旅行的藝術(shù):藝術(shù) Ⅶ 令人眼界大開的藝術(shù)-5

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阿爾勒鎮(zhèn)的旅游服務(wù)處位于小鎮(zhèn)西南一條不起眼的混凝土街區(qū)里。游客可以在此拿到免費的地圖，查詢飯店、文化節(jié)、孩童看護、品酒、泛舟、歷史遺跡和市場等資訊。但此處有一點特別突出，在大廳門口一張向日葵簇擁下的海報上寫著：“歡迎來到凡·高的領(lǐng)地”，而大廳的墻上則被飾以豐收的場景、橄欖樹和果園。

The tourist office in Arles is housed in an undistinguished concrete block in the south-western part of the town. It offers visitors the usual fare: free maps, information on hotels, cultural festivals, child-minders, wine tastings, canoeing, ruins and markets. But one attraction is emphasized above all others. 'Welcome to the land of Vincent van Gogh,' exclaims a poster with the sunflowers in the entrance hall, while the walls inside are decorated with harvest scenes, olive trees and orchards.

旅游服務(wù)處特別向游客們推薦被稱作“凡·高的足跡”的項目。凡·高1890年去世，在他逝世100年的紀念日，凡·高在普羅旺斯待過的地方都能看到一系列的飾板——這些飾板被安裝在金屬板或是石板上——放置在那些凡·高曾經(jīng)畫過的地方用以表達對凡·高的敬意。飾板上貼著凡·高畫作的復(fù)制品，并加上了幾行解說詞。不管是城里，麥田或橄欖園都看得到這樣的飾板，甚至在圣雷米也有。他在割耳事件發(fā)生后不久便被送入此地的療養(yǎng)院，他在普羅旺斯的日子就在這里告終。

The office particularly recommends what it describes as 'a Van Gogh trail'. On the hundredth anniversary of his death in 1890, Van Gogh's presence in Provence was honoured by a series of plaques-fixed on to metal rods or stone slabs-positioned in places that he painted. The plaques feature photographs of the relevant works and a few lines of commentary. They are to be found both within the town and in the wheat and olive fields that surround it. They extend as far as Saint-Rémy, where, after the ear incident, Van Gogh ended his Provençal days at the Maison de Santé.

我說服了我的主人們，打算花費一個下午的時間追尋凡·高的足跡，于是我們來到旅游服務(wù)處領(lǐng)取地圖。很偶然的，我們得知有一個一周一次由導(dǎo)游帶領(lǐng)的游覽項目，游客們在院子里整裝待發(fā)，而名額未滿，價格也還合適。我們和好些熱愛凡·高者一同報名參加了這項活動。導(dǎo)游名叫索非婭，是巴黎索邦神學院的一名學生，正在撰寫一篇有關(guān)凡·高的論文。在她的帶領(lǐng)下，我們到了此行的第一站：拉馬丁廣場。

I persuaded my hosts to spend an afternoon following the trail and so we travelled to the tourist office to collect a map. By chance, we learnt that a guided tour, a once-weekly event, was about to start in the courtyard outside and that there were still places available for a modest sum. We joined a dozen other enthusiasts and were first taken to the Place Lamartine by a guide, who told us that her name was Sophie and that she was writing a thesis on Van Gogh at the Sorbonne in Paris.

1888年5月初，因為覺得自己住的旅館太貴，凡·高租下了位于拉馬丁廣場2號的一座建筑物的一側(cè)，這就是著名的“黃色小屋”。這座“黃色小屋”的外墻被他的主人漆成了明亮的黃色，而屋內(nèi)卻沒有。凡·高對于房屋內(nèi)部的設(shè)計產(chǎn)生了極大的興趣。他想讓它顯得單純而樸素，具有南方的色彩：紅色、綠色、藍色、橙色、硫磺色和淡紫色。“我想讓它真正成為‘一間藝術(shù)家之屋’——沒有什么昂貴的東西，但是從椅子到圖畫，每一樣?xùn)|西都有特色，”他這樣告訴他的弟弟。“至于床，我已經(jīng)買了鄉(xiāng)間常用的床，不是鐵床，而是大的雙人床。它的外表給人堅固、耐久且恬靜的印象。”重新裝飾完成之后，他得意地寫信給他的妹妹：“我在這里的房子，外面漆成鮮黃油般的黃色，搭配著耀眼的綠色百葉窗，房子在一個廣場中，沐浴在燦爛的陽光下，這房子有一個綠色的花園，里面種了梧桐、夾竹桃和洋槐。房子里面的墻完全被刷成白色，地板由紅色的磚塊鋪就。在房子的上空就是耀眼的藍天。在這間房子里，我可以生活、呼吸、沉思和作畫。”

At the beginning of May 1888, finding his hotel too expensive, Van Gogh had rented a wing of a building at 2 Place Lamartine known as 'the Yellow House'. It was one half of a double-fronted building, which had been painted bright yellow by its owner but left unfinished inside. Van Gogh developed a great interest in the interior design. He wanted it solid and simple, painted in the colours of the south: red, green, blue, orange, sulphur and lilac. 'I want to make it really an artist's house -nothing precious , but everything from the chairs to the pictures having character,' he told his brother. 'About the beds, I have bought country beds, big double ones instead of iron ones. That gives an appearance of solidity, durability and quiet.' The refurbishment complete, he wrote elatedly to his sister: 'My house here is painted the yellow colour of fresh butter on the outside with glaringly green shutters, it stands in the full sunlight in a square which has a green garden with plane trees, oleanders and acacias. And it is completely whitewashed inside, and the floor is made of red bricks. And over it there is the intensely blue sky. In this I can live and breathe, meditate and paint.'

