欧美人文风情第68篇:马奈名画《奥林匹亚》

 There's a long tradition of the female nude 1 represented in the most erotic, sensuous 2 way,  有一种裸体女性以最情欲、诉诸美感的方式呈现、

clothed by mythology 3 or clothed by sheer beauty. 透过神话包装或是透过纯粹美感包装的悠久传统。
It's a tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks and Romans in sculptures, 那是一种回溯到古希腊和罗马雕像的传统，
for example, of the goddess Venus modestly covering her body after her bath. 举例来说，女神维纳斯在沐浴后稍微遮住她胴体的雕像。
And Manet in this painting that we're looking at here, the Musee d'Orsay, 马奈在这幅我们正在这观赏的画中，在巴黎奥赛博物馆，
is clearly drawing on those traditions but doing something radically 4 modern. 正明确地利用这些传统，但做一些完全现代的事情。
The immediate 5 model for Manet was Titian's Venus of Urbino, 马奈直接的模范是提香的《乌尔比诺的维纳斯》，
except that he's stripping away the academic technique of the representation of space, of the term of the body, 只是他正除去那空间呈现、体态形式的学术派技巧，
but he's also stripping away that veil of mythology. 但他同样也在除去那神话的面纱。
And here in the Musee d'Orsay, we can see traditional nudes 6 as Venus painted in a traditional way. 这里在奥赛博物馆，我们可以看到像维纳斯的传统裸女以传统方式被绘出。
Clearly, the image is that Manet's Olympia is speaking, too. 显然地，那画面是马奈的《奥林匹亚》也在发声。
So by academic art, we're talking about the kind of art that was sanctioned by the official academy that was associated with the government of France. 所以就学院艺术来说，我们正在谈论被与法国政府联合的官方研究院所认可的那种艺术。
It didn't challenge, particularly. It satisfied. 它并没有挑战，具体来说。它反倒满足了。
Well, for a couple of reasons. For one, because it had the stamp of the official state. 嗯，有几个理由。第一，因为它有官方政府的图章。
These were the leading artists of the time. 这些是当时主要的艺术家们。
They were saying, "This art is of quality, and so of course, it had a ready market value." 他们正在说：“这是有品质的艺术，所以当然，它有现成的市场价值。”
But at the same time, it was art that was formulaic, that was expected. 但同时，那是制式化的、可以预料到的艺术。
Well, there was an idea that there was a definition of great art. 嗯，有个想法是有一个伟大艺术的定义。
And there was no point in looking for what was new or different, because what great art was self-evident. 且没有理由要找寻什么是新的或与众不同的，因为伟大艺术是不言自明的。
Great art was based on the classical and the Renaissance 7. 伟大艺术是基于古典和文艺复兴。
And what someone like Manet is doing is challenging those very established ideas, ideas that seemed as natural as the sun coming up in the morning. 像是马奈这样的人做的是挑战那些非常既定的想法，看似和太阳在早上升起一样自然的想法。
She's not a Venus. Her name is Olympia, 她不是个维纳斯般的古典美人。
and she looks very much like a real woman in a real apartment in Paris. 她的名字是奥林匹亚，她看起来非常像一个在巴黎一间真实套房中的真实女人。
So wait a minute, so how do you know she looks like a real woman as opposed to a Venus? 所以等一下，你要怎么知道她看起来像个真实的女人，和维纳斯般的古典美人相比？
We don't know what a Venus looks like. 我们不知道维纳斯长什么样子。
Her features are not idealized. They're not perfected. 她的特征并没有被理想化。它们没有被完美化。
When we look at ancient Greek sculpture or Renaissance paintings of a nude, we have a woman who's perfectly 8 beautiful, 当我们看到古希腊雕像或是文艺复兴画作中的裸女，我们有位女性是完美无瑕地美丽，
and you can see her face is asymmetrical 9 and her lips are a little bit too thin. 你可以看到她的脸是不对称的，还有她的双唇有点太薄。
She doesn't have that perfection. 她并没有那种完美度。
In addition, the representations of the academic artist always show Venus or other nudes in a coy way. 此外，学院艺术家的呈现总是以一种腼腆的方式绘出维纳斯或其他裸女。
This woman is looking directly at us. She is sentient 10, she is thinking, 这个女人正直直地看着我们。她带有感情、她正在思考、
and she's confronting us even as we look at her. 甚至在我们看着她时，她正面对着我们。
And so there was a real problem, I think, for the viewers of this painting. 所以有个实际的问题，我认为，对于这幅画作的观众。
There's no way to look at her and pretend that it was about beauty. 没有办法看着她并假装那是有关美感的。
One was confronted by her sexuality. There's no way to say, "I'm just looking at the ideal image of Venus of the idea of beauty." 人们面对她的性感。 没有办法说：“我就是在看着带着美感概念的维纳斯的完美画像。”
Here the reality of a nude woman is present. 这里一位裸体女性事实是存在的。
And it's even coarser than that because this woman was recognized as a courtesan that is as a kind of prostitute. 这甚至比那更粗糙，因为这名女性被认为是个名妓，就是妓女的一种。
The name, Olympia, was common for prostitutes at that time in Paris. 这名字，奥林匹亚，在巴黎那时是妓女很普遍的名字。
And what we're seeing here is Olympia's servant handing her flowers that presumably have just come from one of her patrons, one of her customers. 我们在这里看到的是，奥林匹亚的仆人递给她鲜花，那推测是才刚从她的主顾其中之一来的，她的顾客其中之一。
We must have, as the customer, walked into the room and startled the cat at the foot of the bed as well as the two figures. 我们一定，身为顾客，走进那房间，且吓到在床尾那只猫，还有那两个人物。
