following. Making the movie Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (beautiful name, isn’t it?) which was renamed Wild Horses of Fire for most foreign distributions, Parajanov had become something of an international celebrity and simultaneously a target of attacks from the system of his native country. Cinema authorities regularly denied him permission to make films, almost without discussion until he was finally arrested in late 1973 on trumped-up charges of rape, homosexuality and bribery. Even now, nobody can know for certain whether he was guilty or not, whether he was accused fairly or not, since you never knew with the Soviet justice of those times. The soviets could simply invent a man’s guilt, forging facts, in order to kill the man, and I can’t say that he was homosexual indeed, since I can’t know of it (though it is known that in 1948 he was convicted of homosexual acts in Tbilisi; he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was amnestied after being incarcerated for 3 months.) Being condemned and imprisoned as homosexual for several years, he was to go through the hell, but he didn’t; he survived, since his art helped him. He made portraits of his prison-mates, which helped him to earn their sympathy. He was imprisoned until 1977, despite plethora of pleas for pardon from various esteemed artists. Parajanov served four years out of his five year sentence, and later credited his early release to the efforts of the French Surrealist poet and novelist Louis Aragon, and the American writer John Updike.
Even after release (he was yet to be arrested for the third and last time in 1982) he was persona non grata in Soviet cinema. It was not until mid-80's, when political climate started to supple, that he could resume directing. Still, it required help of influential Georgian actor David (Dodo) Abashidze and other friends to have his last feature films green-lighted.
His health seriously weakened by 4 years in labor camps and 9 months in Tbilisi prison, Parajanov died of lung cancer in 1990, at the time when, after almost 20 years of suppression, his films were finally again allowed to be featured in foreign film festivals. As one critic remarked: Paradjanov made films not about how things are, but how they would have been had he been God."
He was married two times and had a son. When he died, such luminaries as Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra, Francesco Rosi, Alberto Moravia, Giulietta Masina, Marcello Mastroianni and Bernardo Bertolucci were among those who publicly mourned his passing. In a telegram that came to Russia: "The world of cinema has lost a magician".
Personally I knew of the story of his life when I was a teenager, when listening to the Voice of America (from Washington DC) as well as Radio Liberty and BBC world service. The collage above is one of his brilliant works, recently displayed in Ukraine.
I regard the picture as a good cover for my book.
This is the original picture, Pinturicchio "Portrait of a boy":
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Announcement:
A chapter from my everlasting romance La Lune Blanche (Volume 2) has been published on the Authonomy books and writing website:
http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=8638
