旅行的藝術:藝術 Ⅶ 令人眼界大開的藝術-3

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然而，幸好，凡·高在藝術上有著勃勃雄心，他不相信先前的藝術家已經捕捉到了法國南部的所有風光。在他看來，許多藝術家的作品遺漏了事物的精華。“賢明的主啊，我已經看過一些畫家的作品，他們根本沒有真正畫出這些事物，”他歡呼道，“在這里我還有充足的發(fā)揮空間。”

Nevertheless, and fortunately for his artistic ambitions, Van Gogh did not believe that previous artists had captured everything there was to see in southern France. Many had in his view completely missed the essentials. 'Good Lord, I have seen things by certain painters which did not do justice to the subject at all,' he exclaimed. 'There is plenty for me to work on here.'

舉個例子，沒有人曾經捕捉過阿爾勒鎮(zhèn)上中年中產階級婦女獨特的形象。“這里有一些婦女像弗拉戈納爾 [11] 或是雷諾阿 [12] 畫中的人物。但是，這里還有一些女人是此前在繪畫中從未被賦予某種標記的 （斜體為德波頓所標）。”他還發(fā)現自己在阿爾勒鎮(zhèn)外看到的在田間勞作的農夫也被藝術家忽略了：“米勒重新喚起了我們的思考，使我們能夠看到大自然中的居民。但是，直到現在仍然沒有人畫出真正的法國南方人。”“我們現在已經基本知道如何去看待農夫了嗎？不，幾乎沒有人知道如何將他們表現出來。”

No one had, for example, captured the distinctive appearance of the middle-aged, middle-class women of Arles: 'There are some women like a Fragonard and like a Renoir. But there are some that can't be labelled with anything that's ever been done yet in painting ［my italics］.' The farm labourers he saw working in the fields outside Arles had also been ignored by artists: 'Millet has reawakened our thoughts so that we can see the dweller in nature. But until now no one has painted the real Southern French man for us.' 'Have we in general learned to see the peasant now? No , hardly anyone knows how to pull one off.'

在凡·高于1888年踏上普羅旺斯之前，百年來一直有畫家把這個地方的景色搬上畫布。普羅旺斯比較知名的藝術家有弗拉戈納爾、康斯坦丁、畢道爾和艾吉耶 [13] 。他們全部都是現實主義畫家，他們都信奉一個經典的，而且較少引起爭議的觀點，即他們的任務就是在畫布上展現一個視覺世界的精確版本。他們走進普羅旺斯的田野、山川，畫出了栩栩如生的柏樹、林子、青草、麥子、云朵和公牛。

The Provence that greeted Van Gogh in 1888 had been the subject of painting for over 100 years. Among the betterknown Provençal artists were Fragonard (1732-1806), Constantin (1756-1844), Bidauld (1758-1846), Granet (1775-1849) and Aiguier (1814-1865). All were realistic painters, adhering to the classical and, until then, relatively undisputed notion that their task was to render on canvas an accurate version of the visual world. They went out into the fields and mountains of Provence and painted recognizable versions of cypresses, trees, grass, wheat, clouds and bulls.

然而凡·高卻堅持認為，他們中的大部分并沒有畫出這些景物的神髓，對普羅旺斯的描繪不夠真切。我們傾向于將那些充分表達出周遭世界核心要素的圖畫稱為現實主義的作品。但是世界是如此復雜，并足以使兩幅描繪同一個地方的現實主義作品因藝術家風格和氣質的不同，而呈現出完全不同的景象。兩個現實主義畫家有可能坐在同一片橄欖林的一端，創(chuàng)作出迥異的素描。每一幅現實主義作品都代表一種選擇，畫家從真實世界中選取他認為突出的特質來表現；沒有一幅繪畫作品可以捕捉整個世界，就好像尼采略帶嘲諷地指出的那樣：

Yet Van Gogh insisted that most had failed to do justice to their subjects. They had not, he claimed, produced realistic depictions of Provence. We are apt to call any painting realistic that competently conveys key elements of the world. But the world is complex enough for two realistic pictures of the same place to look very different depending on an artist's style and temperament. Two realistic artists may sit at the edge of the same olive grove and produce divergent sketches. Every realistic picture represents a choice of which features of reality are given prominence; no painting ever captures the whole, as Nietzsche mockingly pointed out in a bit of doggerel verse entitled:

現實主義畫家

THE REALISTIC PAINTER

“完全忠實于自然”——天大的謊言：

Completely true to nature！'-what a lie:

自然怎么會被局限于一幅畫中？

How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?

自然最小的部分已是無窮！

The smallest bit of nature is infinite!

因此他只是畫出了他喜歡的。

And so he paints what he likes about it.

那么什么是他喜歡的？他喜歡他所能畫出的！

And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!

如果我們喜歡某個畫家的作品，那可能是因為，我們認為他或她選擇了我們認為對于一片景色來說最有價值的特征。有些選擇是如此敏銳，以至于它們逐漸成了一個地方的定義，只要我們到那個地方去旅行，就必然會想起某位偉大藝術家所描繪的特征。

If we in turn like a painter's work, it is perhaps because we judge that he or she has selected the features that we believe to be the most valuable about a scene. There are selections so acute that they come to define a place, we can no longer travel through it without being reminded of what a great artist noticed there.

換言之，比如，如果我們抱怨畫家為我們畫的肖像不像我們本人，我們并不是在指責這個畫家欺騙了我們。只是我們覺得，或許這件藝術作品創(chuàng)作的選擇過程出了差錯，那些我們認為應該屬于精華部分的地方沒有被給予足夠的重視。拙劣的藝術可以被定義為一連串錯誤選擇的后果，該表現的沒有表現出來，該省略的卻又呈現出來。

Alternatively, if we complain that, for example, a portrait of us does not look 'like us', we are not accusing a painter of trickery. We simply feel that the process of selection that goes on in any work of art has gone wrong, and that parts of us which we think of as belonging to our essential selves have not been given their due. Bad art might thus be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

凡·高對絕大多數在他之前已經描繪過法國南部的畫家進行了抱怨，認為他們沒有把最本質的東西表現出來。

And leaving the essential out was precisely Van Gogh's complaint against most of the artists who had painted southern France until his own day.