Andrew Graham-Dixon on Vermeer, a Forgotten Sect, and Underrated Artists (Ep. 284)
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.
大家好，欢迎回到《与泰勒对话》。
I’m very happy to be here today in person with Andrew Graham-Dixon.
我很高兴今天能亲自来到这里与安德鲁·格雷厄姆·迪克森会面。
He is one of the world’s leading art historians, art critics, and he is prominent in the world of documentary.
他是世界领先的艺术史学家、艺术评论家之一，在纪录片界享有盛誉。
Andrew, welcome.
安德鲁，欢迎。
It’s a great pleasure to be here, Tyler.
很高兴来到这里，泰勒。
Andrew has a new and fascinating book out among his many books.
安德鲁在他众多的书中有一本新的、引人入胜的书。
It’s called Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found.
它的名字叫《维米尔：失而复得的生命》。
Let’s start with Vermeer.
让我们从维米尔开始吧。
Why was Vermeer’s art forgotten for so long, until the middle of the 19th century?
为什么维米尔的艺术被遗忘这么久，直到 19 世纪中叶？
How could that happen?
怎么会发生这种事？
To us, it looks very accessible and beautiful, and obviously better than most of his contemporaries.
对我们来说，它看起来非常平易近人，而且很漂亮，而且显然比他同时代的大多数人都要好。
Well, this was part of the general mystery of Vermeer that I have tried to explain in the book.
嗯，这是我在书中试图解释的维米尔普遍谜团的一部分。
I don’t think it had previously been very well explained, but what has emerged quite clearly is that he painted basically all of these great paintings, the finest examples of his work, for one single family.
我认为以前对此没有得到很好的解释，但很明显的是，他基本上为一个家庭画了所有这些伟大的画作，这是他作品中最好的例子。
They kept them very close.
他们让他们保持非常亲密的关系。
They left them to their daughter.
他们把它们留给了他们的女儿。
She died young, left them to her husband.
她英年早逝，把它们留给了她的丈夫。
He died only in 1696, 20 years after Vermeer’s death, and only then did these paintings enter the world at large.
他于 1696 年去世，也就是维米尔去世 20 年后，这些画作才得以广泛流传。
Up until that time, they’d only been owned by one family.
在那之前，它们只属于一个家庭所有。
I can’t think of another case of a great artist—I imagine if all Rembrandt’s pictures had been painted just for one man and his wife, we would never have heard of him probably.
我想不出还有哪个伟大艺术家的例子——我想如果伦勃朗的所有画作都是为一个男人和他的妻子画的，我们可能永远不会听说过他。
Where do they start being seen?
他们从哪里开始被看到？
What’s the first public unveiling of Vermeer as a great artist?
维米尔作为一位伟大艺术家的第一次公开亮相是什么？
It would be in the mid-19th century when they were finally—the miracle is that these paintings were sold at auction.
到了 19 世纪中叶，它们终于出现了——奇迹是这些画作在拍卖会上出售了。
No one’s heard of Vermeer.
没有人听说过维米尔。
As soon as they then get resold in the later 17th century, they’re being resold as if they were by other artists because Vermeer is not a name.
一旦它们在 17 世纪后期被转售，它们就会像其他艺术家一样被转售，因为维米尔不是一个名字。
He’s not like Gucci.
他不像古驰。
Vermeer, if it gets sold, it gets sold as a Rembrandt or as a Gerard Douw, as even a Pieter de Hooch.
维米尔（Vermeer），如果它被出售，它会被当作伦勃朗（Rembrandt）或杰拉德·杜（Gerard Douw）的作品出售，甚至被当作彼得·德·霍奇（Pieter de Hooch）的作品出售。
His work is being sold under false currency, if you like.
如果你愿意的话，他的作品正在以虚假货币出售。
What’s amazing is that it all survives, and it survives long enough for this wonderful guy called Théophile Thoré, who’s a French revolutionary exiled from France, goes to Belgium, a Frenchman’s idea of purgatory.
令人惊奇的是，这一切都保存了下来，而且保存了足够长的时间，让这个名叫泰奥菲尔·托雷（Théophile Thoré）的好人，一个被法国流放的法国革命者，去了比利时，一个法国人心目中的炼狱。
But in Belgium, he discovers Vermeer and puts together the fact that all these paintings, which are masquerading as those by other artists, are actually by Vermeer.
但在比利时，他发现了维米尔，并整理出这样一个事实：所有这些伪装成其他艺术家的画作实际上都是维米尔的作品。
He says, “There is this painter called Vermeer.
他说：“有一位画家叫维米尔。
We never heard of him.
我们从未听说过他。
Isn’t he incredible?” Within 50 years, 60 years, Marcel Proust writes his great novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, at the center of which he places a man, a character, a Swann, who is obsessed by Vermeer.
他不是很不可思议吗？”在 50 年、60 年的时间里，马塞尔·普鲁斯特写出了他的伟大小说《追忆似水年华》，他在小说的中心放置了一个男人、一个角色、一个斯旺，他对维米尔着迷。
Proust makes it very clear that he regards the View of Delft as the most beautiful painting in the world.
普鲁斯特明确表示，他认为《代尔夫特风景》是世界上最美丽的画作。
Vermeer is one of the greatest.
维米尔是最伟大的画家之一。
From that moment onwards, Vermeer begins his ascent to become one of the most loved painters in the history of civilization, but it’s very late.
从那一刻起，维米尔开始成为文明史上最受喜爱的画家之一，但为时已晚。
View of Delft (c.
代尔夫特视图（c.
1660–1661) — heaven on earth?
1660–1661）——人间天堂？
Does this whole history make you more persuaded by objectivist or subjectivist theories of aesthetics?
整个历史是否让您更相信客观主义或主观主义的美学理论？
That is it inevitable who becomes a great painter?
那谁成为伟大画家是必然的吗？
Mystical aesthetics is where I would go with this because it seems to me that it’s a proper miracle that a painting that has nothing—nothing on its side, no one fighting for it, no one rooting for it, no name, it’s got nothing except itself—survives 400 years.
我会选择神秘美学，因为在我看来，一幅什么都没有的画——没有任何人支持它，没有人为它而战，没有人支持它，没有名字，除了它自己什么也没有——能存活 400 年，这简直就是一个奇迹。
Not only that, all of the other paintings, more or less all of the others, survive.
不仅如此，所有其他画作，或多或少都保存了下来。
I think that’s a true miracle.
我认为这是一个真正的奇迹。
It’s what Vermeer put into those paintings, and that’s really the heart of my book, what’s in the paintings that made them survive.
这就是维米尔在这些画作中投入的东西，这确实是我这本书的核心，画作中的东西让它们得以幸存。
That faith, that belief, that idealism, that dream, that beauty that’s in the paintings, that’s why they survived.
画中的那种信仰、那种信仰、那种理想主义、那种梦想、那种美，这就是它们幸存下来的原因。
That’s why no one threw them away.
这就是为什么没有人扔掉它们。
They didn’t not throw them away because they were valuable; they weren’t valuable.
他们并不是因为它们有价值才扔掉它们；而是因为它们很有价值。它们不值钱。
They didn’t not throw them away because they were by a famous person.
他们并没有因为它们是名人的作品而扔掉它们。
They didn’t know who they were by, but they kept them because they knew they had something in them.
他们不知道它们是谁，但他们保留它们，因为他们知道它们里面有东西。
On Vermeer's liberalism
论维米尔的自由主义
In what sense was Vermeer a liberal?
维米尔在什么意义上是一个自由主义者？
Well, the main discovery of my book is that Vermeer was among the very first pioneers of what we now call the liberal tradition.
嗯，我的书的主要发现是维米尔是我们现在所说的自由主义传统的最早的先驱之一。
What we now call the Netherlands, then the Dutch Republic.
我们现在所说的荷兰，当时的荷兰共和国。
In the Dutch Republic, and the Dutch contribution to the Enlightenment, which is the origins of the liberal tradition, has been very much forgotten.
在荷兰共和国，荷兰对启蒙运动的贡献，即自由主义传统的起源，已被人们遗忘。
That’s absolutely at the heart of my book, is an attempt to remember these people, to bring them back into the place in history that they deserve.
这绝对是我这本书的核心，就是试图记住这些人，让他们回到他们应得的历史地位。
I’m not only talking about Vermeer.
我不仅在谈论维米尔。
I’m talking about his friends, his patrons, because that’s the discovery of the book, is that he and his friends were a remarkable group of people, and they have been completely forgotten, and what they believed has been largely forgotten too.
我说的是他的朋友，他的赞助人，因为这就是这本书的发现，他和他的朋友是一群了不起的人，他们已经完全被遗忘了，他们所相信的也基本上被遗忘了。
We need to remember it now, probably more than ever.
我们现在需要记住它，可能比以往任何时候都更需要记住它。
This was also a religious movement.
这也是一场宗教运动。
Yes.
是的。
Doctrinally, how would they have been different from, say, Protestants in England?
从教义上来说，他们与英国的新教徒有何不同？
The Collegiants, the Remonstrants?
大学生，抗议者？
Yes.
是的。
Vermeer’s patrons, it emerges, and Vermeer himself, were part of a Protestant sect in Holland called the Remonstrants.
事实证明，维米尔的赞助人和维米尔本人都是荷兰一个名为抗议派的新教教派的成员。
They had a more extreme manifestation called the Collegiants, and they were unique among all Christian denominations of that time in being utterly opposed to division, hostility, enmity.
他们有一个更极端的表现形式，称为“学院派”，他们在当时所有基督教教派中是独一无二的，因为他们完全反对分裂、敌意和敌意。
The only thing they wanted was to bring all Christians, indeed all people—they included Jewish people and Muslim people—they wanted to bring everyone together within a faith that only really cleaved to the essentials of what Jesus Christ said, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount.
他们唯一想要的就是让所有基督徒，实际上是所有人——包括犹太人和穆斯林——他们希望将每个人聚集在一个信仰中，这种信仰只真正坚持耶稣基督所说的要点，特别是在登山宝训中。
They said, “If you actually follow Jesus properly, you can never make war.
他们说：“如果你真正正确地跟随耶稣，你就永远不会发动战争。
You can never persecute someone who differs from your opinion.
你永远不能迫害与你观点不同的人。
You can never pick on somebody because they believe something different.” They were very, very tolerationist.
你永远不能因为某人相信不同的东西而挑剔他们。”他们是非常非常的宽容主义者。
They formed the first pacifist movement in European history.
他们发起了欧洲历史上第一个和平主义运动。
They lived in a time of appalling warfare, the Thirty Years’ War, probably the worst war in the history of the modern West.
