第五季第20集：特纳如何开创现代艺术

欢迎来到瓦尔迪和瓦尔迪与本迪的艺术冒险。

WALDI and welcome to Waldey AND and BENDY Bendy's Adventures in Art.

我是本德尔·格罗夫纳，一位艺术史学家，通常我会与《星期日泰晤士报》的艺术评论家瓦尔德马尔·雅努什奇克一起主持。

I'm Bendel Grosvenor, an art historian, and normally, I'm joined by Waldemar Januszczyk, art critic of the Sunday Times.

但他目前仍不在，尽管他向我保证不会太久，但我依然在这里，为那些一周不接触艺术史就无法安心的观众们。

But he's still away, and though he assures me it's not for much longer, I'm still here for those of you who can't go a week without an art historical fix.

今天，我想谈谈一幅非凡的画作，以及一个历史时刻——越深入思考，我越觉得这是艺术史上罕见的转折点之一。

And today, I want to talk about a really extraordinary painting and a moment in history, which, the more I think about it, feels like one of those rare turning points in art.

这是一种旧事物悄然消逝、全新事物悄然取而代之的时刻，即使当时几乎无人察觉。

It's the sort of moment when something old quietly expires and something unmistakably new takes its place, even if hardly anyone notices at the time.

而这一时刻并未发生在欧洲绘画的常规中心。

And this moment doesn't happen in the usual capitals of European painting.

它不在巴黎，也不在罗马，而是在伦敦，就在一座着火的建筑前，一位艺术家站在人群中。

Not in Paris and not in Rome, but it's in London, in front of a burning building with an artist standing in the crowd.

那座建筑就是议会大厦。

The building is the houses of parliament.

这位艺术家是J.

The artist is J.

M.

M.

W.

W.

透纳，这幅画名为《议会大厦大火，1834年10月16日》。

Turner, and the painting is called the burning of the houses of lords and commons, 10/16/1834.

如今，这幅画收藏于美国费城艺术博物馆。

Now today, the painting lives in America, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

这是上世纪初富有的美国人大量收购英国最佳艺术品时，我们流失的画作之一。

It is one of those pictures we let get away when rich Americans were buying up the best of British art in the early twentieth century.

但在描述这幅画之前，我想先讲一个关于它创作过程的目击者叙述，因为这个故事实在太精彩，不容错过。

But before I describe the painting, I want to start with an eyewitness account of its creation, because it's far too good a story not to tell straight away.

场景是1835年2月英国学院的展览厅，目击者是透纳的同行艺术家爱德华·里平希尔。

The scene is the exhibition rooms of the British institution in February 1835, and our eyewitness is Turner's fellow artist, Edward Rippingill.

他正在观看特纳在所谓的上光日里的行为。

He's watching Turner on what were called varnishing days.

那是画家们在展览开幕前最后一刻被允许进入展厅，对作品进行最后修改的日子。

That's when painters were allowed to come in at the last minute and fiddle with their pictures before the doors opened to the public.

以下是里平希尔对所见情景的描述。

Here's Rippinggill describing what he saw.

这幅画刚送进来时，只是几抹颜色的斑点，毫无形状，如同创世之前的混沌。

The picture when sent in was a mere dab of several colors, without form and void, like chaos before the creation.

在我待在那里的三个小时里，特纳从未停止过工作，甚至没有一次回头或离开过挂画的墙壁。

For the three hours I was there, Turner never ceased to work, or even once looked or turned from the wall on which his picture hung.

所有旁观者都被特纳本人的姿态以及他处理画作的方式逗乐了。

All the lookers on were amused by the figure Turner exhibited in himself, and the process he was pursuing with his picture.

他的脚边放着一个小颜料盒、几支极小的画笔，以及一两个小瓶，摆放得非常不便。

A small box of colors, a few very small brushes, and a vial or two were at his feet, very inconveniently placed.

在这一系列神秘的操作中，人们注意到几乎完全使用调色刀作画的特纳，正在将一块长度和厚度如手指大小的半透明物质，均匀地揉开并铺满整幅画作。

In one part of the mysterious proceedings, Turner, who worked almost entirely with his palette knife, was observed to be rolling and spreading a lump of half transparent stuff the size of a finger in length and thickness all over his picture.

不久，作品完成了。

Presently, the work was finished.

