梵高從未去過日本，卻做著一個日本夢

AMSTERDAM — In the soft, clear light of Provence, France, Vincent van Gogh saw the crisp skies of Japanese woodcut prints. The almond blossoms, gnarled trees and irises that dotted the French landscape reminded him of nature scenes painted in Kyoto. And in the locals at Arles cafes, he saw resonances with the geishas and Kabuki actors of a country he had never visited.

阿姆斯特丹——在法國普羅旺斯柔和清晰的陽光下，文森特·梵高(Vincent van Gogh)看到了日本木刻版畫中的清澈天空。法國風光里的杏花、鳶尾花與盤根錯節(jié)的樹木讓他聯(lián)想起那些在京都繪制的自然風景。在阿爾咖啡館的當?shù)厝松砩?，他看到日本藝妓與歌舞伎的影子，而那是一個他從未去過的國家。

“My dear brother, you know, I feel I’m in Japan,” van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, on March 16, 1888, not long after he had settled in Arles.

“親愛的弟弟，你知道，我覺得自己好像在日本，”1888年3月16日，梵高在定居阿爾不久后寫信給弟弟提奧(Theo)。

By June he was urging Theo and other Impressionist artists in Paris to join him. “I’d like you to spend some time here, you’d feel it,” he wrote. “After some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel color differently.”

到六月份，他開始敦促提奧和巴黎其他印象派藝術家加入自己的行列。“我希望你能在這里度過一段時間，你會感覺到的，”他寫道。“一段時間后，你的視野會發(fā)生變化，你會更多地以日本人的方式去觀看事物，以不同的方式去感知色彩。”

For at least a year, van Gogh, who was Dutch, lived in Provence in a kind of Japanese dream. It was not a delusion, but rather an imaginative projection of an idealized vision of Japan onto the French landscape, said Nienke Bakker, curator of paintings for the Van Gogh Museum. The painter had been bitten by the bug of Japonisme, a mania for Japanese aesthetics that swept Europe in the 19th century, and which also afflicted painters such as Claude Monet, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas.

在至少一年的時間里，荷蘭人梵高在普羅旺斯做著他的日本夢。梵高博物館館長尼恩克·巴克(Nienke Bakker)說，這不是妄想，而是把他心目中理想化的日本景觀投射到法國風景當中去，非常有想象力。19世紀，對日本美學的狂熱席卷歐洲，被稱為“日本主義”，梵高也受到了沖擊，這股風潮還感染了克勞德·莫奈(Claude Monet)，愛德華·馬奈(Édouard Manet )和埃德加·德加(Edgar Degas)等畫家。

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in collaboration with three Japanese museums, has mounted the most comprehensive exhibition so far to explore that inspiration, “Van Gogh & Japan,” which runs through June 24. It tracks van Gogh’s early fascination with imported Japanese Ukiyo-e prints — colorful woodblock prints on handmade paper that were popular in Europe in the late 19th century. It also shows how, little by little, van Gogh integrated elements of Japanese art into his own style.

阿姆斯特丹的梵高博物館與三家日本博物館合作舉辦了“梵高與日本”(Van Gogh & Japan)展覽，迄今最全面地探索了梵高從日本主義中所獲得的靈感，展覽將持續(xù)至6月24日。它追溯了梵高早年對出口到歐洲的日本浮世繪的迷戀——浮世繪是一種印在手工紙張上的彩色木版畫，于19世紀末開始在歐洲流行。該展覽也顯示出梵高如何將日本藝術元素逐漸融入自己的風格。

“It’s hard to imagine what his works would have looked like without this source of inspiration,” said Bakker, one of the exhibition’s four curators, referring to the influence of Japanese prints. “It really helped him to find the style that we all know,” she added. “He really chose that as the way to go.”

“很難想象，如果沒有這種靈感的啟發(fā)，他的作品會是什么樣子，”該展覽的四位策展人之一巴克(Bakker)這樣評價日本版畫的影響。“它確實幫助他找到了他那種眾所周知的風格，”她補充說。“他確實選擇了這種方式作為自己的方向。”

The sprawling exhibition — which is larger than a previous version that toured Tokyo, Sapporo and Kyoto — includes nearly all the major van Gogh paintings that make direct or indirect reference to Japanese art. These are hung near some 50 Japanese prints that played a role in the development of van Gogh’s distinctive style, as well as Japanese lacquerwork and painted scrolls.