他们生活在一个可怕的战争时期，即三十年战争，这可能是现代西方历史上最严重的战争。
Fifteen million out of 20 million German people died in the course of 30 years, and the 5 million who were left, all the women had been violated, and all the men only have one arm or one leg.
30年间，2000万德国人中，有1500万人死亡，剩下的500万，所有的女性都遭到了侵犯，所有的男性都只剩下一只胳膊或一条腿。
It was truly atrocious.
实在是太残暴了。
They’re responding to real traumatic historical events.
他们正在对真实的创伤性历史事件做出反应。
They’re responding to what is going on around the corner from where they live.
他们正在对自己居住地附近发生的事情做出反应。
They come up with this very, very beautiful approach to life, full of optimism, full of idealism.
他们提出了这种非常非常美丽的生活方式，充满乐观，充满理想主义。
For about 20 years, the Dutch Republic actually lives by these codes of belief to a great extent.
大约 20 年来，荷兰共和国实际上在很大程度上遵循了这些信仰准则。
It’s the only tolerant country in Europe.
它是欧洲唯一宽容的国家。
On Vermeer's Catholicism, or lack thereof
论维米尔的天主教信仰或缺乏天主教信仰
The Art of Painting (c.
绘画艺术（c.
1666–1668) — the map made Tyler think Catholic; the context says otherwise.
1666-1668）——这张地图让泰勒认为是天主教徒；上下文另有说明。
If I look at The Art of Painting, a painting by Vermeer in Vienna, one of my favorites, I used to think of that as a Catholic painting, in part because of the map in the back of the scene.
如果我看《绘画的艺术》，这是我最喜欢的维米尔在维也纳的一幅画，我曾经认为它是一幅天主教画作，部分原因是场景后面的地图。
Are you revising that view?
您正在修正这一观点吗？
Yes.
是的。
Vermeer marries a Catholic, which has led to a common mistake that he must have converted to Catholicism.
维米尔与一名天主教徒结婚，这导致了一个常见的错误：他一定已经皈依了天主教。
It’s very clear from the documentary evidence that I present in my book that all of his friends are from this Remonstrant, Collegiant axis.
从我在书中提供的书面证据可以清楚地看出，他的所有朋友都来自这个抗议、学院轴心。
Of course, that’s exactly what a Remonstrant would do, is marry a Catholic.
当然，这正是抗议者会做的，那就是嫁给天主教徒。
A lot of my friends are Jewish, and I’m not Jewish.
我的很多朋友都是犹太人，而我不是犹太人。
That’s not dispositive.
这不是决定性的。
It may mean something.
这可能意味着什么。
No. We’ve got so much evidence to show that Vermeer was a member of the Remonstrant and Collegiant movement, and he painted all these pictures for those people.
不。我们有很多证据表明维米尔是抗议和学院运动的成员，他为那些人画了所有这些画。
If the Remonstrants and the Collegiants had a bone of contention with anyone, it was probably with the extreme militant Jesuits, who did more or less want to extinguish them.
如果抗议者和学院与任何人有争论的话，那可能是极端好战的耶稣会士，他们或多或少想消灭他们。
This is the problem with toleration.
这就是宽容的问题。
How do you tolerate someone who actually wants to snuff you out?
你如何容忍一个真正想要消灭你的人？
They did their best.
他们尽力了。
Vermeer is a tolerant Remonstrant who’s actually married to a Catholic and living in a Catholic corner in Delft.
维米尔是一位宽容的抗议者，他实际上嫁给了一名天主教徒，住在代尔夫特的一个天主教角落。
His pictures are most certainly not Catholic paintings.
他的画肯定不是天主教画。
If I go to the Met in New York, there’s a painting which we call Allegory of the Catholic Faith.
如果我去纽约大都会艺术博物馆，就会看到一幅画，我们称之为《天主教信仰的寓言》。
Of course, you know it well.
当然，你很清楚这一点。
At least I was taught the painting is showing the celebration of Catholic mass in private homes in a surreptitious manner.
至少我被告知这幅画以一种秘密的方式展示了私人住宅中天主教弥撒的庆祝活动。
Is that wrong?
这是错误的吗？
Yes, that is wrong.
是的，那是错误的。
What’s the correct way to think about that painting?
思考这幅画的正确方法是什么？
In my book, it’s all about toleration, so I cannot possibly lay down to you what I think you should believe.
在我的书中，一切都是关于宽容，所以我不可能向你规定我认为你应该相信的东西。
The key, as always, is the context.
一如既往，关键是上下文。
I’ve discovered the context of the picture, which has not really been written about.
我发现了这幅画的背景，但并没有真正被写过。
If you look at the Met’s text that it puts forward to promote a particular idea about that picture, they don’t mention at all the owner of the painting, who was a very interesting man indeed, called Hermann von Schwoll, who was the head of the Hamburg post office and a very, very rich man, free-thinking, dissident.
如果你看一下大都会博物馆为宣传这幅画的特定想法而提出的文字，他们根本没有提到这幅画的主人，他确实是一个非常有趣的人，名叫赫尔曼·冯·施沃尔，他是汉堡邮局的负责人，也是一个非常非常富有的人，思想自由，持不同政见者。
He supported a young man who lived in his house, didn’t have any money, and he was one of the first popular journalists, a liberal journalist.
他养活了一个住在他家里的年轻人，他没有钱，他是最早受欢迎的记者之一，一位自由派记者。
He wrote in favor of the Collegiant movement.
他写信支持学院运动。
He wrote proto-feminist tracks.
他写了原始女权主义歌曲。
That was another aspect of these people.
这是这些人的另一个方面。
He was most definitely not a militant Catholic.
他绝对不是一个激进的天主教徒。
He liked allegories.
他喜欢寓言。
The Allegory of the Catholic Faith, in my opinion, is an allegory of how hard it is to get to God if you are a Catholic.
在我看来，天主教信仰的寓言是一个寓言，说明如果你是天主教徒，到达上帝是多么困难。
The woman in the picture is surrounded by emblems of the complex doctrines of the Catholic faith, which Remonstrants and Collegiants said, “That’s what’s holding you back.
照片中的女人周围都是天主教信仰复杂教义的标志，抗议者和同事们说：“这就是阻碍你的原因。
You’re far too doctrinally complicated, you Catholics.
你们天主教徒，教义太复杂了。
You’d kill us over whether we believe or not that the wafer is actually the real flesh of Jesus.” Or, “Let’s just forget all these doctrines and we’ll get together and we’ll just unite and read the New Testament together and we’ll get straight to God.
不管我们是否相信这块薄饼实际上是耶稣的肉身，你都会杀了我们。”或者，“让我们忘记所有这些教义，我们会聚在一起，我们会团结起来，一起阅读新约，我们会直接走向上帝。
We’ll get straight to heaven without all of this clutter.”
我们将直接进入天堂，不再有这些杂乱。”
That painting is full of clutter.
那幅画充满了混乱。
Everywhere you look, there are trip hazards.
放眼望去，到处都有绊倒的危险。
She’s almost about to fall over this globe, which symbolizes, in theory, the Catholic Church’s dominion over all of this world, which was a doctrine which Vermeer and his friends found not to their taste.
她几乎要从这个地球上掉下来，从理论上讲，这象征着天主教会对整个世界的统治，但维米尔和他的朋友们发现这一教义不合他们的口味。
What do you make, though, of the 15 children being baptized Catholic?
那么，你对这 15 个接受天主教洗礼的孩子有何看法呢？
Yes, there were 15, as you know, which is remarkable.
是的，如您所知，有 15 个，这非常了不起。
Only one wife, right?
只有一个妻子，对吗？
He loved his wife very much, but it wouldn’t be right—Protestants had lots of children.
他非常爱他的妻子，但这不对——新教徒有很多孩子。
You can’t say that, oh, he’s had lots of children, and therefore he’s a Catholic.
你不能这么说，哦，他有很多孩子，因此他是天主教徒。
That doesn’t really compute.
这并不能真正计算。
People have kids.
人们有孩子。
No, but the kids were Catholic, right?
不，但孩子们是天主教徒，对吗？
Yes, sorry, absolutely.
是的，抱歉，绝对。
No, his children are raised as Catholics because Vermeer has no money.
不，他的孩子们被当作天主教徒抚养长大，因为维米尔没有钱。
What about the simple hypothesis, Vermeer wasn’t very Protestant?
那么简单的假设又如何呢？维米尔不太信奉新教？
A lot of men just aren’t that religious.
很多男人并不那么虔诚。
They’ll go along with what their wives want.
他们会按照妻子的意愿去做。
She was Catholic, we know that.
我们知道她是天主教徒。
He did these pictures for money.
他拍这些照片是为了钱。
His patrons were Protestant.
他的赞助人是新教徒。
He just wasn’t very religious.
他只是不太虔诚。
That’s how I would read Vermeer’s career.
这就是我如何解读维米尔的职业生涯。
Would you still read like that?
你还会这样读书吗？
I think the paintings are profoundly religious.
我认为这些画具有深刻的宗教色彩。
I think he was profoundly religious.
我认为他非常虔诚。
What he didn’t do was paint for money.
他做画不是为了钱。
Someone with his talents, if he’d wanted to paint for money, he could have been rich.
像他这样有才华的人，如果他想画画赚钱，他可能会变得富有。
He didn’t need to paint for money because his mother-in-law, Maria Thins, was one of the richest women in Delft.
他不需要为了钱而画画，因为他的岳母玛丽亚·廷斯是代尔夫特最富有的女性之一。
He struck a devil’s bargain, if you like, I think, whereby she will support the family.
我想，如果你愿意的话，他达成了一个魔鬼般的交易，她将以此养家糊口。
She will support her daughter, who’s rebelled against her, to marry Vermeer in the first place.
她首先会支持反抗她的女儿嫁给维米尔。
She didn’t approve of the marriage, but she reluctantly agrees.
她不同意这桩婚事，但也勉强同意了。
She will pay all the bills, but it’s to be her rules.
她会支付所有的账单，但这是她的规则。
They will be brought up, like her, as Catholics.
他们将像她一样，作为天主教徒长大。
Vermeer doesn’t like it, but it’s okay.
维米尔不喜欢它，但没关系。
He’ll put up with it.
他会忍受的。
Where his heart is in the Remonstrant corner of the city, his heart and soul is there.
他的心在城市抗议的角落，他的心和灵魂就在那里。
That’s what he believes in.
这就是他所相信的。
He does all of this so as not to have to paint for money.
他做这一切都是为了不用为了钱而画画。
The Vermeer painting, The Concert, that was stolen from the Gardner Museum, do you have any intuition where it might be or if it still has survived?