透纳收拾好工具，放进盒子并关上盖子，然后依然面朝墙壁，保持与墙相同的距离，默默无声地侧身离去。

Turner gathered his tools together, put them into and shut up the box, and then, with his face still turned to the wall, and at the same distance from it, went sidling off without speaking a word to anybody.

这就是爱德华·里平格尔对透纳绘制我们今天讨论的这幅画——1834年10月16日议会大厦大火——过程的描述。

So that's Edward Ripingle describing how Turner painted the picture we're discussing today, the burning of the houses of lords and commons, 10/16/1834.

里平格尔描述的场景本身就很非凡，但我认为它还指向了更深远的意义。

Rippinggil describes an extraordinary scene in itself, but I think it also points to something much larger.

在接下来的半小时里，我将努力说服你们，透纳在那面墙上创作的，不仅是第一幅真正意义上的现代绘画之一，甚至可能是现代艺术的开端。

And over the next half an hour, I'm going to try and persuade you that what Turner was creating on that wall was nothing less than one of the first truly modern paintings, and perhaps even the beginning of modern art.

在继续之前，让我们放慢脚步，仔细观察这幅画本身。

Before we go any further, let's slow down and have a close look at the painting itself.

如果你手边有屏幕，可以在费城艺术博物馆的网站上找到这幅画的高分辨率图像。

If you have a screen handy, you can find a high resolution image on the Philadelphia Museum of Art's website.

如果没有，也不用担心。

If not, don't worry.

我会描述我们需要观察的所有细节。

I'll describe everything we need to see.

这幅画相当大，大约90乘120厘米，透纳刻意地安排了我们的视角。

The picture is fairly large, about 90 by a 120 centimeters, and Turner places us very deliberately.

我们站在泰晤士河南岸，一个寒冷的十月夜晚，凝视着河对岸。

We are standing on the South Bank of the River Thames on a cold October night looking across the river.

在画面最左侧的对岸，议会大厦正熊熊燃烧，不是以一种赏心悦目的方式，而是以一种真正令人惊恐的方式，化作一片翻腾的黄、白与红色火焰。

On the opposite bank, over to the far left of the picture, the houses of parliament are ablaze, not in a picturesque way, but in a genuinely alarming one, as a roaring mass of yellows and whites and reds.

这座建筑仿佛变成了一座熔炉。

The building seems to have become a furnace.

火焰直冲云霄，仿佛吞噬了周围的空气。

The flames shoot high into the sky and seem to consume the air around them.

在火焰下方，你勉强能辨认出圣斯蒂芬礼拜堂那座小小的哥特式端墙，仍如舞台布景般屹立，但火舌已在其内部肆虐。

Beneath the flames, you can just make out the small Gothic end wall of Saint Stephen's Chapel still standing like a stage set, but with the fire raging inside.

在它身后，被火光映照着的是威斯敏斯特修道院的双塔。

Behind it, caught in the glow, rise the twin towers of Westminster Abbey.

还有那烟雾。

Then there's the smoke.

它并不是优雅地向上飘散，而是被吹向横向，横跨河流朝我们扑来，让你几乎能感受到随之而来的热浪。

It's not drifting politely upward, but it's blown sideways towards us, across the river, so that you can almost feel the heat traveling with it.

泰晤士河本身异常平静，如同一面黑色的玻璃，却布满了橙色与金色的倒影。

The Thames itself sits strangely calm, like dark glass, but it's streaked with reflections of orange and gold.

而横贯整个场景的，是我们右侧的威斯敏斯特桥。

And cutting diagonally through the whole scene is Westminster Bridge to our right.

它比实际应有的规模要大得多。

It's far larger than it really should be.

桥石在月光下靠近我们的一端呈苍白之色，但在另一侧，却被火焰的倒影染成黄色。

The stone is pale in the moonlight on the end nearest us, but it becomes yellow by the flames reflected on it on the other side.

这座桥仿佛压迫着整个场景，使整个画面透出一丝幽闭感。

The bridge seems to press in on the scene, giving the whole view a faint sense of claustrophobia.

而在前景中，我们发现自己置身于人群中。

And in the foreground, we find ourselves among a crowd.

伦敦人挤得肩并肩，不是在逃离灾难，而是像观看戏剧一样凝视着它。

Londoners are packed shoulder to shoulder, not fleeing the disaster, but watching it as though it were theater.