這場展覽的規(guī)模很大，超過之前在東京、札幌和京都的巡展，囊括了梵高幾乎所有直接或間接參考日本藝術的重要繪畫作品。一同展出的還有約50幅日本版畫，它們在梵高獨特風格的發(fā)展中扮演了重要角色，此外還有一些日本漆器和繪畫卷軸。

Van Gogh first encountered Japanese prints in 1885 while working in Antwerp, the Belgian port city, whose docks he described as teeming with Japanese wares: They were “fantastic, singular, strange,” he wrote.

梵高初次接觸日本版畫是1885年在比利時港口城市安特衛(wèi)普工作期間，據(jù)他描述，那里的碼頭上有許多日本器物：它們“美好、奇異、古怪”，他寫道。

The Van Gogh Museum exhibition begins about a year later, when he moved into his brother’s apartment in Paris and discovered that the German art dealer Siegfried Bing, who sold Japanese art and decorative objects, had an attic full of Japanese woodcut prints at reasonable prices.

梵高博物館此次展覽的展品大約始于一年之后，當時梵高搬到了弟弟在巴黎的公寓，認識了出售日本藝術品與裝飾品的德國藝術經(jīng)銷商齊格弗里德·賓(Siegfried Bing)，他的閣樓里塞滿了價格公道的日本木刻版畫。

He immediately bought about 660 prints for just a few cents a piece. Bakker said that van Gogh originally held an exhibition trying to resell the prints, but it was unsuccessful. So instead he tacked them to his studio walls and used them for inspiration. About 500 survive in the Van Gogh Museum’s permanent collection.

他很快以幾分錢一張的價格購買了大約660幅版畫。巴克說，一開始，梵高舉辦了一次展覽，試圖轉售這些版畫，但沒有成功。于是他就把它們掛在自己工作室的墻上，從中獲得靈感。其中約500張流傳至今，成為梵高博物館的永久收藏。

By the time van Gogh moved to Arles a year later, he was fully in the thrall of Japan. On the train from Paris, he repeatedly checked out the window, he wrote to his friend Paul Gauguin, “to see ‘if it was like Japan yet’! Childish, isn’t it?'”

一年后，梵高搬到阿爾，那時他已徹底迷上了日本。他寫信給朋友保羅·高更(Paul Gauguin)說，在從巴黎出發(fā)的火車上，他反復查看窗外，“看看‘是不是已經(jīng)有點像日本了’!孩子氣，對不對?”

“The first year in Arles, everything is Japan,” Bakker said. “Later, after his breakdown, that changes, and he still refers to it but it’s less important. The nature of his admiration had changed. It has become integrated into his style, but it’s no longer his artistic model.”

“在阿爾的第一年，一切都和日本有關，”巴克說。“后來，在他崩潰之后，這種情況發(fā)生了變化，他仍然提到日本，但它已經(jīng)變得不那么重要。他欣賞的性質變了。它融入了他的風格，但已不再是他的藝術模板。”

The impact was more subtle, more buried in his technique. For instance, he sometimes divided the canvas using diagonal lines, rather than using horizontal perspective planes, as was the norm in Western painting. And he would streak his paintings with diagonal rain, as he had seen in Japanese prints.

這種影響更加微妙，在他的技巧中變得更加隱蔽。比如，他有時使用對角線的方式劃分畫布，而不是像西方繪畫中經(jīng)常使用的那樣使用水平透視平面。他讓大量斜線布滿畫面，就像他在日本版畫中看到的那樣。

The Japanese dream had ended, perhaps, but the fascination with Japan had not. Tsukasa Kodera, a Japanese curator who worked on the exhibition, has studied van Gogh’s interest in his country for more than 30 years, and spent the past six researching the final phase of van Gogh’s life.

也許日本夢已經(jīng)做完了，但他對日本的迷戀并沒有結束。這個展覽的日本策展人圀府寺司(Tsukasa Kodera)30年來一直在研究梵高對日本的興趣，過去六年中，他研究了梵高生命的最后階段。

“He was interested in our culture, and that says something to Japanese people,” Kodera said. Even though van Gogh’s art was not widely reproduced and accessible in Japan until decades later, he added: “They had also van Gogh visions, van Gogh dreams. Just as van Gogh imagined Japan as a country, they imagined him. It was a kind of two-way imaginary vision.”

“他對我們的文化感興趣，這對日本人來說很有意義，”圀府寺司說。盡管梵高的藝術直到幾十年后才開始在日本被廣泛復制和觀賞，但他說：“日本人也同樣擁有梵高的視野與梵高的夢想。正如梵高想象日本這個國家，日本人也在想象梵高。這是一種雙向的想象視野。”

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Event Info 活動信息

“Van Gogh & Japan”

“梵高與日本”

Through June 24 at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; vangoghmuseum.nl.

阿姆斯特丹梵高博物館;vangoghmuseum.nl;至6月24日。