维米尔的画作《音乐会》从加德纳博物馆被盗，您是否有任何直觉它可能在哪里或者它是否仍然存在？
Oh, man, I wish I did.
哦，伙计，我希望我这么做了。
You must have a best guess.
你一定有一个最好的猜测。
Who can I ask who will know better than you?
我该问谁谁会比你更了解呢？
I’m not that kind of art detective.
我不是那种艺术侦探。
I try to excavate the meanings of the paintings, not their whereabouts.
我试图挖掘这些画作的意义，而不是它们的下落。
I’m really sorry to disappoint you.
真的很抱歉让您失望了。
The Concert (c.
音乐会（c.
1664) — ending a meeting in harmony.
1664) — 和谐地结束会议。
On why Dutch music doesn't blossom
为何荷兰音乐未能蓬勃发展
You may contest the premise here, but why did not Dutch music blossom in the same manner that Dutch painting did?
您可能会质疑这里的前提，但为什么荷兰音乐没有像荷兰绘画那样蓬勃发展？
That painting that you just mentioned, The Concert, is a very good example of Dutch music blossoming.
你刚才提到的那幅画《音乐会》是荷兰音乐蓬勃发展的一个很好的例子。
To simplify things a little bit, Dutch music essentially doesn’t blossom because Dutch Calvinism, orthodox Calvinism that is, the official faith of the Republic, considers music to be dangerous to the soul.
简单地说，荷兰音乐本质上没有蓬勃发展，因为荷兰加尔文主义，正统加尔文主义，即共和国的官方信仰，认为音乐对灵魂是危险的。
To listen to music or to perform music, it’s like admiring a beautiful statue of the Virgin Mary.
听音乐或演奏音乐，就像欣赏一尊美丽的圣母玛利亚雕像一样。
They think it’s wrong.
他们认为这是错误的。
The statue has to be smashed.
雕像必须被砸碎。
The music has to be got rid of because that’s in the way of your faith.
音乐必须被去除，因为它妨碍了你的信仰。
That’s why you have these wonderful pictures of the white churches of the Reformed Dutch.
这就是为什么你能看到这些荷兰改革宗白色教堂的精彩照片。
They’re churches without images, but they’re also churches without music.
它们是没有图像的教堂，但也是没有音乐的教堂。
But the Collegiants don’t have such objections themselves.
但学院们本身并没有这样的反对意见。
They think music helps bring you to God.
他们认为音乐可以帮助你走向上帝。
A Collegiant meeting is a very beautiful thing.
同学聚会是一件非常美好的事情。
I should perhaps explain for people who are not familiar with any of this that the Collegiants are Christians without a church.
我也许应该向那些不熟悉这一点的人解释一下，学院成员是没有教堂的基督徒。
Most of them are women, 80 percent.
其中大多数是女性，占 80%。
This, by the way, is why all of Vermeer’s paintings are of women, because he’s painting for this predominantly female Collegiant group who meet in the house of his patrons, which is next to the Remonstrant church.
顺便说一句，这就是为什么维米尔的所有画作都是女性的原因，因为他是为这个以女性为主的学院团体画画，这些团体在他的赞助人的房子里聚会，该房子就在抗议教堂旁边。
That painting, The Concert, as it’s called, which is a misnomer, it’s not a concert; it’s a painting of a Collegiant meeting taking place.
那幅画，正如它所称的《音乐会》，这是一个用词不当，它不是一场音乐会；它是一场音乐会。这是一幅正在举行的学院会议的画。
It’s a pair with a painting, which I can’t tell you where it is because it’s owned by the King of England, Charles.
这是一对，上面有一幅画，我不能告诉你它在哪里，因为它是英国国王查尔斯拥有的。
It was his mother’s favorite painting.
这是他母亲最喜欢的画。
I saw it once in her bedroom.
我在她的卧室里见过一次。
She used to keep it very close.
她过去常常把它保持得很近。
Those two paintings show us what the music-making at the end of a Collegiant meeting might have looked like.
这两幅画向我们展示了学院会议结束时音乐制作的样子。
You see this group of people playing music.
你看到这群人在演奏音乐。
There’s a wonderful CD, I can’t remember the name of it, I could get the reference for it, where you can actually hear this music.
有一张很棒的 CD，我不记得它的名字了，我可以找到它的参考资料，在那里你可以真正听到这首音乐。
They set the Psalms to very complex, musical, beautiful, multivocal harmonies.
他们将诗篇设定为非常复杂、音乐性、美丽、多声部和声。
You have to imagine that there’s a meeting.
你必须想象有一个会议。
The meeting might go on for five hours.
会议可能会持续五个小时。
These women are all there together, and they’re talking, talking, talking, talking.
这些女人都在一起，她们不停地说话、说话、说话、说话。
First of all, one of them reads out a passage from the New Testament.
首先，其中一人宣读了《新约》中的一段话。
Then they all talk about what it means.
然后他们都谈论这意味着什么。
Then they discuss what they’re going to do the next day, how they’re going to help because they do a lot of charity work, these people.
然后他们讨论第二天要做什么，如何提供帮助，因为这些人做了很多慈善工作。
They plan their proposals.
他们计划他们的建议。
They probably have an argument about whether the Messiah is actually going to come in the year 1666.
他们可能会争论弥赛亚是否真的会在 1666 年到来。
Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.
也许他会，也许他不会。
They might have a quarrel about that.
他们可能会为此发生争吵。
At the end, when all the single voices have finished speaking, the voices all come together in this song, in this music, which is itself a demonstration of what harmony between people looks like.
最后，当所有的单个声音都说完之后，所有的声音都聚集到一起，在这首歌里，在这首音乐里，这本身就是人与人之间和谐的表现。
On English art
论英国艺术
Was there more, you could call it iconophobia, in England at the same time?
与此同时，在英格兰还有更多的，你可以称之为“偶像恐惧症”的现象吗？
Churches stripped bare, visual arts penalized?
教堂被剥光，视觉艺术受到惩罚？
Yes.
是的。
In Britain, the Church of England was as astonishingly destructive as the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
在英国，英国国教的破坏力与中国文化大革命一样惊人。
They destroyed the entirety of British art.
他们摧毁了整个英国艺术。
Say, Durham or Lincoln, those places were not wrecked.
比如说，达勒姆或林肯，那些地方没有被毁坏。
They’re in remarkably good shape today.
他们今天的状态非常好。
The church is left.
教堂就剩下了。
It’s like theaters, but all of the actors have been killed.
就像剧院一样，但所有演员都被杀了。
The stage set is left, but everything is gone, all the art, all the sculpture, all the stained glass.
舞台布景留下了，但一切都消失了，所有的艺术品、所有的雕塑、所有的彩色玻璃。
There’s a wonderful quote by one of my favorite historians, Lawrence Gowing.
我最喜欢的历史学家之一劳伦斯·高英（Lawrence Gowing）有一句精彩的话。
He said, “If you were to try to reconstruct the glories of British medieval art, it would be as if you would try to put together a diplodocus from half a tailbone and one tooth.”
他说：“如果你试图重建英国中世纪艺术的辉煌，就好像你试图用半个尾骨和一颗牙齿拼凑出一条梁龙。”
I’m a big fan of your book, A History of British Art.
我是你的书《英国艺术史》的忠实粉丝。
In that, you insightfully remark that a lot of English art earlier on was harder, more angular, and less obsessed with perspective.
在那篇文章中，您深刻地指出，早期的许多英国艺术更加困难，更有棱角，并且不那么痴迷于透视。
Have those traits carried down into English or British art of the 19th and 20th centuries, or even today?
这些特征是否延续到了 19 世纪和 20 世纪的英国或英国艺术中，甚至今天？
I’m a bit suspicious about identifying national traits.
我对识别民族特征有点怀疑。
I’m not sure.
我不知道。
If you see a painting that’s English, my guess is you can recognize it as such.
如果你看到一幅英国画，我猜你能认出它是英国画。
Oh, that’s English.
哦，那是英语。
It’s not French.
这不是法语。
I’d be shocked if you couldn’t do that.
如果你做不到这一点，我会感到震惊。
I think in the 20th century and the 21st century, that might be harder.
我认为在20世纪和21世纪，这可能会更难。
I think I might struggle because the power of Esperanto and also the herd mentality of the modern artist should not be underestimated.
我想我可能会挣扎，因为世界语的力量以及现代艺术家的从众心理不应该被低估。
People are very good at imitating other people.
人们非常善于模仿别人。
You can look at Russian art in the 19th century.
你可以看看19世纪的俄罗斯艺术。
An awful lot of it looks very French because they were so obsessed with trying to imitate the French, because that was the pinnacle of civilization.
其中很多看起来非常法国，因为他们如此痴迷于模仿法国人，因为那是文明的顶峰。
I think it’s a bit of a tricky one.
我认为这有点棘手。
To go back briefly to Vermeer, his patrons and their meetings, and these pictures that are painted for their meetings, I just think it’s such an astonishing thing, the lesson that’s being shown to other people in a time when, as you just alluded to, in Britain, if you’re a Catholic, forget marrying a Catholic.
简单回顾一下维米尔、他的赞助人和他们的会议，以及为他们的会议而画的这些照片，我只是觉得这是一件令人惊讶的事情，正如你刚才提到的，在英国，如果你是天主教徒，就忘记与天主教徒结婚，这是向其他人展示的教训。
If you discover a Catholic, they will be tortured to death in public.
如果发现天主教徒，他们会被当众折磨致死。
They will have their entrails ripped out in public.
他们的内脏将在公共场合被撕掉。
They will be fed their own eyeballs.
他们将被自己的眼球喂养。
It’s truly awful.
这真的很糟糕。
Yet in Holland, a tolerant Remonstrant such as Vermeer can actually marry a Catholic.
然而在荷兰，像维米尔这样宽容的抗议者实际上可以与天主教徒结婚。
He’s painting for a Remonstrant and her husband, who, to their meetings for these Christians without a church, you don’t have to believe in God.
他正在为一名抗议者和她的丈夫画画，他们在为这些没有教堂的基督徒举行的会议上说，你不必相信上帝。
You can be Jewish.
你可以是犹太人。
You can be a Muslim.
你可以成为穆斯林。
The only thing you have to believe is that Christ’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount contain the salvation for mankind.
你唯一要相信的是基督在登山宝训中的教导包含着对人类的拯救。
When you think of those people actually meeting, it’s the difference between, say, for example, if you’ve got the Troubles in Northern Ireland and you’ve got people from Sinn Féin meeting, the nationalists, the politicians meeting.