就连河面上也布满了观众，几十艘微小得几乎看不见的小船载着他们。

Even the river is full of spectators in dozens of tiny, hardly there boats.

现在是个好时机，让我们更仔细地看看特纳的技法，他是如何完成这幅画的。

And this is a good moment to look a little bit more closely at Turner's technique, how he's doing it.

如果你近距离观看这幅画，很多部分根本看不出明确的含义。

If you look at the picture up close, a lot of it barely makes much sense.

整片区域看起来相当抽象，更像雕塑而非绘画。

Whole passages seem quite abstract, more like sculpture than painting.

例如，在画面顶部，你可以清晰地看到利平吉尔所描述的调色刀痕迹，快速而有节奏地压入画布表面。

At the top, for example, you see clearly the marks of the palette knife that Rippinggil described, pressed quickly and rhythmically into the surface.

在天空中，散布着锐利的红色和黄色斑点，像是被随意抛洒的小火花，暗示着余烬或火焰碎片。

And across the sky, there are sharp flecks of red and yellow, little sparks of color almost thrown on to suggest embers or fragments of flame.

即使是最细微的笔触也充满力量。

Even the smallest strokes feel forceful.

一切都被充满活力地涂抹出来。

Everything is applied with great energy.

在某些方面，这些画作简直就像是被随意涂抹的。

In some ways, the pictures really just paint painted.

然后我们注意到了这种不寻常的构图。

And then we noticed the unusual composition.

当时，透纳是皇家学院的透视学教授，他常向学生讲授如何安排最亮的光和最深的阴影。

Turner was at the time professor of perspective at the Royal Academy, and he used to lecture students about where to place their brightest lights and deepest shadows.

他说，要放在中间，绝不要放在角落。

Safely in the middle, he said, never in the corners.

但在这里，他却恰恰相反。

And yet here he does exactly the opposite.

最明亮的火焰被推向左侧，而最暗的区域则位于边缘。

The brightest blaze, the fire, is pushed off to the left hand side, and the darkest areas are on the edges.

通常的规则似乎被完全忽略了。

The usual rules seem to be ignored.

这幅画的整体构图强烈地将我们的视线引向火焰。

The whole construction of the painting forcefully draws us towards the fire.

它不仅仅是向我们展示火焰，更是让我们感受到站在那里的情景。

It's not so much showing it to us, but making us feel what it was like to stand there.

这就是这幅画。

So that's the painting.

现在，让我们倒回时间，探索这场大火本身，因为这段历史至关重要。

Now let's take a step back in time and explore the fire itself, because the history really matters here.

正是这个背景帮助我们理解透纳的用意。

It's the context that helps us make sense of what Turner was up to.

1834年10月16日清晨，议会大厦的两名工人接到一个简单的任务：处理一堆旧的记账木签。

On the morning of 10/16/1834, two workmen at the houses of parliament were given a simple enough job, to dispose of a mountain of old tally sticks.

这些是中世纪的税收记录，用刻在木棍上的凹槽来表示某人欠款的数额。

These were medieval tax records, literally wooden sticks with notches carved into them to show how much money someone owed.

即使按十九世纪的标准来看，这套系统听起来也有些像圣经里的东西，但几个世纪以来，这些木签一直在国库办公室里越积越多，终于有人决定是时候清理掉了。

The system sounds faintly biblical even by nineteenth century standards, but they'd been piling up in the exchequer offices for centuries, and someone finally decided it was time to get rid of them.

不幸的是，他们选择的方法是在下议院正下方的炉子里焚烧这些木条，你大概能猜到接下来发生了什么。

Unwisely, the chosen method was to burn them in a furnace directly beneath the House of Lords, and you could probably guess what happened next.

起初，工人们按照指示，小心翼翼地一次只往炉子里放几根。

At first, the men fed them into the stove carefully, a few at a time as they were told.

但随着一天过去，他们无疑急于回家，便开始成捆地往里塞。

But as the day wore on, and doubtless eager to get home, they began shoving in whole bundles.

到了傍晚时分，上方的上议院议事厅突然着火了。

And suddenly, by early evening, the chamber above, the house of lords, was on fire.

很快，下议院也着火了，几个小时内，威斯敏斯特旧中世纪宫殿的大部分便化为灰烬。

And soon the commons caught fire too, and within a few hours, most of the old medieval palace of Westminster had gone.

