艺术的力量（2006）

Everything that Rothko had done so far had been on a human scale. Personal.
但是这幅作品是面向公众的 整个曼哈顿都在看着呢
But this was public. And Manhattan was watching.
它可以借此机会实现自身的跨越
A picture lives by companionship,
在那些敏锐的参观者眼中悸动复生
expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer.
同样 它也可能会因此而遭受挫折
It dies by the same token.
因此如果把它展示于世人面前
It is therefore a risky and unfeeling act
这可以说是个危险的举动
to send it out into the world.
当他于二十世纪二十年代又回到这里时 当然没有人注意到
When he arrived here back in the 1920s, of course, no one noticed.
他只不过是又一个在爵士时代的纽约不为人知的灵魂
He was just another lost soul in jazz-age New York.
但是当时他并没有颓废沉沦
But then, he wasn't really into bootleg and boogie-woogie.
更像马♥克♥思♥和莫扎特
More like Marx and Mozart,
他心中有种冲动 要做些与现代世界有关的事情
he was burning to do something about the modern world.
与伯克利城市氛围相违的事情
Something in the opposite mood to Busby Berkeley.
罗斯科曾于1923年来到纽约
Rothko had come to New York in 1923
对此他后来描述道是“带着饿扁的肚子四处徘徊游荡”
to ''wander around, bum about, and starve a bit,'' he later said.
他加入了一个艺术团体来补贴生活之用
He enrolled in an art class and, to make ends meet,
在一个犹太人社区中心给孩子们上课
taught kids at a Jewish community centre.
当他站在位于布鲁克林的教室里 一切看起来挺容易的
When he stood in the Brooklyn classroom, it all seemed so easy.
他告诉孩子们不要太在意规则
He'd tell the children not to mind the rules.
他说绘画应该像歌♥唱一样自然 它应该与音乐是相通的
Painting, he said, was as natural as singing. It should be like music.
但是当他开始尝试时 结果却差强人意
But when he tried, it came out as a croak.
这是一份棘手且痛苦的想象力工作
It's the work of a painfully knotted imagination.
麻烦在于他在做的事情是孩子们没有做过的
The trouble is he was doing something the children didn't do,
那想象起来太困难了
thinking too hard.
所以 他涉足了表现主义
So, he dabbled in expressionism.
浓厚的黑色颜料
hick dark paint.
粗犷的线条
Sketchy lines.
不 这不太好
No, not very good.
这些树根抓的是什么?
''What are the roots that clutch"
从这些乱糟糟的东西上面伸展出来的又是什么？
''What branches grow out of this stony rubbish?"
孩子啊 你们说不上来也猜不出
''Son of man, you cannot say or guess"
因为看到的只是一堆支离破碎的图画
''For you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats"
阳光所及之处 那棵死树的枝丫光秃秃的 也没有给蟋蟀提供庇护的场所
''And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief"
干涸的石头 没有水流的迹象
''And the dry stone no sound of water. ''
罗斯科的“地下铁系列”
The Subway series
是不经意间首次引起人们注意的作品
were the first paintings by Rothko that catch you off-guard.
作品里充满了TS.艾略特的“Waste Land”中冷漠的男女形象
Full of the bleak alienation of men and women in TS Eliot's Waste Land,
他们都表现出了明显的陌生感
they have a compelling strangeness.
他捕捉到了都市日常生活的一瞥
He took an everyday urban scene
然后承载以冷淡的情感
and loaded it with a clammy sensation of doom.
这些来自布鲁克林的往返者
Are these commuters from Brooklyn
或者游荡的灵魂难道是陷入了炼狱之中
or wandering souls trapped in purgatory?
俄耳甫斯(太阳神阿波罗之子) 正在四等列车上寻找欧律狄斯(俄耳甫斯之妻)
Orpheus looking for Eurydice on the uptown D train.
地下铁的建筑构造 合着一列列悲伤的柱子
The architecture of the subway, with its mournful rows of columns,
阻碍了他的视线
snagged his attention.