当你想到那些真正开会的人时，你会发现，例如，北爱尔兰陷入麻烦，而新芬党的人开会，民族主义者、政客开会，这两者之间是有区别的。
That’s completely different than if you’ve got Catholic mothers of sons who’ve been shot in the conflict deciding to meet in their houses with Protestant mothers, women who’ve been shot, meet together, hug, talk, and embrace.
这与在冲突中被枪杀儿子的天主教母亲决定在家中与新教母亲、被枪杀的妇女见面、拥抱、交谈和拥抱完全不同。
That’s completely different.
那是完全不同的。
That’s what these people were doing.
这就是这些人所做的。
It’s as if, I don’t know, what would the example be today?
就好像，我不知道，今天的例子会是什么？
It’s as if, say, for example, some Jewish mothers got together with some mothers from Gaza and had a picnic in the rubble together.
举例来说，就好像一些犹太母亲和一些来自加沙的母亲聚在一起，一起在废墟中野餐。
What message would that send?
这会发送什么信息？
That’s the message they’re sending.
这就是他们发送的信息。
It’s an aspect of Dutch history that is just, as far as I’m concerned, it’s never mentioned.
就我而言，这是荷兰历史的一个方面，但从未被提及。
It’s been forgotten.
它已经被遗忘了。
You can go to any number of wonderful galleries like the Washington National Gallery, where you’ve got amazing, beautiful, wonderful Dutch art, but this context, this troubled context behind it, the war, the death, it’s just been edited out.
你可以去任何数量的精彩画廊，比如华盛顿国家美术馆，那里有令人惊叹的、美丽的、精彩的荷兰艺术，但是这个背景，这个背后的麻烦背景，战争，死亡，它刚刚被删除了。
It’s been forgotten.
它已经被遗忘了。
It’s not part of people’s consciousness.
它不是人们意识的一部分。
I’m trying to put it back.
我正在努力把它放回去。
On Rembrandt
论伦勃朗
How does Rembrandt fit into this doctrine of toleration?
伦勃朗如何融入这种宽容主义？
That’s a great question.
这是一个很好的问题。
I was on a show of late Rembrandt in the National Gallery in London with a good friend of mine, Danny Katz, who’s a Renaissance sculpture expert.
我和我的好朋友丹尼·卡茨（Danny Katz）一起在伦敦国家美术馆观看了已故伦勃朗的展览，他是一位文艺复兴时期的雕塑专家。
Very plain spoken, but always has something interesting to say.
说话很平淡，但总有一些有趣的东西要说。
We were just looking in this dark room, all these wonderful paintings, The Jewish Bride, it’s wonderful, beautiful painting, so tender.
我们只是在这个黑暗的房间里看着所有这些美妙的画作，《犹太新娘》，这是美妙的、美丽的画作，如此温柔。
He said, “Everywhere you look, everywhere you look, there’s just love.
他说：“无论你看向哪里，无论你看向哪里，到处都是爱。
You’re surrounded by love, aren’t you?” That’s what Rembrandt is.
你被爱包围了，不是吗？”这就是伦勃朗。
It’s love.
这是爱。
There’s quite a bit of Judaism in his paintings, as you mentioned.
正如你提到的，他的画中有相当多的犹太教色彩。
There are Jewish people in his paintings.
他的画里有犹太人。
He painted, I’ll get his name wrong, Menasseh ben Israel, the head of the Jewish community in Amsterdam.
他画的是，我把他的名字写错了，梅纳塞·本·以色列，阿姆斯特丹犹太社区的负责人。
Very interestingly, it’s not really been talked about because people always say Vermeer and Rembrandt are the opposite.
非常有趣的是，这并没有真正被谈论，因为人们总是说维米尔和伦勃朗是相反的。
The origin for my book about Vermeer is really the discovery that I made.
我关于维米尔的书的起源实际上是我的发现。
Wherever you look in detail in Vermeer’s life, you find members of this religious movement, the Remonstrants or the Collegiants.
无论你仔细观察维米尔一生的哪个细节，你都会发现这个宗教运动的成员：抗议者或学院派。
They’re not very common.
它们并不常见。
Only one in 500 people in Holland is a Collegiant.
荷兰只有五百人之一是学院成员。
If I find eight in Vermeer’s life, including the leader of the movement, we know that he’s part of it.
如果我在维米尔的一生中找到八个人物，包括该运动的领导人，我们就知道他是该运动的一部分。
It’s just no way that he’s not.
他不可能不是。
Interestingly, Rembrandt knows these people, too.
有趣的是，伦勃朗也认识这些人。
Rembrandt’s older, a fair bit older, but he paints the head of the Remonstrant Church, Uytenbogaert.
伦勃朗比他年长一些，但他画的是抗议教堂的头像，乌伊滕博加尔特。
Sorry for the butchery in my Dutch accent.
抱歉我的荷兰口音造成了屠杀。
Uytenbogaert.
乌伊滕博加尔特。
That portrait is in the Rijksmuseum.
那幅肖像现藏于国立博物馆。
As far as we know, Rembrandt’s a slippery fish, but I think his approach is very open.
据我们所知，伦勃朗是一条滑溜溜的鱼，但我认为他的做法非常开放。
He’s very nondoctrinaire.
他非常不教条。
He’s certainly not a hardline Calvinist.
他当然不是强硬的加尔文主义者。
He’s friends with the Mennonites.
他是门诺派的朋友。
The Mennonites are very liberal.
门诺派非常自由。
I think it’s not a coincidence that the liberal West adopted Rembrandt as its favorite artist.
我认为自由主义西方国家将伦勃朗视为其最喜爱的艺术家并不是巧合。
Looking back now with this historical knowledge that I feel I’ve gained about this period, this forgotten secret of this amazing movement that existed, that they seem to have been a part of.
现在回想起来，我觉得我已经获得了关于这一时期的历史知识，这个存在的惊人运动的被遗忘的秘密，他们似乎是其中的一部分。
Do you have any intuition why Rembrandt prints, in even the last two or three years, have gone up so much in price?
您是否有任何直觉，为什么伦勃朗的版画在过去的两三年里价格上涨了这么多？
People used to say Old Masters were greatly underpriced.
人们过去常说古代大师作品的价格被严重低估。
They’re such a bargain.
它们真是太划算了。
Not long ago, a Canaletto auctions for $30 million, which struck me as a bit crazy.
不久前，一幅卡纳莱托的作品以3000万美元的价格拍卖，这让我觉得有点疯狂。
Rembrandt prints, which are more or less the same thing over time, they’ve gone up by two times or three times over a few years.
伦勃朗的版画，随着时间的推移，或多或少是一样的，它们在几年内增加了两到三倍。
What’s going on here?
这是怎么回事？
Old Masters coming back because people are sick of the rest, or is it just anomalous?
古代大师的回归是因为人们厌倦了其余的作品，还是这只是反常的现象？
It might be a little bit anomalous.
可能有点不正常。
I’ve been following it because I was friends with a guy at Sotheby’s who did a lot of research into a recently discovered Rembrandt.
我一直在关注它，因为我是苏富比拍卖行的一个人的朋友，他对最近发现的伦勃朗做了很多研究。
It felt like there’s a ceiling for a Rembrandt painting.
感觉伦勃朗的画作有上限。
This is a lovely painting of the Nativity, a monochrome painting.
这是一幅可爱的耶稣诞生画，一幅单色画。
It sold for £10 million or $10 million, which is the same price as the last two Rembrandt self-portraits have sold for.
它以 1000 万英镑或 1000 万美元的价格售出，与伦勃朗最后两幅自画像的售价相同。
When you think an Andy Warhol, which is essentially a screen print, is selling for maybe $100 million, it does seem really weird and underpriced.
当你想到安迪·沃霍尔（Andy Warhol）的一件本质上是丝网印刷品的作品售价可能高达 1 亿美元时，你会觉得它确实很奇怪而且价格过低。
Yet, as you say, the prints have been selling for figures that, compared to the paintings, are really high.
然而，正如你所说，与绘画相比，版画的售价确实很高。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
It is my belief that Rembrandt is a painter just full of love for the world.
我相信伦勃朗是一位充满对世界的爱的画家。
The values that are enshrined in his paintings are important values.
他的画作所体现的价值观是重要的价值观。
Maybe that we live in such tough times, maybe people just feel the value of those things all the more.
也许我们生活在如此艰难的时代，也许人们才更加感受到这些东西的价值。
On attributions
关于归因
There are attributions for both Vermeer and Rembrandt, as you well know.
如您所知，维米尔和伦勃朗都有归属。
How uncertain are they?
他们有多不确定？
What does the uncertainty hinge upon?
不确定性取决于什么？
I’m not interested in paintings that weren’t in the house much.
我对家里没有的画不太感兴趣。
I know what they were, so I don’t need to get involved with attribution.
我知道它们是什么，所以我不需要参与归因。
I’m only really interested in the paintings that were in the house.
我只对房子里的画感兴趣。
You have one here in Washington.
华盛顿这里有一个。
Sure.
当然。
The Milkmaid and Woman Holding a Balance — a pair, per Graham-Dixon: the contemplative life and the active life.
挤奶女工和拿着天平的女人——根据格雷厄姆-迪克森的说法，一对：沉思的生活和积极的生活。
Note the nail above each woman.
注意每个女人上方的指甲。
Woman Holding a Balance.
拿着天平的女人。
It’s now accepted.
现在已被接受。
Formerly, it was uncertain.
以前，这是不确定的。
I’m never sure whether I should trust the new judgment.
我不确定我是否应该相信新的判断。
Well, there’s no question.
嗯，这是毫无疑问的。
As I show in my book, one of the things that emerges from the book, once you actually know why the paintings were made, once you know the beliefs of the people for whom they were painted, suddenly, one of the things that emerges really clearly about the paintings is that a lot of them were painted in twos.
正如我在书中所展示的那样，书中出现的一件事是，一旦你真正知道为什么要制作这些画作，一旦你了解了这些画作所为之人的信仰，突然间，关于这些画作真正清晰地浮现出来的一件事是，其中很多都是两两画的。
The Woman Holding a Balance is clearly, without any doubt, the pair to the famous painting in the Rijksmuseum called The Milkmaid.
毫无疑问，《拿着天平的女人》显然与国立博物馆的著名画作《挤奶女工》是一对。
All of the painting’s titles are nothing to do with Vermeer.
这幅画的所有标题都与维米尔无关。
They’re all modern inventions.
它们都是现代发明。
She’s not a milkmaid, and she’s not just a woman with a balance.
她不是挤奶女工，也不仅仅是一个保持平衡的女人。
What the two pictures represent is the two aspects.