与此同时，伦敦像往常一样在危机时刻涌出人群前来围观。

London, meanwhile, did what London usually does in a crisis, turned up to watch.

桥梁和屋顶上挤满了观众，河面上停满了船只，《泰晤士报》称这是有史以来最壮观的火灾之一。

Bridges and rooftops filled with spectators, boats clustered on the river, The Times called it one of the most terrific conflagrations ever seen.

在其他关于当晚的记载中，那个时代最常使用的词语之一反复出现——崇高。

In other accounts of the night, one of the favorite words of the age appears repeatedly, sublime.

这个词在十八世纪被广泛使用，用来描述同时兼具美丽与恐怖的事物。

This was a word popularized in the eighteenth century to describe something that was both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

今天我们虽然不再常用这个词，但依然在使用‘崇高’这一情感，比如当我们以一种奇特的矛盾方式形容某物‘糟糕得好’或‘可怕得好’时。

We still use the sentiment of the sublime in English today, if not the word, when, for example, we describe something in that curiously contradictory way as terribly good or frightfully good.

但那晚，除了崇高之外，还有一件令人振奋的事情。

But alongside the sublimity that night, there was something else cheering.

而这正是当时政治背景为特纳画作提供更深层意义的关键所在。

And this is where the politics of the time gives us an even more important context for Turner's painting.

让我们花点时间来探讨一下。

So let's spend a moment exploring that.

到了十九世纪三十年代，英国是一个政治上极度不平等的社会。

By the eighteen thirties, Britain was a deeply unequal political society.

也许它比以往任何时期都更加明显地不平等。

Perhaps it was more obviously unequal than at any time before.

人口在增长，工业城市规模急剧扩张，但政治权力却几乎仍完全掌握在土地所有者阶级手中。

The population was growing, and industrial cities were exploding in size, and yet political power still sat almost entirely with the land owning class.

当时只有大约3%的人口拥有投票权，而且这一权利与财产挂钩。

Only about 3% of the population could vote, and that right to vote was tied to property.

因此，议会实际上成了土地所有者的私人俱乐部。

So parliament remained, in effect, a private club for the landed class.

这种制度的荒谬性显而易见。

The absurdities of this system were obvious.

像曼彻斯特和伯明翰这样人口达数十万的城市，竟然完全没有议会议员，而像萨福克海岸的唐威奇这样的地方——其中一半土地几个世纪前就已沉入海中——却仍能凭借寥寥数名选民向威斯敏斯特派出多名议员。

Cities like Manchester and Birmingham, with a population of hundreds of thousands, had no MPs at all, while places like Dunwich on the Suffolk Coast, half of which had fallen into the sea centuries before, could still send multiple MPs to Westminster with just a handful of voters.

这些就是著名的腐败选区。

These were the famous rotten boroughs.

因此，对于那些没有投票权的人来说，很容易感到自己是由那些几乎不了解或不在乎他们生活的人所统治的。

So it was easy for those without the vote to feel they were governed by those who rarely knew or cared how they lived.

今天我们仍常在英国政治中听到‘一个国家’这个说法，比如‘一国保守主义’。

We often still hear today in British politics the phrase one nation, as in one nation conservatism.

这一说法可以追溯到十九世纪三十年代的这段时期。

And that goes back to this time in the eighteen thirties.

这句话出自一位未来的首相本杰明·迪斯雷利所写的小说，他描述了英国实际上并非一个国家，而是两个国家——富人和穷人。

It's a line from a a novel written by a future prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, and he described how Britain was really not one nation, but two nations, and those nations were the rich and the poor.

迪斯雷利写道，这两个国家彼此对对方的生活习惯、思想和情感一无所知，就像生活在不同纬度或不同星球上的人，食用不同的食物，遵循不同的习俗，不受同样的法律管辖。

Disraeli wrote that these two nations were as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets, who are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.

总体而言，迪斯雷利是对的，这也是为什么当时许多人认真考虑过革命的可能性。

And broadly, Disraeli was right, which is why many thought quite seriously at the time of revolution.

事实上，19世纪30年代初可能是英国最接近一场真正民众革命的时刻；在经历了大量动荡，包括布里斯托尔等城市发生的致命暴乱后，统治阶级最终承认了变革的必要性。

In fact, the early eighteen thirties was probably the closest Britain has come to a genuinely popular revolution, and after a great deal of unrest, including fatal riots in cities like Bristol, the governing class eventually accepted the need for change.