令人遺憾的是，索非婭并沒有什么可以展示給我們，因為“黃色小屋”已毀于二戰(zhàn)，取而代之的是一座青年旅館，并且由于旁邊是一座巨大的“均價”商店（法國的一種專售廉價商品的連鎖店），而顯得更加矮小。因此我們驅(qū)車前往圣雷米，在凡·高曾經(jīng)住過和在那進行繪畫活動的療養(yǎng)院周圍的田地里待了一個多小時。索非婭隨身攜帶了一本巨大的塑料封面的書，里面有凡·高在普羅旺斯期間主要的繪畫作品，她經(jīng)常在凡·高曾經(jīng)到過的地方將它舉起來，讓我們圍在身邊凝視。當她背對著阿爾卑斯山，舉起《以阿爾卑斯山為背景的橄欖樹》（1889年6月）時，大家紛紛贊嘆這片景色和凡·高的作品。但是，在團隊中偶爾也能聽到異議：在我身旁，一個戴著大帽子的澳大利亞人對他的同伴——一個頭發(fā)蓬亂的嬌小女人——說：“嗯，它看上去并不很像這片景色。”

Sadly Sophie had little to show us, for the Yellow House had been destroyed in the Second World War and replaced by a student hostel, dwarfed by a giant Monoprix supermarket beside it. So we drove to Saint-Rémy and there spent more than an hour in the fields around the asylum where Van Gogh had lived and painted. Sophie had with her a large plastic-coated book containing the main Provence paintings and she frequently held it up in a spot where Van Gogh had worked and we peered around to see. At one moment, with her back to the Alpilles, she held up Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (June 1889) and we admired both the view and Van Gogh's version of it. But there was a moment of dissent in the group. Next to me, an Australian wearing a large hat said to his companion, a small tousled-haired woman, 'Well, it doesn't look much like that.'

凡·高：《阿爾勒的黃色小屋》，1888年

凡·高的確擔心這樣的批評。他寫信給他的妹妹說，許多人說過，他的作品看上去太怪異，還有一些人甚至認為他的作品一無是處，令人厭惡至極，其原因不難發(fā)覺。在他的畫中，房子的墻并非總是直的，太陽并非總是黃色的，甚至草也并非總是綠色的，他畫的樹擺動得有些夸張。“我的確對色彩的真實情況做了某種改變，”他承認，并同時也對比例、線條、陰影和色調(diào)作了類似的改變。

Van Gogh himself had feared he might encounter such accusations. To his sister, he wrote that many people already said of his work: '“This really looks too strange,” not to mention those who think it a total abortion and utterly repulsive.' The reasons weren't hard to find. The walls of his houses weren't always straight, the sun wasn't always yellow or the grass green, there was an exaggerated movement in some of his trees. 'I have played hell somewhat with the truthfulness of the colours,' he admitted, and he played similar hell with proportion, line, shadow and tone.

然而，改變真實情況對于凡·高而言，僅僅是將那個所有的藝術(shù)家都會被卷入其中的過程表達得更加清楚——也即，選擇將現(xiàn)實中的哪些方面包含在畫中，哪些方面排除出去。正如尼采所了解的，現(xiàn)實本身是無窮的，也永遠無法全部被表現(xiàn)于藝術(shù)之中。在普羅旺斯的畫家當中，凡·高之所以獨樹一幟，是因為他選擇自己感覺最重要的東西來表達。而像康斯坦丁這樣的畫家，花費了巨大的努力畫起來則中規(guī)中矩，努力追求正確的尺寸。凡·高雖然對于創(chuàng)造一種“相似性”很感興趣，但是卻并不擔心尺寸的問題，只在意畫出他認為最能表現(xiàn)南方特色的地方；他告訴他弟弟，他追求的“像”不同于虔誠的攝影師所追求的逼真。他所關(guān)注現(xiàn)實中的那一部分，有的時候需要加以扭曲、省略或者更換顏色，方能在畫面上表現(xiàn)出來，但是依然使他感興趣的是真實——“相似性”。他愿意犧牲一種幼稚的現(xiàn)實主義來成就一種更加深刻的現(xiàn)實主義，就像一個詩人，在描述一件事件時雖然比不上一名記者來得真實，但是卻可能揭示出在記者嚴謹?shù)奈淖挚蚣軆?nèi)無法找到的事件的真相。