但是从色调来看 真正的行动还在继续
But the real action is going on with the colours themselves.
站台的边缘是醒目的深红色
Look at the platform edge, that brilliant crimson smear,
当罗斯科施展颜色表现方式时你会明白他的用意
and you can see what Rothko meant when he called his colours performers.
这是一场生动的启程
It was a dramatic departure but getting there as a painter
但是作为一名画家 到达终点却要花费20年
would take him another 20 years.
1958年 在工作进行了3个月后
In 1958, three months into the Seagram commission,
罗斯科作了一场演讲
Rothko gave a lecture.
这是他最后一次阐述他对艺术的理解
It was the last time he'd have anything to say about art
同样这也是我们对他是如何看待自己作品最真切的了解
and it's the closest insight we have as to how he saw his painting.
作品的悲剧性主题
The tragic notion of the image
经常萦绕在我的脑海里
is always present in my mind.
我不太能说的上来
I can't point it out.
因为那里没有太过确切的东西
There are no skull and bones.
他说道 艺术最基本的问题
''The whole problem of art,'' he said,
是关于在这个特别的文明中建立人类的价值观
''is to establish human values in this specific civilisation.''
他否认自己的作品与心理上 启示性或者内部因素有关
Denying there was anything psychological or internal or revelatory about his work,
他说道 不 不 这是关于世界的
he said, ''No, no. It's about and of the world.''
然后从感性到讽刺再到死亡等方面
Then he went on to list all the ingredients that make up a Rothko painting
他罗列出了罗斯科式作品的所有组成元素
from sensuality through irony to death.
他说道 当我创作的时候 一种悲剧性的感觉时常伴随着我
''A sense of the tragic,'' he said, ''is always with me when I paint.''
正是对人类悲剧的这种无法忍♥受的沉重感觉
And it was this unbearably weighty feeling for human tragedy
令罗斯科把它表现在了作品之中
that Rothko wanted to bring into the Four Seasons.
我只对如何表现人类最基本的情感感兴趣
I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions.
悲剧 狂喜 厄运等等
Tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on.
而且有些看了我的作品的人们
And the fact that people break down
会感到崩溃并放声大哭
and cry when confronted with my pictures
这表明我传达出了那些最基本的人类情感
shows that I communicate those basic emotions.
但是对于罗斯科来说艺术之路却充满坎坷
But it always had been uphill for Rothko.
在纽约 三十年代确实不是艺术家的黄金时期
The '30s hadn't exactly been the best time to be an artist in New York.
那里没有适合画家的一个市场氛围
Not much of a market for painters, struggling or otherwise.
他去现代艺术博物馆观看每一次展览
With every show he went to at the Museum of Modern Art,
36岁的达达 39岁的毕加索
Dada in '36, Picasso in '39,
这些现代主义艺术大♥师♥令他感到气馁踌躇
the modern masters made him feel worse, floundering.
除了马蒂斯的红色工作室
Only Matisse's Red Studio,
当时是1949年 最终他内心某处的开关被打开了
which he saw in 1949, finally switched something on.
也许这与马蒂斯所做的有关
Maybe it had something to do with what Matisse did
因为马蒂斯把色彩从某些特殊物体上解放出来了
to liberate colour from specific objects.
事物不再有颜色 绘画也是如此
Things no longer have a colour, the painting does.
但是回溯到三十年代
But back in the '30s,
罗斯科仍然得绞尽脑汁去创作这件作品
Rothko was still thinking too hard to paint like this.
他并没有依自己的直觉行事 而是到书本中寻求解答
Instead of following his instinct, he went back to his books.
希腊悲剧 莎士比亚悲剧 尼采的“悲剧的诞生”
Greek tragedy, Shakespearean tragedy, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.
烟雾缭绕中 他搜寻着伟大构思的每一个组件
Great monolithic slabs of the big ideas he chain-smoked his way through.