但变革并不多。

But not much change.

通过所谓的1832年《大改革法案》，投票权从约占人口的3%扩展到约5%，但实际上，议会仍由同样的贵族利益主导。

By the so called Great Reform Act of 1832, the right to vote was extended from about 3% of the population to about 5% of the population, and practically, the same aristocratic interests still dominated parliament.

因此，当两年后，即1834年10月，同一届议会大楼被烧毁时，许多旁观者觉得这简直是天理昭彰。

So when two years later, in October 1834, that same parliament burned down, it looked to many watching like poetic justice.

事实上，根据当晚的报道，大多数人看着这些建筑相继坍塌时都欢呼雀跃。

In fact, we know from reports on the night that most people watching cheered and laughed as the various buildings collapsed.

对大多数人来说，这就像一场戏剧。

For most people, it was theater.

但那天晚上人群中有一位男子，我们的艺术家J。

But for one man in the crowd that night, our artist, J.

M。

M.

W。

W.

特纳，这却是他的创作素材。

Turner, It was material.

让我们先休息一下，回来后我们将进一步探讨特纳如何回应这一戏剧性事件。

Let's take a quick break there, and when we come back, we'll explore further how Turner responded to this dramatic event.

蒙蒂和本迪。

Monty and bendy.

欢迎回来。

Welcome back.

我是本诺·格罗布纳，我们正在讨论特纳的画作《议会大厦大火》，1834年10月16日。

I'm Benno Grobner, and we're discussing Turner's painting, the burning of the house of lords and commons, 10/16/1834.

当晚，我们知道特纳就在现场，很可能带着速写本，在火场周围来回移动，从不同角度记录这一幕。

Now on the night, we know Turner is there, likely with his sketchbook in hand, moving around the fire to record it from one angle to another.

有一幅非常出色的水彩速写，描绘了威斯敏斯特大教堂与燃烧的议会大厦之间的火势，这幅画现藏于泰特美术馆。

There's a fabulous watercolor study of the fire taken between Westminster Abbey and the burning Parliament Building, and that's in the Tate Gallery.

但我想更迅速地聚焦于特纳当时内心的想法，而非他在速写本中画了什么。

But I want to focus quickly more on what was going on inside Turner's head at the time more than what he was producing in his sketchbooks.

当他看到议会大厦倒塌时，他心里在想什么？

What did he think as he saw parliament collapse?

当大火蔓延时，特纳是否也像其他人一样欢呼雀跃？

Was Turner cheering along with everyone else as the fire spread?

遗憾的是，我们根本无从知晓。

Unfortunately, we simply don't know.

在政治上，特纳是那种从不表露心迹的人。

Politically, Turner is one of those figures who keeps his counsel.

他以沉默寡言著称，无论是为奴隶主还是激进政治家工作，都同样乐在其中。

He was famously taciturn and worked as happily for slave owners as radical politicians.

正如《泰晤士报》在他讣告中所言，他似乎享受着只被部分理解的感觉。

As the Times put it in his obituary, he seemed to enjoy being only half understood.

你可以想象他只是咕哝几句，而不是解释自己，就像蒂莫西·斯波尔在电影《特纳先生》中那样精彩地演绎了他。

You can imagine him grunting rather than explaining himself, just as Timothy Spall played him so beautifully in the film, mister Turner.

人们很容易想象特纳是个激进分子——一个考文特花园理发师的自力更生的儿子，但事实是我们无法确切界定他的政治立场。

It is tempting to imagine that Turner was a bit of a radical, the self made son of a Covent Garden Barber, but the truth is we can't pin his politics down.

不过，我们可以肯定的是，这一点对我们的故事更为重要：在艺术上，他最初几乎与激进派完全相反。

What we can say, though, and this matters more for our story, is that artistically he began life as almost the opposite of a radical.

今天当我们想到特纳时，往往会想到那些令人惊叹的晚期杰作，比如《战斗的特米雷尔号》或《雨、蒸汽和速度》，那些令人眼花缭乱的近乎印象派的画作。

When we think of Turner today, we tend to picture those amazing late masterpieces, the Fighting Temeraire or Rain, Steam, and Speed, those dazzling near Impressionistic canvases.

但这些作品都出现得更晚，是在威斯敏斯特大火之后。

But those come much later and after the Westminster fire.