这两张图代表的是两个方面。
They simplify Christianity to its bare essentials: Do well, think well.
他们将基督教简化为最基本的要素：做得好，想得好。
At the end of the day, you consider, have I behaved as Jesus would have wanted me to behave today?
归根结底，你想一想，我今天的行为是否符合耶稣希望我的行为？
Have I done everything that I should have?
我已经做了我应该做的一切了吗？
I ask my conscience this question.
我问我的良心这个问题。
That’s what the Woman Holding a Balance is doing.
这就是持天平的女人正在做的事情。
She’s not weighing gold.
她称的不是黄金。
She’s weighing her conscience.
她正在掂量自己的良心。
Behind her, there’s a painting of the last judgment where the souls are being weighed by Archangel Michael.
她身后有一幅最后审判的画，大天使米迦勒正在对灵魂进行称重。
She has weighed her own soul.
她掂量过自己的灵魂。
There’s nothing in the balance.
平衡中没有任何东西。
The scales are empty.
秤是空的。
They’re perfectly poised.
他们完全准备好了。
Her conscience is clean.
她的良心是干净的。
The other lady, exactly the same scale to the room she occupies, the same light source coming from the left, she is crumbling bread into a bowl of milk.
另一位女士，与她所在的房间大小完全相同，同样的光源来自左侧，她正在将面包揉碎成一碗牛奶。
She’s making what the Dutch call bread pudding, which was the food that you gave when you administered charity to the old and to the very young, people who were too infirm or old to be able to chew solid food.
她正在制作荷兰人所说的面包布丁，这是当你向老年人和年轻人（那些体弱或年老而无法咀嚼固体食物的人）施舍时提供的食物。
You gave them this pap, this bread pudding.
你给了他们这个面包，这个面包布丁。
That’s what she’s doing.
这就是她正在做的事情。
She’s robed in blue, almost as if she were a modern Madonna.
她穿着蓝色长袍，几乎就像现代的麦当娜一样。
If you’re seeing them in traditional Christian terms, they are Martha and Mary.
如果你用传统的基督教术语来看待他们，他们就是马大和马利亚。
They are the contemplative life and the active life.
它们是沉思的生活和积极的生活。
If there’s any doubt in your mind about them being a pair, which they’ve never been identified as a pair as far as I’m aware up until now.
如果你对他们是否是一对有任何疑问，据我所知，到目前为止，他们从未被确认为一对。
They were certainly not hung as a pair in the great Rijksmuseum exhibition that happened a few years ago.
它们肯定不是在几年前举办的国家博物馆大型展览中成对悬挂的。
If you look at the two pictures, if you get them up onto a computer screen together, you’ll see that there’s a nail in the wall.
如果你看这两张照片，如果你把它们放在电脑屏幕上，你会发现墙上有一颗钉子。
Just above and to the left of each woman in exactly the same place.
就在每个女人的上方和左侧的完全相同的位置。
It’s Vermeer tapping us on the shoulder from 400 years ago and saying, “Yes, if there’s any doubt that these paintings are a pair, look at the nail.”
400 年前，维米尔拍着我们的肩膀说：“是的，如果怀疑这些画是一对，请看一下指甲。”
On exhibitions and restorations
关于展览和修复
What did you learn from the great Rijksmuseum exhibit of more or less all the Vermeers?
您从国家博物馆举办的或多或少所有维米尔作品的大型展览中学到了什么？
When you saw them all together, it must have been the first time for you.
当你看到他们在一起时，这对你来说一定是第一次。
What new idea did you have?
你有什么新想法？
Well, I was testing the big new idea, which is the book.
嗯，我正在测试一个新的大想法，那就是这本书。
It was great timing for me because I had completed the first draft of my manuscript, or most of it, certainly when it came to the paintings.
这对我来说是一个很好的时机，因为我已经完成了手稿的初稿，或者说大部分，尤其是在绘画方面。
I’d written more or less everything that I wanted to write about the paintings.
我或多或少已经写下了我想写的关于这些画的一切。
There was this fantastic opportunity to see them all.
这是见到他们所有人的绝佳机会。
The Rijksmuseum’s director, Taco Dibbits, who I’d known for a long time, was kind enough to give me, in effect, a free pass because it was a very tough ticket.
国立博物馆馆长塔科·迪比茨（Taco Dibbits）是我认识很久的人，他很友善地给了我一张免费通行证，因为这是一张非常难买的票。
I think I went to the exhibition maybe 30 or 40 times.
我想我大概看了30或40次展览。
I went many, many times just to really embed in the paintings.
我去了很多很多次，只是为了真正融入到画作中。
You had to go toward the end of the day, particularly when the crowds slackened off a bit, or right at the beginning if you got in before anyone else.
你必须在一天快结束的时候去，特别是当人群稍微散去的时候，或者如果你比其他人先到的话，就在开始的时候去。
You’d get a little bit of time, especially with the paintings at the far end of the show.
你会得到一点时间，尤其是展览最后的画作。
It was great.
太棒了。
I’m very grateful to them.
我非常感谢他们。
Putting aside the details of your own thesis, what is it you think you see more of on the 17th visit as compared, say, to the second visit?
抛开您自己论文的细节不谈，您认为与第二次访问相比，您在第 17 次访问中看到更多的内容是什么？
Most are all of the pictures you had seen before, anyway, in other places, just not together.
大多数都是你以前见过的照片，反正在其他地方，只是没有在一起。
Yes.
是的。
I think the subtlety of the light, things like that, and certain details.
我认为光线的微妙之处，诸如此类的事情，以及某些细节。
Those nails in the wall may have come fairly late, actually.
事实上，那些钉在墙上的钉子可能来得相当晚。
I think I may have seen those late, although the paintings were actually hung 120 yards apart, because when they put on that exhibition, they obviously weren’t aware of the context that I’d discovered.
我想我可能很晚才看到那些画，尽管这些画实际上是相隔 120 码悬挂的，因为当他们举办那个展览时，他们显然不知道我发现的背景。
No one could really be in a position to understand those sorts of meanings, perhaps.
也许没有人能够真正理解这些含义。
It’s only with the discovery of the context that it’s possible to see what he was actually trying to do.
只有了解了背景，才有可能了解他实际上想要做什么。
It was a very interesting exhibition from the point of view of looking at the pictures purely as paintings because there was no strong narrative drive to it.
从纯粹将图片视为绘画的角度来看，这是一个非常有趣的展览，因为它没有强烈的叙事动力。
What do you think of the quality of the restorations?
您认为修复体的质量如何？
Vermeer’s paintings were in fantastically good condition.
维米尔的画作保存得非常好。
I was lucky enough 28 years ago to film at the Mauritshuis with the BBC crew just at the point where the View of Delft had been restored, and the Girl with a Pearl Earring had been restored.
28年前，我有幸与BBC摄制组一起在莫瑞泰斯皇家美术馆拍摄，当时代尔夫特风景已被修复，戴珍珠耳环的少女也已被修复。
I could see very clearly, and he talked me through it.
我看得很清楚，他给我讲了一遍。
It was a man called Jørgen Wadum who’d done the restoration.
负责修复工作的是一位名叫约尔根·瓦杜姆 (Jørgen Wadum) 的人。
The minimal retouching necessary in a Vermeer, almost nothing wrong with the painting.
维米尔画作中所需的最少修饰，这幅画几乎没有任何问题。
There’s no controversial filling in of void space, which you normally have, certainly with a Renaissance painting.
没有争议的空白空间的填充，这是你通常拥有的，尤其是文艺复兴时期的绘画。
To what extent do you bring that area of loss back?
您在多大程度上挽回了该损失领域？
How much do you harmonize it so that it doesn’t disturb the modern eye looking at the painting?
你对它进行了多少协调，以免干扰现代人观看这幅画的眼光？
You can’t really leave a gaping hole.
你不能真的留下一个大洞。
In the case of Vermeer, there aren’t these gaping holes.
就维米尔而言，不存在这些漏洞。
One thing I remember that was fantastic, which is one in the eye for the people who are always going on about the camera obscura, which I think is one of the more boring things people talk about when they talk about Vermeer.
我记得一件事非常棒，这对那些总是谈论暗箱的人来说是一件很有趣的事情，我认为这是人们在谈论维米尔时谈论的最无聊的事情之一。
Did he use a camera obscura and all that?
他使用暗箱之类的东西吗？
If you look closely, as Jørg showed me, at the highlight in the pearl, in the Girl with a Pearl Earring, there’s a splash.
如果你仔细观察，正如 Jørg 向我展示的那样，《戴珍珠耳环的女孩》中珍珠的亮点处，你会发现有一点飞溅。
He’s dropped the paint.
他把油漆掉了。
He’s dropped the paint.
他把油漆掉了。
Likewise, if you look at The Lacemaker, the painting in the Louvre, which I controversially describe as a painting about maternal love, and I say that the sewing cushion with all its red threads is a visual metaphor placed there by Vermeer for the woman’s placenta, nourishing the baby.
同样，如果你看卢浮宫的《花边女工》，我有争议地将其描述为一幅关于母爱的画作，我会说，布满红线的缝纫垫是维米尔放在那里的视觉隐喻，代表着滋养婴儿的女性胎盘。
She’s making a piece of lace for her baby, and she’s pregnant, and the sewing cushion.
她正在为她的孩子做一块蕾丝，而且她已经怀孕了，还有缝纫坐垫。
All of those red threads, they’ve actually been thrown.
所有这些红线，实际上都是被扔掉的。
It’s like a little Vermeer Jackson Pollock prefiguration.
这就像维米尔·杰克逊·波洛克的一点预演。
He’s thrown the paint.
他把油漆扔了。
On underrated French artists
论被低估的法国艺术家
What makes George Stubbs such an underrated painter?
是什么让乔治斯塔布斯成为如此被低估的画家？
I think he’s been underrated forever because of his subject matter.
我认为由于他的题材，他永远被低估了。
I blame the French.
我责怪法国人。
The French in the 17th century invented a system for ranking works of art by their subject matter.
17 世纪的法国人发明了一种按题材对艺术品进行排名的系统。
Up at the top, you and I, we could put on some armor and confront each other with swords, and Poussin would paint us.
在山顶，你和我，我们可以穿上盔甲，用剑对峙，普桑会给我们画画。
That would be a history painting done from the life.
那将是一幅取材于生活的历史画。
That would be at the pinnacle.
那将是巅峰。
Then would be a painting of an event, maybe a meeting between great men.
然后将是一幅关于某个事件的画，也许是伟人之间的一次会面。
Then, below that, there would be a portrait.