然后他尝试着去找到那种悲剧残忍♥性的感觉
And then he tried to get the sense of tragic brutality,
这也是人类一而再再而三在做的事情
this is what humans do over and over again,
这一起都表现在了画布上
down on canvas.
我们很容易就能在这些图画中找到悲剧元素
No problem finding the tragic in these pictures.
神化与怪兽 叙利亚公牛 埃及雄鹰
Myths and monsters, Syrian bulls, Egyptian hawks,
嘶嘶作响的半人半兽边爬边啄
half-men, half-beasts slither, hiss and peck,
就像一件古老的法兰绒
like an ancient frieze.
屠♥杀♥ 祭祀 挖心掏肺
Slaughter, sacrifice and disembowelment by the yard.
但是罗斯科在死亡之地的考古之旅
But Rothko's archaeological excursions in the land of the dead
被现实世界发生的事情打乱了
were overtaken by the real world.
战争爆发了
The war happened.
但这并没有影响到罗斯科
Not for Rothko, classified 4F,
他因为高度近视而不适合服役
unfit for service due to acute short-sightedness.
但是罗斯科意识到对于艺术来说 这次冲突就像一个十字路口
But Rothko knew the conflict was a crossroads for art.
现代文明面临被消灭的危险
With civilisation facing annihilation,
美国必须要站出来把西方文明从法♥西♥斯♥的魔爪中拯救出来
it was up to America to save Western culture from fascism.
美国不仅要庇护来自欧洲的艺术家
Not just by offering safe haven to refugee painters from Europe,
而且还要拿出英勇的新的行动
but by doing something brave, something fresh,
而且这些行动要跟得上当时的时代
something equal to the times.
但这是说着容易做起来难 而且美国已经说的够多了
Easier said, and they said it a lot, than done.
巴内特.纽曼是罗斯科最亲近的朋友之一
Barnett Newman, one of Rothko's closest friends,
他发表了另一个宣言 总结了一条整个艺术团体认为的道路
issues another manifesto that sums up the way the group felt.
他说道 在世界废墟上发生的这场道德危机中
''In the moral crisis of a world in shambles,'' he says,
已经不再有什么可能性仍去绘画旧的事物
''it was no longer possible to go on painting the old stuff."
比如花朵裸体之类的
''Flowers, reclining nudes.''
所以纽曼封笔不再创作 时间长达四年之久
So Newman just gives up painting, for four years.
到了1959年的春天
By the spring of 1959,
罗斯科差不多已经完成了“西格拉姆”的订单
Rothko had almost completed work on the Seagram job.
由于精力几近耗竭
Exhausted by his endeavour, he took a three-month vacation to Europe
他携妻女去欧洲度了三个月假
with his wife and daughter.
我们可以从已经发表的
We get an insight into how he was feeling
他在跨大西洋班机的酒吧中
from a reported conversation he had at the bar
进行的一次谈话中了解他内心的感受
on the transatlantic ocean liner.
他再次以“狗♥娘♥养♥的”去称呼那些鄙视自己作品的人
He railed against the ''sons of bitches'' who'd be dining beneath his art,
希望自己的作品令他们食欲不振
hoped his paintings would ruin their appetite.
渐渐的 他开始把这件作品当作是一场斗剑决斗
Increasingly, he'd come to see the commission as a gladiatorial contest,
马克 VS 曼哈顿
Mark versus Manhattan.
长久以来 罗斯科一直希望能给自己的作品注入那些前辈大♥师♥们的情感力量
Rothko had always wanted to give his paintings the emotional force of the old masters.
在先前1950年的那次欧洲之旅中 他游遍了欧洲
On a previous trip to Europe in 1950, he'd done the grand tour.
在佛罗伦萨 他参观的某个地方激发了创作西格拉姆大厦壁画的主要灵感
And in Florence, he'd visited what was to be a major inspiration for the Seagram murals.
在圣洛伦佐教堂里的米开朗基罗图书馆
Michelangelo's library in the Church of San Lorenzo.
在我工作了一段时间以后
After I'd been at work for some time,
我意识到在潜意识中