《战斗的特米雷尔号》创作于1839年，《雨、蒸汽和速度》创作于1844年。

A Fighting Temeraire was painted in 1839, Rain, Steam, and Speed in 1844.

年轻的透纳完全是另一种人。

The young Turner was a very different creature indeed.

他的早期生涯在许多方面相当传统。

His early career is in many ways quite conventional.

他十几岁时进入皇家艺术学院学习，临摹古代雕塑，研究大师作品，并学习皇家艺术学院首任院长约书亚·雷诺兹爵士所传授的正统宏伟画风。

He enters the Royal Academy Schools as a teenager, he copies antique casts, he studies the old masters, and he learns to paint in the approved grand manner taught by the Royal Academy's first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

他吸收了克劳德·洛兰的风景画和威廉·范德韦尔德的海景画，这些都是土地贵族阶层所欣赏的题材。

He absorbs landscapes by Claude Lorrain, seascapes by William Vanderwelder, all the pictures that the landowning classes admired.

他绘制的正是这些阶层所喜爱的作品：庄园景观、如画的山谷、航运场景和优雅的日落。

And he paints what those classes want estate views, picturesque valleys, shipping scenes, polite sunsets.

这些作品为他带来了成功。

And this works for him.

他的晋升速度惊人。

He rises astonishingly fast.

他在1802年成为正式的皇家院士，当时年仅26岁，是历史上最年轻的一位；随后在1807年被任命为透视学教授。

He becomes a full royal academician in eighteen o two, the youngest ever, just aged 26, and then he's made professor of perspective in eighteen o seven.

当大多数艺术家还在摸索阶段时，透纳早已成为体制的一部分。

By the time most artists are still finding their feet, Turner was already part of the establishment.

他非常擅长取悦这套体系，并因此变得富有。

He was extraordinarily good at pleasing the system, and he became rich in doing so.

但关键在于。

But here's the thing.

始终另有一个透纳在幕后若隐若现。

There was always another Turner hovering in the background.

一个更迅捷、更自由的透纳。

A quicker, freer Turner.

你在他的私人作品中可以看到这个透纳，那些并非为公开展览而作的作品，尤其是他的速写本和习作。

You see this Turner in his more private works, those not made for public exhibition, especially his sketchbooks and studies.

那么，我们该如何解释这种张力呢？

So how do we explain this tension?

为什么一位拥有如此天赋的画家要花这么长时间遵守规则？

Why does a painter with that much natural talent spend so long playing by the rules?

为什么要有这么多克制？

Why all that restraint?

在这里，我认为特纳的伟大支持者约翰·罗斯金最准确地指出了关键。

And here, I think John Ruskin, Turner's great champion, puts his finger on it best.

罗斯金认为，皇家学院本身束缚了特纳，它对他的训练过于严苛，用罗斯金的话说，压抑了他对真实的感知、创造力以及选择倾向。

Ruskin believed the royal academy itself held Turner back, that it trained him too severely, that it, in Ruskin's words, repressed his perceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and his tendencies of choice.

换句话说，特纳必须为自己的教育而抗争。

In other words, Turner had to fight for his own education.

罗斯金甚至说，对特纳而言，唯有以反抗的精神，才能做对的事。

Ruskin even says that for Turner, it was impossible to do right but in a spirit of defiance.

而‘反抗的精神’这个说法，我认为值得我们深入思考片刻，因为它为我们理解特纳整个艺术生涯提供了思路。

And that phrase, a spirit of defiance, I think is a really good one for us to consider more deeply for a second, because it gives us a way of thinking about the rest of Turner's career.

如果我们想找特纳真正转变的时刻，当这种反抗终于爆发的时刻，那么我们必须问：他何时开始信任自己的直觉？

If we're looking for the moment when Turner really changes, when that defiance finally breaks through, then we have to ask, when did he start trusting his instincts?

因为尽管我们很容易把《战斗的特米雷尔号》这样的晚期杰作视为突如其来的奇迹，仿佛特纳某天早上醒来就决定改变画风，但我们必须记住，艺术家通常不会这样突然转变。

Because although it's tempting to point to those late masterpieces like the Fighting Temeraire and treat them like sudden miracles, as though Turner woke up one morning and just decided to paint differently, we have to remember that artists don't usually change like that.

某种力量推动了他们，使他们原有的表达方式显得不足。

Something pushes them and makes their old language feel inadequate.