Yet in playing hell Van Gogh was only making more explicit a process in which all artists are involved-namely, choosing what aspects of reality to include and what to leave out. As Nietzsche knew, reality itself is infinite and can never be wholly represented in art. What made Van Gogh unusual among Provençal artists was his choice of what he felt was important. A painter like Constantin had expended much effort in getting the scale right. Van Gogh, though passionately interested in producing a 'likeness', insisted that it wasn't by worrying about scale that he would end up conveying what was important in the south; his art would involve, as he mockingly told his brother, 'a likeness different from the products of the God-fearing photographer'. The part of reality that concerned him sometimes required distortion, omission and substitution of colours in order to be brought to the fore, but it was still the real '-the likeness'-that interested him. He was willing to sacrifice a naïve realism in order to achieve a realism of a deeper sort, behaving like a poet who, though less factual than a journalist in describing an event, may nevertheless reveal truths about it that find no place in the other's literal grid.

1888年9月，凡·高寫了封信給他的弟弟，談到他計劃要畫的一幅肖像畫：“與其嘗試著去精確再現(xiàn)展示在我面前的圖景，我更加傾向于隨心所欲地運用色彩，為的是有力地表達我自己……我將給你一個例子來說明我的想法。我打算畫一個藝術(shù)家朋友的肖像，他是一個懷有偉大夢想的人，天生就熱愛自己的工作。（這就是他在1888年9月初畫的《詩人》）。在我的畫中，他將會是一個金發(fā)碧眼的人。我想將我對他的欣賞，我對他的愛，放進這幅畫中。因此，開始時我盡可能忠實地把他畫出來。但是這幅畫仍然沒有完成。為了完成這幅畫，我的用色將非常專斷、大膽。我對他亮麗的頭發(fā)進行了夸張，我甚至調(diào)出了橙色調(diào)、鉻黃色和蒼白的淡黃色。他背后那道普普通通的墻，我則用我能想出的最飽滿、最強烈的藍色作為背景，通過這種明亮的頭部與飽滿的藍色背景的簡單結(jié)合，我獲得了一種神秘的效果，好像一顆星星在一片天藍色夜空的深處……哦，我親愛的弟弟……那些中規(guī)中矩的人們只會將這種夸張看作是一幅漫畫。”

Van Gogh elaborated on the idea in a letter to his brother in September 1888 concerning a portrait he was planning: 'Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes, I use colour more arbitrarily, in order to express myself forcibly … I'm going to give you an example of what I mean. I should like to paint the portrait of an artist friend, a man who dreams great dreams, who works as the nightingale sings, because it is his nature ［this was Poet of early September 1888］. He'll be a blond man. I want to put my appreciation, the love I have for him, into the picture ［my italics］. So I paint him as he is, as faithfully as I can, to begin with. But the picture is not yet finished. To finish it I am going to be the arbitrary colourist. I exaggerate the fairness of the hair, I even get to orange tones, chromes and pale citronyellow. Behind the head, instead of painting the ordinary wall of the mean room, I paint infinity, a plain background of the richest, intensest blue that I can contrive, and by this simple combination of the bright head against the rich blue background, I get a mysterious effect, like a star in the depths of an azure sky … Oh, my dear boy … and the nice people will only see the exaggeration as a caricature.'

普羅旺斯圣雷米的凡·高之路

幾周以后，凡·高開始另一幅“漫畫”。“今晚我想開始畫一間咖啡館。它晚上點著煤氣燈，是我吃晚餐的地方，”他告訴他弟弟，“這種地方叫作‘夜間咖啡館’（它們在這里相當普通），整夜都開著。夜晚四處游蕩的人們，如果沒有錢支付一間寓所或者醉得無法被抬進寓所，可以在這里寄宿。”在創(chuàng)作《阿爾勒鎮(zhèn)的夜間咖啡館》這幅作品時，凡·高為了表現(xiàn)現(xiàn)實的其他內(nèi)容而不再拘泥于“現(xiàn)實”的某些要素。他并沒有再現(xiàn)景觀本身或是咖啡館的色彩，咖啡館的燈泡變形為發(fā)光的蘑菇，椅子的背彎成弓形，地板翹了起來。然而他依然感興趣于表達他對這個地方的真實想法，而如果他必須遵循藝術(shù)的那些經(jīng)典規(guī)則，恐怕無法像這樣將他的這些想法表現(xiàn)出來。

A few weeks later, Van Gogh began another 'caricature'. 'Tonight I am probably going to start on the interior of the café where I eat, by gaslight, in the evening,' he told his brother. 'It is what they call a “café de nuit” (they are fairly common here), staying open all night. Night prowlers can take refuge there when they have no money to pay for a lodging or are too drunk to be taken in.' In painting what would become The Night Café in Arles , Van Gogh abandoned adherence to some elements of 'reality' for the sake of others. He did not reproduce the proper perspective or colour scheme of the café, his gaslights metamorphosed into glowing mushrooms, the chairs arched their backs, the floor buckled. Yet he was still interested in expressing truthful ideas about the place, ideas that would perhaps have been less well expressed if he had had to follow the classical rules of art.