然后，在它的下面，会有一幅肖像。
You’d keep going down, and eventually you’d get to paintings of still lifes, like flowers and fruit, or paintings of animals.
你会继续往下走，最终你会画出静物画，比如花朵和水果，或者动物画。
These were the lowest works of art because they featured the basest things.
这些是最低级的艺术作品，因为它们具有最低级的东西。
I think that Stubbs, to a certain extent, was the victim of that.
我认为斯塔布斯在某种程度上是受害者。
Are we now able to see them properly?
我们现在能够正确地看到它们吗？
Yes.
是的。
It’s been no problem since Stubbs and Constable, more than anyone else, slightly controversial to say, but I think they paved the way for modernism because they showed, not necessarily deliberately, but they showed that anything could be painted, anything at all, like a piece of mud or a piece of a river could be painted in such a way as to touch on the very highest thoughts and ideas and beliefs and feelings that subject matter is completely, in a sense, irrelevant.
自从斯塔布斯和康斯特勃尔以来，这已经不成问题了，比任何人都更有争议，但我认为他们为现代主义铺平了道路，因为他们表明，不一定是故意的，但他们表明任何东西都可以画，任何东西，比如一块泥土或一条河，都可以用这样的方式来画，以触及最高的思想、想法、信仰和感觉，而主题在某种意义上是完全无关的。
Cézanne picked up on that when he said, “I want to stun Paris with an apple.
塞尚注意到了这一点，他说：“我想用一个苹果震惊巴黎。
I’ll paint an apple, and I’ll paint it with such astonishing concentration that you’ll see it as an epistemological challenge to all of your philosophy.”
我会画一个苹果，而且我会以惊人的专注力来画它，你会认为它是对你所有哲学的认识论挑战。”
I think that French art gets that from British art because British art has to be like that because that’s all the aristocrats are going to commission.
我认为法国艺术从英国艺术中继承了这一点，因为英国艺术必须是这样的，因为这就是所有贵族都会委托的。
They look down on people like Stubbs, in a sense.
从某种意义上说，他们看不起像斯塔布斯这样的人。
If I’m an aristocrat in the 18th century and I want a really important picture, I’ll go to Italy and I’ll buy one, thank you very much, and I’ll buy my history painting from Titian.
如果我是18世纪的贵族，我想要一幅非常重要的画，我会去意大利，买一幅，非常感谢，我会从提香那里买我的历史画。
You, sir, Stubbs, you just paint my horse.
斯塔布斯先生，你刚刚画了我的马。
It’s my racehorse, and I’m very fond of him.
这是我的赛马，我非常喜欢他。
Paint him well and don’t scare him.
好好画他，别吓到他。
You think the French also have underrated Géricault, who painted and drew many horses?
你认为法国人也低估了画了很多马的杰里柯吗？
Géricault, of course, went to England.
杰里科当然去了英国。
Géricault spent some of his formative years in the early 19th century in London.
十九世纪初，杰里科在伦敦度过了他的成长岁月。
He brought some of that spirit of English revolution to French art.
他将英国革命的一些精神带入了法国艺术。
Interestingly, Géricault’s great friend and the man who looked up to Géricault more than anyone else, Delacroix, who did he idolize out of all the British artists?
有趣的是，杰里科的好朋友、最崇拜杰里科的人——德拉克洛瓦，在所有英国艺术家中，他最崇拜的是谁呢？
Constable.
警官。
He loved Constable, Delacroix.
他爱康斯特布尔、德拉克洛瓦。
Somebody should write a book about it.
应该有人写一本关于它的书。
This special relationship that’s partly to do with intense jealousy and hatred, but also to do with unexpected mutual admiration.
这种特殊的关系部分与强烈的嫉妒和仇恨有关，但也与意想不到的相互钦佩有关。
How would you contrast what you absorb from a Géricault horse compared to a Stubbs horse?
与从斯塔布斯马相比，您如何对比您从杰里柯马身上吸收的东西？
Stubbs, I think, he’s not painting himself.
我认为斯塔布斯并不是在画自己。
Géricault’s painting himself.
杰里科本人的画作。
Géricault horses are self-portraits.
杰里科的马是自画像。
Stubbs is trying to understand how the world works, and Stubbs understands the miracle.
斯塔布斯试图了解世界是如何运作的，而斯塔布斯也理解奇迹。
He really sees it as a miracle.
他确实认为这是一个奇迹。
It’s very interesting.
这很有趣。
In Stubbs’s later engravings, he seems to work his way toward the beginnings of the Darwinian theory of evolution because he’s done a lot of dissection, and he’s beginning to see that there are similarities in the way that a chicken’s hips are formed to the way that human hips are formed.
在斯塔布斯后来的版画中，他似乎正在朝着达尔文进化论的开端努力，因为他做了很多解剖工作，他开始发现鸡臀部的形成方式与人类臀部的形成方式有相似之处。
He’s beginning to wonder whether there might not be some contiguity of relationship between the different animal species.
他开始怀疑不同动物物种之间是否存在某种连续性的关系。
It’s very near the end of his life, so of course, he never pushes forward to it.
他的生命已接近尾声，所以他当然不会再向前迈进。
I believe it’s not entirely eccentric to see the currents of thought that led Stubbs to those ideas as being contributory to the great river of Darwinian theory that’s going to come about 50 years later.
我认为，看到导致斯塔布斯提出这些想法的思潮对达尔文理论的大河做出了贡献，而达尔文理论的伟大河流将在大约 50 年后出现，这并不完全是奇怪的。
I think he’s confronting that mystery of existence and of species and who we are, and maybe we can understand who we are through looking at a horse.
我认为他正在面对存在、物种以及我们是谁的谜团，也许我们可以通过观察一匹马来了解我们是谁。
I also sometimes get from his horses, I get a tremendous sense of species fellow feeling.
有时我也从他的马匹身上得到一种巨大的同胞感。
There’s that great painting that’s in Mount Stewart.
斯图尔特山有一幅伟大的画作。
I can’t remember the name of the racehorse, Hambletonian.
我不记得赛马的名字了，汉伯顿尼安。
The racehorse had been flogged to within an inch of its life to win this great prize for the owner.
这匹赛马被鞭打得只剩下一英寸，才为主人赢得了这份巨大的奖品。
Stubbs has painted the horse at the moment after the race when the groom is comforting the horse and the horse is flecked with blood, and its eyes are wild.
斯塔布斯在赛后的那一刻画了这匹马，当时马夫正在安慰这匹马，这匹马浑身是血，眼神狂野。
Stubbs paints the picture almost as if he’s painting a concentration camp victim or something.
斯塔布斯画的这幅画几乎就像他在画集中营受害者之类的东西。
He’s saying, “How could you do this to this wonderful creature, this wonderful being?” I love Stubbs.
他说：“你怎么能这样对待这个奇妙的生物、这个奇妙的存在呢？”我爱斯塔布斯。
You can tell.
你可以说出来。
Many are held in the state of Virginia, as you probably know, in the Mellon Collection in Richmond.
正如您可能知道的那样，许多藏品都保存在弗吉尼亚州里士满的梅隆收藏馆中。
I’ve seen them many times.
我见过他们很多次。
Yes, that’s Basil Taylor.
是的，那是巴兹尔·泰勒。
The great Stubbs expert was huge friends with Paul Mellon.
这位伟大的斯塔布斯专家是保罗·梅隆的好朋友。
It’s all about who you know and when you know them.
这一切都与您认识谁以及何时认识他们有关。
Paul Mellon has got more money than anyone else.
保罗·梅隆比任何人都拥有更多的钱。
He loves art more than anyone else, and he becomes friends with Basil Taylor, which is, I suppose, a shame for England, but a wonderful thing for Yale.
他比任何人都热爱艺术，并与巴兹尔·泰勒成为朋友，我认为这对英格兰来说是一种耻辱，但对耶鲁来说却是一件美妙的事情。
My favorite picture, I think, in the whole Mellon, is that picture of the zebra.
我想，在整个梅隆，我最喜欢的照片就是那张斑马的照片。
Do you know that picture?
你知道那张照片吗？
I think I do.
我想我知道。
I love that picture.
我喜欢那张照片。
On Howard Hodgkin
论霍华德·霍奇金
Another favorite book of yours of mine, the Howard Hodgkin study.
我最喜欢的另一本书是《霍华德·霍奇金研究》。
Now, it seemed to me in the 1990s, there was some chance Hodgkin would have a big breakthrough.
现在，在我看来，在 20 世纪 90 年代，霍奇金有可能取得重大突破。
The New York Times wrote him up.
《纽约时报》对他进行了报道。
He might become this major contemporary painter, but it never quite happened.
他可能会成为一位重要的当代画家，但这从未真正发生过。
His prices are still pretty reasonable.
他家的价格还是比较合理的。
The works are lovely.
作品很可爱。
Who was right, the people who thought he was incredibly important, or that he’s a minor modernist?
谁是对的，那些认为他极其重要的人，还是认为他是一个小现代主义者？
I wouldn’t call time on anybody’s reputation.
我不会为任何人的声誉而停止。
Hey, Vermeer’s a pretty good case.
嘿，维米尔是一个很好的例子。
Vermeer had no reputation at all for 400 years.
四百年来，维米尔根本没有任何声誉。
I think Howard’s doing okay.
我认为霍华德表现还不错。
I would argue for him.
我会为他辩护。
What’s your view now, because it’s decades since you wrote the book?
你现在怎么看，因为你写这本书已经几十年了？
Yes.
是的。
No, that’s fair enough.
不，这很公平。
I see the patterns by which the world values things.
我看到了世界评价事物的模式。
I don’t pay a great deal of attention to them unless I’m asked a question like that.
除非有人问我这样的问题，否则我不会太关注他们。
I think, “Oh, gosh.
我想，“哦，天哪。
Of course, this is what people think about,” and I don’t think about it.
当然，这是人们的想法，”而我并没有考虑这一点。
I just think about what they are.
我只是想想它们是什么。
I think they’re such wonderful pictures.
我认为它们是非常精彩的照片。
Eventually, they will be just as expensive as the pictures of Matisse or Vuillard or Bonnard or those other artists.
最终，它们将与马蒂斯、维亚尔、博纳德或其他艺术家的画作一样昂贵。
Howard, I think, belongs within that tradition very much.
我认为霍华德非常属于这一传统。
He’s an unusual painter because he decides to extend and deepen a tradition that he has nothing to do with personally, nationally, or historically.
他是一位不寻常的画家，因为他决定扩展和深化与他个人、国家或历史无关的传统。
He just becomes so fascinated by it.
他只是对它如此着迷。
I’d probably add Degas to that, too.