所以，关键的问题来了。

So here's the crucial question.

是什么推动了透纳？又是在什么时候？

What pushed Turner and when?

我认为答案很简单。

And I think the answer is simple.

是1834年的那场大火。

It was the fire of eighteen thirty four.

对于透纳这样性格的画家来说，整个场景必定极具吸引力——炽热的火焰、耀眼的光、浓烟、水流、喧嚣、黑夜，历史在眼前实时展开，无人知晓接下来会发生什么。

For a painter of his temperament, the whole scene must have been irresistible heat, light, smoke, water, noise, night, history unfolding in real time with nobody quite sure what would happen next.

这正是透纳多年来一直在探索的一切，而突然间，所有这些都同时呈现了出来。

It was everything Turner had been circling around for years, and suddenly it was all there at once.

这种组合太过震撼，以至于旧有的绘画规范完全无法应对。

The combination so overwhelming that the old prescribed way of painting simply wouldn't do.

所以他必须尝试一些新的方法来匹配它。

So he had to try something new to match it.

一旦他做到了这一点，一旦他意识到绘画可以由光、氛围和情感构建，而非细致的描述，他就再也回不去了。

And once he'd done that, once he realized the painting could be built out of light and atmosphere and feeling rather than careful description, there was really no going back.

因此，1834年的那场大火，正是罗斯金所说的特纳所需要的反抗时刻。

So the fire of eighteen thirty four was the moment of defiance that Ruskin said Turner needed.

就像泰晤士河畔的人群用笑声反抗旧的政治秩序一样，特纳也在默默反抗旧的艺术秩序。

Just as the crowds by the Thames were defying the old political order with laughter, Turner was quietly defying the old artistic order.

因此，他在1835年向英国学院提交了一幅几乎尚未开始的作品，仅仅是一些色点。

And that's why he sends in for exhibition at the British institution in 1835 a canvas that was barely begun, little more than dabs of color.

然后他当众根据记忆和想象完成它，在此过程中，他打破了所有传统的绘画规则。

And then he finished it in public, from his memory and his imagination, and as he did so, he broke all the usual rules of painting.

透视被夸张，细节消融，桥梁异常突兀，光影位置错乱，人群化作一串深色笔触的节奏；尽管这幅画的标题直白而具描述性——《议会大厦之火，1834年10月16日》，但特纳展现的不仅是火势的样貌，更是身临其境时眼中灼光、脸上炙热的感受。

Perspective is exaggerated, detail dissolves, the bridge looms unnaturally, the lights and the shadows are in the wrong places, the crowd becomes a rhythm of dark strokes, and although the title of the painting is very direct and descriptive, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 10/16/1834, Turner wasn't just showing what the fire looked like, but what it felt like to be there, with the glare in your eyes and the heat on your face.

在我看来，这正是现代艺术的追求。

And that, to my mind, is a modern ambition.

因为如果现代艺术真有什么含义，那就是画家们停止复制世界，转而开始翻译他们对世界的体验。

Because if modern art really means anything, it's this the moment painters stop copying the world and start translating their experience of it instead.

这不正是我们在透纳这里看到的吗？

And isn't that what we see here with Turner?

现在，透纳无法彻底放下火灾这个主题，因为他很快又画了一次，这表明它对他有多么重要。

Now Turner couldn't quite leave the subject of the fire alone, for he soon painted it again, which shows you just how much it mattered to him.

在一幅如今属于克利夫兰艺术博物馆的画作中，他从下游稍远一点的位置描绘了火灾，泰晤士河被拉宽，让我们能更清楚地看到火光在水中的倒影。

In a picture which now belongs to the Cleveland Museum of Art, he showed the fire from slightly further downstream, with the Thames opened out so we can see more of the fire reflected in the water.

这个主题或许更平静一些，也更传统一点，但评论家们依然感到困惑，甚至有一名报纸评论家建议皇家学院应该用湿毯子盖住这位火之国王或他的作品。

The subject is a little calmer, perhaps a little bit more conventional, but critics were still baffled, and one newspaper critic even suggested that the Royal Academy should throw a wet blanket over this fire king or his works.

这难道不是一个很棒的称号吗？

Now isn't that a great name?

火之国王。

The fire king.

这本是嘲讽之词，但透纳即将成为一种新绘画类型的国王。

It was meant as mockery, but a king Turner was about to become of a new kind of painting.