And so there is this vulgarity here. It really is doing even more than just stripping away the mythology. 所以在此有这个粗俗感。它真正在做的甚至不只是剥除那神话。
It's confronting 19th century Paris with its own corruption 11. 它正使十九世纪的巴黎面对它自己的腐败。
When we use the word prostitute, we think of a figure of much lower class. 当我们使用妓女这个词，我们想到是一个在更低阶层的人物。
And here we have a woman who's obviously a higher-class prostitute. 这里我们有位显然是位较高级妓女的女性。
The reaction of the press was pretty vicious. 新闻界的反应是非常恶毒的。
The press said she looked like a cadaver 12, she looked like she was dead. 报道指出她看起来像具尸体，她看起来像死了。
Manet outlined her in black and hardly modeled her flesh. 马奈用黑色替她上轮廓，且几乎没有将她的肌肉画出立体感。
What's interesting is that some of the characters of the remade of this emphasize the shadow on her hands and feet. 有趣的事是这幅画的仿作中其中一些角色强调她手脚的阴影。
And some of the press actually spoke 13 of her hands being filthy 14. 有些媒体确实说她的手很污秽。
And it's interesting that those are the only areas where there's significant modeling. 而有趣的是那些是唯一有明显画出立体感的地方。
Where one would expect to see modeling on the female nude would be in the abdomen 15 or on the breasts. 人们会期望在裸体女性身上看到有立体感的地方是在腹部或是胸部。
And here Manet's kept that really flat. 但这里马奈把那维持得相当平坦。
And you're right, there are areas that we do see shadow of unexpected. 没错，那些是我们确实看到意料之外的阴影之处。
So the press interpreted her hand as drawing attention to her sexuality 所以媒体将她的手解读成吸引注意到她的性感，
even though nudes for centuries had shown women with their hand place across their genitals. 即便数世纪来裸女画作都将女性以她们的手盖住生殖器上呈现。
You mentioned that kind of flatness of her body, and some artists organization said she's a bit of a paper cut-out. 你提到她身体那种平坦度，有些艺术家团体说她有一点像一张剪纸。
But Manet, of course, in so much of his work, really does reject the field articulation 16 of represented space, 但马奈，当然，在他很多作品中，都确实拒绝了与描绘空间的场域连结，
and confronts the viewer with the complexity 17 of painting on a two-dimensional surface. 并在一个平面的表面上以画作的复杂度面对观众。
And the area where you can really see that are, for instance, in the way the toes peek 18 out from under her slipper 19. 你确实可以看到那个的区域是，举例来说，那脚指头从她的拖鞋探出头的方式。
There is this awkwardness that reminds us that all of this is an illusion. 有这种拙劣感提醒我们这所有都是种幻觉。
And then in fact, there is just this two-dimensionality of this canvas. 然后事实上，只有这种画布的平面状态。
There's a kind of unmasking. 有一种揭露的感觉。
Manet's saying, "I'm not gonna pretend that my painting isn't paint. 马奈正在说：“我没有要假装我的画作不是画的。
I'm not going to present you with this perfect illusion the way that academic artists are doing, 我没有要像学术派艺术家做的那样呈现完美的幻觉给你看，
where you don't even see a brush stroke." 在这种作品中你甚至看不到一道笔刷。”
So he's insisting on unmasking that illusion. 所以他坚持揭露那种幻觉。
And then he's insisting on unmasking the illusion of our own interests in looking at these images. 然后他坚持揭露我们本身对看着这些图像兴趣的幻觉。
He's reminding us that our interest here is a sexual one. 他正提醒我们在这的兴趣是带有性欲的一种兴趣。
Right. In so many traditional representations of the nude, because the figure is not looking out at us, 对的。在许多裸女的传统呈现上，因为人物并没有向外看着我们，
we can comfortably look at her. But here we're confronted by her gaze and by her thinking, 我们可以自在地看着她。但这里我们面对她的凝视、面对她的思考，
and there is a much more problematic experience here. 这里有许多麻烦的体验。
And that's in the fact that she's a real woman, she's contemporary, 那是因为事实上她是一位真的女性，她是现代的，
and the way she picks her head up, the way she looks out at us, the angularity of her body. 她抬起头的方式、她向外看着我们的方式、她身体的僵硬感。
It's in all those things. And people at the time, 1865, recognized this. 那在所有那些事情中。而在那时的人们，在1865年，认同这个。
So this is a painting that is only partially 20 about the nude. 所以这是幅只有部分关于裸体的画作。
This is a painting about art-making and about the kinds of conventions that exist in art, 这是幅有关艺术创造、并有关存在在艺术中那种传统的画作，
then making us, the viewer, aware of those conventions even as we look at this painting. 然后让我们－－观众，查觉那种传统，甚至当我们在观赏这幅画作时。
Manet's saying, "Let's be honest about the materials. Let's be honest about the subject and our own motives 21 and desires." 马奈正在说：“让我们对取材诚实。让我们对主体以及我们自己的动机和欲望诚实。”
And I think that that's a really interesting thing for art to do. 我认为那是给艺术去做的非常有趣的事。
The great poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire called on artists to paint the beauty of modern life. 伟大的诗人及艺评人Charles Baudelaire呼吁艺术家们画出现代生活的美感。
And I think Manet is taking up that call. 我认为马奈在接纳那呼吁。
Manet is inventing what beauty could be for the modern world. 马奈正在创造现代世界可以有的那种美感。