我可能还会加上德加。
Indian miniatures, right, which he collected.
印度细密画（右）是他收集的。
He always said they weren’t an influence on his work.
他总是说他们对他的工作没有影响。
I never believed that.
我从来不相信这一点。
I never did either, to be honest.
老实说，我也从未这样做过。
You’re darn right.
你说得对。
He had incredible taste in Indian miniatures.
他对印度细密画有着令人难以置信的品味。
He did, he did.
他做到了，他做到了。
What a wonderful collection he had of Indian miniatures.
他收藏的印度细密画真是太棒了。
I used to love going to see Indian things with him.
我以前很喜欢和他一起去看印度的东西。
We used to go because he used to live right behind the British Museum.
我们过去常去，因为他以前住在大英博物馆后面。
When I was a young art critic, I became friends with him, and I used to go often to have lunch with him.
当我还是一名年轻的艺术评论家时，我和他成为了朋友，我经常去和他一起吃午饭。
We would always go in to look at the Indian things.
我们总是进去看看印度的东西。
What was he like?
他是什么样的人？
He would be very emotional.
他会非常情绪化。
Very emotional.
非常感慨。
I would say, “Oh, I loved that painting that you made of the Henry Moore at the Bottom of the Garden.” Then he would suddenly remember, because every painting that he did was like a moment in his life.
我会说，“哦，我喜欢你在花园尽头为亨利·摩尔创作的那幅画。”然后他会突然想起来，因为他画的每一幅画都像是他生命中的一个时刻。
It had its origins in a particular moment.
它起源于一个特定的时刻。
There were emotions brought back in tranquility, if you like.
如果你愿意的话，有些情绪会在平静中回归。
He would suddenly remember what was happening on that day and how much he loved that person, but they’re dead now.
他会突然想起那天发生的事情，想起自己有多么爱那个人，但现在他们都死了。
It was just someone to turn the taps on.
只是有人打开水龙头。
He would weep great big tears, proper big tears, like Toad of Toad Hall tears, except they weren’t fake tears; they were real tears.
他会流很大的泪水，真正的大泪水，就像蟾蜍堂里的蟾蜍的眼泪一样，只不过那不是假泪水。那是真正的眼泪。
Very emotional.
非常感慨。
You had to rather watch your step.
你必须小心你的脚步。
You never knew if you’d have to take a timeout for 20 minutes.
你永远不知道自己是否需要暂停 20 分钟。
On difficult-to-love artists
论难以被爱的艺术家
Do you feel there’s a category of artist where it’s now impossible to still love them?
你是否觉得有一类艺术家现在已经不可能再爱他们了？
If I think, say, of Malevich, who is a great artist and very important historically, but when I see them, I’m left cold.
比如说，如果我想到马列维奇，他是一位伟大的艺术家，在历史上非常重要，但当我看到他们时，我感到很冷。
Maybe I’ve seen them too many times, or maybe there are too many fakes, or maybe that kind of image has been too commercialized, but it now does nothing for me, and I’m not sure that will change, but without taking any credit away from him.
也许我看过太多次了，也许假货太多了，也许那种形象已经太商业化了，但它现在对我没有任何帮助，我不确定这种情况会改变，但不会剥夺他的任何荣誉。
Is that a meaningful concept to you?
这对你来说是一个有意义的概念吗？
Yes.
是的。
I don’t feel like that, but I don’t look at Malevich all the time.
我不这么认为，但我不会一直看着马列维奇。
I’ve become more and more interested in context.
我对上下文越来越感兴趣。
When I look at Malevich, I just see the Black Square, and I just see that moment.
当我看马列维奇时，我只看到黑色方块，我只看到那一刻。
So many millions of people have died.
数百万人死亡。
This is a revolution.
这是一场革命。
This is a moment when the people will rise up, and all these beautiful ideas are in the air, and all these people dreaming their dreams, and that’s going to be crushed.
这是人民站起来的时刻，所有这些美好的想法都在空中，所有这些梦想着自己梦想的人，都将被粉碎。
If I see those pictures and I’m thinking those thoughts, I can still find that I look at those pictures and I might feel like a choking-up feeling because of that.
如果我看到这些照片并且正在思考这些想法，我仍然会发现我看着这些照片，我可能会因此而感到一种哽咽的感觉。
I feel that deeply with Vermeer.
我对维米尔的感受很深。
It’s so tragic.
太悲惨了。
If I look at the View of Delft, the Collegiants and the Remonstrants, Vermeer’s people, they believed that as people read more books, as people became more educated, they would all read Socrates, they would all read good philosophy, they would read the Bible.
如果我看看代尔夫特的观点、学院派和抗议者、维米尔的人，他们相信，随着人们读更多的书，随着人们受教育程度的提高，他们都会读苏格拉底，他们都会读好的哲学，他们会读圣经。
They would become friends.
他们会成为朋友。
Everyone would become friends with everyone else.
每个人都会与其他人成为朋友。
All religious discord would disappear.
所有宗教不和都会消失。
War would become a thing of the past.
战争将成为过去。
Tyrants would hand over their power to the people.
暴君会把他们的权力交给人民。
They genuinely believed that, and they didn’t just believe it.
他们真心相信这一点，而且不仅仅是相信。
It was a belief in the New Jerusalem, which was very widespread among the Jewish communities of that period, as well as the Catholics, the Protestants.
这是对新耶路撒冷的信仰，在当时的犹太社区以及天主教徒和新教徒中非常普遍。
Lots of people believed in this, but only the Collegiants believed that it would happen, not by some Messiah coming down with lightning and thunder.
很多人都相信这一点，但只有学院成员相信这会发生，而不是某个弥赛亚带着闪电和雷霆降临。
They actually believed that the spirit of Christ, by which they meant the spirit of love and the spirit of peace, would inhabit people automatically.
他们实际上相信基督的精神，即爱的精神和和平的精神，会自动居住在人们身上。
The more they could read and understand and talk to one another in these Collegiant meetings, that peace on earth would happen, and that it wouldn’t be some kind of amazing miracle thing.
他们在这些学院会议上阅读、理解和交谈的越多，地球上的和平就会发生，而且这不会是某种令人惊奇的奇迹。
That heaven on earth looks like your hometown on a really sunny, clear day.
在阳光明媚、晴朗的日子里，人间天堂看起来就像你的家乡。
The women are at the shops.
妇女们在商店里。
The children are playing.
孩子们正在玩耍。
The boats are ready to take you to wherever you want to go.
船只已准备好带您前往任何您想去的地方。
That is heaven on earth, and that’s what that painting is of.
那是人间天堂，这就是那幅画的意义。
Every time I see that painting, in a different way from the Malevich, it’s in touching distance.
每次我以与马列维奇不同的方式看到那幅画时，它就在触手可及的距离。
We could have that.
我们可以拥有那个。
We could have that more or less everywhere if we just stop being so stupid.
如果我们不再那么愚蠢，我们或多或少可以在任何地方都有这种情况。
On other Dutch painters
关于其他荷兰画家
Past Vermeer and Rembrandt, is Fabritius the next greatest Dutch artist from that era, or who comes close to those two?
除了维米尔和伦勃朗之外，法布里蒂乌斯是那个时代下一位最伟大的荷兰艺术家，或者谁最接近这两位？
Well, “Fabritius,” as I’ve been taught to pronounce him.
好吧，“法布里蒂乌斯”，就像我被教的那样发音。
Forgive my American pronunciation for all these names, but it’s what people understand here.
请原谅我对所有这些名字的美式发音，但这就是这里人们所理解的。
I always pronounce him like that.
我总是这样发音他。
The only reason is because I did my book as an audiobook recording, so I had a lot of tuition in pronouncing names right.
唯一的原因是因为我的书是作为有声读物录音的，所以我在正确发音方面接受了很多训练。
I think Fabritius is a fantastic painter.
我认为法布里蒂乌斯是一位出色的画家。
He’s definitely, in my opinion, the source for Vermeer’s wonderful technique.
在我看来，他绝对是维米尔出色技巧的源泉。
This tonal painting that no one else does.
这种色调绘画是其他人都没有做过的。
Fabritius does it.
法布里修斯做到了。
He’s in Rembrandt’s studio.
他在伦勃朗的工作室。
They know Leonardo da Vinci’s theories because they’ve just been published in France.
他们知道达芬奇的理论，因为这些理论刚刚在法国出版。
The book’s in Rembrandt’s studio.
这本书在伦勃朗的工作室里。
We know that they know these ideas, and he’s doing it.
我们知道他们知道这些想法，而且他正在这样做。
He’s putting it into practice.
他正在将其付诸实践。
Without Fabritius, Vermeer couldn’t paint the way he does.
没有法布里蒂乌斯，维米尔就无法像他那样绘画。
I think the tragedy of Fabritius, and again—
我认为法布里蒂乌斯的悲剧，再一次——
He dies young.
他英年早逝。
—he dies young, but people don’t really understand.
——他英年早逝，但人们并不真正理解。
How does Fabritius die?
法布里蒂乌斯怎么死的
You probably know how he dies.
你可能知道他是怎么死的。
He dies because Delft is the largest weapons store in Europe.
他死是因为代尔夫特是欧洲最大的武器商店。
Somebody goes in with a candle, and it blows up, and a third of the whole city is destroyed.
有人拿着蜡烛进去，蜡烛爆炸了，整个城市的三分之一被毁了。
Fabritius is blown to pieces.
法布里蒂乌斯被炸成碎片。
Again, why would that happen?
再说一遍，为什么会发生这种情况？
It’s because they’re still at war.
这是因为他们仍然处于战争状态。
This is a culture completely at war.
这是一种完全处于战争状态的文化。
There’s war everywhere.
到处都是战争。
I’m going later, so maybe I’m wrong, but I’m going to go to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, to the Dutch section, and I’m going to see, is there any mention made anywhere, in any room, of the fact that half the population of Germany died during this period?
我稍后会去，所以也许我错了，但我要去华盛顿的国家美术馆，去荷兰馆，我要去看看，有没有任何地方、任何房间里提到过德国一半人口在此期间死亡的事实？
I don’t think so.
我不这么认为。
That 80 years of war between Holland and Spain had led to the massacre of huge numbers of civilian populations.
荷兰和西班牙之间长达80年的战争导致大量平民遭到屠杀。
If you don’t understand these things, how on earth—when you see a radiant painting by Vermeer of peace, it’s not just a painting of a woman in a room.
如果你不明白这些事情，当你看到维米尔的一幅光芒四射的和平画作时，你到底会发现它不仅仅是一幅房间里的女人的画。
A painting of a woman writing, itself it’s like, “Gosh, she’s not being assaulted.