艺术史学家奥利维耶·梅斯利称透纳是点燃绘画的人，这在我看来无比准确。

The art historian Olivier Mesley calls Turner the man who set painting on fire, which feels to me exactly right.

因为正是从这一刻起，晚期的透纳真正找到了自信。

Because it's from this moment that the late Turner really finds his confidence.

那位创作了《战斗的特米雷尔号》《雨、蒸汽和速度》，以及那些前所未见、充满光亮、仿佛属于未来的非凡画作的透纳。

The Turner who paints the fighting Temeraire and rain, steam, and speed, and all those extraordinary dissolving, light filled canvases of a kind which nobody had seen before, and which seemed to belong to the future.

现在，这是我的最后想法。

Now here's my final thought.

尽管我可能在本播客开头暗示过，但我并不真的相信我们可以指出某一天或某一幅画，说这就是现代艺术的开端。

Despite what I may have suggested at the beginning of this podcast, I don't really believe that we can point to a single day or a single painting and say, this is where modern art begins.

艺术史从来不会如此整齐划一。

Art history is never that tidy.

有人认为现代艺术诞生于19世纪60年代的法国，但我完全可以给你看一些16世纪的画作，它们同样显得极为现代。

Some say modern art was invented in France in the eighteen sixties, but I could happily show you pictures from the sixteenth century that feel just as modern.

这里还有一个更广泛的观点。

And there's a broader point here.

单个艺术家能开创一种新的艺术运动吗？

Can any individual artist start a new artistic movement?

其实不能。

Not really.

在我这个不太流行的艺术史观点中，我们有时会给予艺术家——即使像透纳这样伟大的艺术家——过多的赞誉和能动性。

My unfashionable view in art history is that we sometimes give artists, as great as they can be like Turner, a little bit too much credit and too much agency.

我们喜欢想象他们是通过一系列风格演变推动艺术前进的。

We like to imagine they drove art forward in a sequence of stylistic evolutions.

你知道这种说法是怎么回事。

You know how it goes.

文艺复兴最终演变为样式主义，然后是巴洛克、洛可可、新古典主义、浪漫主义，一路发展到现代主义。

Renaissance becomes eventually Mannerism, and then we go to Baroque and Rococo and neoclassicism to romanticism and so on, all the way through to modernism.

这是一个简洁而令人安心的故事，但大部分是我们后来编造出来的。

It's a neat, comforting story, but it's mostly one we've invented later.

这些标签大多是19世纪和20世纪的艺术史学家为了理解一切而构想出来的。

Those labels were mostly dreamt up in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by art historians trying to make sense of everything.

事实上，生活并非如此，艺术也是如此。

In fact, life isn't like that, and art isn't either.

艺术家生活在一个由多种力量塑造的世界中，其中当然包括他们自身的才华，但也有赞助人、观众、事件，甚至意外。

Artists work in a world shaped by many forces of their own genius, yes, but also a world of patrons and audiences, of events and even accidents.

有时，这些力量比艺术灵感更为重要。

And sometimes those forces matter more than artistic inspiration.

因此，对我而言，议会大火和特纳描绘这一事件的画作至关重要。

And that's why, for me, the burning of parliament and Turner's painting of it really matters.

那是他感到必须改变的时刻。

It was the moment he felt he had to change.

即使我们无法确切指出现代艺术从何时开始，1834年的那场大火，以及特纳在1835年于英国学院沉默完成的那幅画，至少在英国艺术中标志着两个终点。

Even if we can't say exactly where modern art begins, the fire of eighteen thirty four and the picture Turner finished in stunned silence at the British institution in 1835 mark a pair of endings, at least in British art.

一个是象征旧政治秩序的古老建筑的终结，它在欢呼声中化为灰烬。

One was the end of an ancient building that embodied the old political order, which collapsed in flames to the sound of cheering.

另一个是关于绘画应为何物的旧观念的终结，而这个终结则更安静地发生在画廊的墙上。

The other was the end of an old idea of what painting was supposed to be, and that ended more quietly on a gallery wall.

感谢收听本期《Woldy和Bendy的艺术冒险》。

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Woldy and Bendy's Adventures in Art.

我们下周再见。

We'll be back next week.

到时候见。

See you then.

Woldy和Bendy。

Woldy and Bendy.