一幅女人写作的画，本身就像是，“天哪，她没有被侵犯。
She’s not being grabbed out of her home.
她没有被抓出家门。
She’s not having her possessions taken away,” because all over Europe, that was what was happening.
她的财产并没有被拿走”，因为在整个欧洲，这就是正在发生的事情。
These ordinary scenes are actually charged with meaning that we can’t recover unless we know the context.
这些平凡的场景实际上充满了意义，除非我们了解上下文，否则我们无法恢复。
That’s why I write books, really, is to try and understand.
这就是我写书的原因，真的，就是为了尝试和理解。
If you don’t understand what they were thinking about, how on earth can you understand what’s in these pictures?
如果你不明白他们在想什么，你到底怎么能明白这些图片里的内容呢？
Would the Dutch painters have seen van Eyck’s and other Low Country paintings?
荷兰画家会看到范艾克和其他低地国家的绘画吗？
The best ones.
最好的。
Diana and Her Nymphs (c.
戴安娜和她的仙女们（c.
1653–1654) — early Vermeer, borrowing the foot-washing of Flemish altarpieces.
1653-1654）——早期的维米尔，借用了佛兰德祭坛画的洗脚画。
Mauritshuis, The Hague.
海牙莫瑞泰斯皇家美术馆。
I don’t know what paintings Vermeer would have seen, but I’m sure that he had seen paintings by van Eyck.
我不知道维米尔会看到什么画，但我确信他看过凡·艾克的画。
It’s quite hard to piece together what they would have seen.
很难拼凑出他们会看到什么。
There were dealers in Amsterdam dealing in really wonderful paintings of that school.
阿姆斯特丹有一些经销商在出售那所学校的精美画作。
Flemish art is around because, after all, the Low Countries is the Low Countries.
佛兰德斯艺术之所以存在，是因为毕竟低地国家就是低地国家。
Yes, it’s been divided into North and South.
是的，它被分为北区和南区。
I think he would be familiar with that tradition.
我想他会熟悉这个传统。
For example, there’s an early painting in the Mauritshuis of Diana and her companions.
例如，莫瑞泰斯皇家美术馆里有一幅戴安娜和她的同伴的早期画作。
I think there’s this very strong Christian undertow to this classical painting where you’ve got a basin and a cloth, and one of Diana’s nymphs is washing her feet, much as Mary Magdalene washes the feet of Christ in Flemish altarpieces.
我认为这幅古典画中有一种非常强烈的基督教气息，你有一个盆和一块布，戴安娜的一位仙女正在洗脚，就像抹大拉的玛丽亚在佛兰芒祭坛画中为基督洗脚一样。
It looks so much like the paraphernalia that you’d see in a Flemish altarpiece that Vermeer must have seen one of those altarpieces to borrow that from it.
它看起来非常像你在佛兰芒祭坛画中看到的用具，维米尔一定是看过其中一幅祭坛画，才从中借用的。
On contemporary art
论当代艺术
When you think about contemporary art, which has become quite controversial in the United States, how healthy is the current state of affairs in general?
当你想到在美国颇具争议的当代艺术时，目前的总体状况有多健康？
I cannot even begin to pretend to do my exam answer because—
我什至无法开始假装做考试答案，因为——
No, you’ve been a judge for the Turner Prize.
不，您曾担任特纳奖的评委。
I have.
我有。
You see plenty in London.
你在伦敦看到很多。
You get around the world.
你可以环游世界。
I do, but to be perfectly honest, I’ve spent seven years only looking at archives and thinking about Dutch art, really.
我确实这样做，但说实话，我花了七年时间只查看档案并思考荷兰艺术，真的。
I’m currently thinking about a Renaissance artist, but I have hardly seen any modern art at all.
我目前正在考虑一位文艺复兴时期的艺术家，但我几乎没有见过任何现代艺术。
What I have difficulty with in contemporary art is the very elevated reputations certain artists have.
我在当代艺术中遇到的困难是某些艺术家拥有很高的声誉。
Because the modern art world seems to be so institutionally rigid.
因为现代艺术世界在制度上似乎非常僵化。
If Museum X has lots of paintings by Richter, Museum Y also does, Museum A, B, C, D, E, they’ve all got lots of paintings by Richter.
如果 X 博物馆有很多里希特的画作，Y 博物馆也有，A、B、C、D、E 博物馆都有很多里希特的画作。
In my opinion, Richter’s work of the last 20 years is almost worthless.
在我看来，里希特过去20年的工作几乎毫无价值。
I think it’s just not interesting.
我认为这并不有趣。
I think it’s coasting.
我认为它正在滑行。
I might even go so far as to say it’s almost like printing money.
我什至可以说这几乎就像印钱一样。
You make these pictures.
你制作这些照片。
They’re very mechanically made.
它们是非常机械化制造的。
They sell for $20 million each.
每张售价为 2000 万美元。
How, within the existing institutions of the art world, is that downgrade going to happen?
在艺术界现有的机构内，降级将如何发生？
I can say that, but it’s not going to make any difference.
我可以这么说，但这不会有任何区别。
The museums aren’t going to change.
博物馆不会改变。
Like my book on Vermeer.
就像我关于维米尔的书一样。
If people take my book on Vermeer seriously, it means that every caption by every painting on every website of every museum will have to be completely different.
如果人们认真对待我关于维米尔的书，这意味着每个博物馆每个网站上每幅画的每个标题都必须完全不同。
Now, I personally think that in 20 years’ time they will be, but I know it’s not going to happen this week or next.
现在，我个人认为 20 年后它们将会实现，但我知道这不会在本周或下周发生。
How’s it going to happen with these other artists?
其他艺术家的情况会如何呢？
Take someone like de Kooning, who’s a truly great artist, but as you’ve pointed out yourself, the variance of the works is very high.
以德库宁这样的人为例，他是一位真正伟大的艺术家，但正如您自己所指出的，作品的差异非常大。
There’s a lot of bad or only so-so de Koonings.
德库宁有很多糟糕或一般的作品。
Are those still due for a spill in terms of esteem, price, display, or do you just think the way it’s at, well, he’s de Kooning, we’ll grant him that, and the good ones are good enough?
那些作品在尊重、价格、展示方面是否仍然会受到影响，或者你只是认为现在的样子，好吧，他是德库宁，我们会承认他，而且好的作品就足够好了？
I think it’s an interesting question.
我认为这是一个有趣的问题。
Again, I remember I reviewed in New York many years ago—I don’t know when it would be, shortly before de Kooning died—there was an exhibition of his late work, and people were quite skeptical about it.
再说一次，我记得很多年前我在纽约回顾过——我不知道是什么时候，就在德库宁去世前不久——有一个他晚期作品的展览，人们对此很怀疑。
I thought, looking at it, there was so much of what had been in the earlier work.
我想，看看它，有很多早期作品中的内容。
I think it’s often quite good, some of them.
我认为其中一些通常都很好。
Yes.
是的。
I felt that he was talking to himself.
我感觉他在自言自语。
When I feel that an artist is talking to themselves, when it’s real, this is what I love about Vermeer, that it’s so real.
当我觉得艺术家在自言自语时，当它是真实的时，这就是我喜欢维米尔的原因，它是如此真实。
He’s only painting what he cares about.
他只画他关心的东西。
That’s it.
就是这样。
He wants to paint the conscience.
他想画出良心。
He’s not thinking about who likes it, who’s going to like it, how much it’s going to be worth.
他没有考虑谁喜欢它，谁会喜欢它，它值多少钱。
Likewise, de Kooning, at the end of his life, he—not likewise, but in a very different way, but he’s within a different tradition and so on.
同样，德库宁，在他生命的尽头，他——不是同样的，而是以一种非常不同的方式，但他处于不同的传统之中，等等。
He’s genuinely thinking about what he’s doing.
他真诚地思考自己在做什么。
I’ve seen artists, an artist that shall not be named.
我见过一些艺术家，一位不能透露姓名的艺术家。
I remember being at the Royal Academy and standing behind this artist in the queue for the cloakroom.
我记得在皇家学院，在衣帽间排队时站在这位艺术家后面。
There was a very pretty attendant taking coats, and he just said, “Do you not know who I am?” She said no. He said, “I am a very important artist.” I thought, “Oh, man.
有一个很漂亮的服务员在拿外套，他只是说：“你不知道我是谁吗？”她说不。他说：“我是一位非常重要的艺术家。”我想：“哦，伙计。
It’s over.” As soon as that happens, you know it’s over.
结束了。”一旦发生这种情况，你就知道一切都结束了。
You have to be thinking about the art that you’re making, and you have to be caring about it.
你必须思考你正在创作的艺术，并且你必须关心它。
I think we can always tell when that’s the case, or I hope we can.
我认为我们总能判断出这种情况，或者我希望我们可以。
I think we can.
我想我们可以。
On buying art
关于购买艺术品
When you’re acting in a role as an art buyer, obviously, you ask yourself, “Do I like the work?
当你扮演艺术品买家的角色时，显然，你会问自己：“我喜欢这件作品吗？
Can I afford the work?” What’s a deeper question that you would apply that other art buyers should apply for making better decisions?
我能负担得起这份工作吗？”为了做出更好的决定，您会向其他艺术品买家提出什么更深层次的问题？
I don’t think I’ve ever bought art.
我想我从来没有买过艺术品。
I was on the Government Art Committee, which buys art for embassies, for the government’s art collection.
我是政府艺术委员会的成员，该委员会为大使馆和政府的艺术收藏购买艺术品。
That’s a very specific kind of buying because you’re buying art by British artists that will favorably represent British art abroad in embassies and so on.
这是一种非常特殊的购买方式，因为你购买的是英国艺术家的艺术品，这些艺术品将在大使馆等地代表英国的海外艺术。
I don’t know.
我不知道。
If I were trying to advise, you mean advise like a collector or someone?
如果我试图提供建议，你的意思是像收藏家或其他人那样提供建议？
Or yourself.
或者你自己。
You could afford a Rembrandt print.
你买得起伦勃朗的版画。
Not the very best ones perhaps.
也许不是最好的。
A fifth state, yes.
第五种状态，是的。
No, you’re quite right.
不，你说得很对。
I think I bought a John Nash for about £20 the other day in a junk shop.
我想前几天我在一家旧货店花了大约 20 英镑买了一本约翰·纳什 (John Nash) 的书。
A lot of Bloomsbury works are quite affordable.
布卢姆斯伯里的很多作品都相当便宜。
I think they’re underpriced.
我认为它们的价格被低估了。
Yes.
是的。
I’ve got a friend who is a very rich fund manager, and he only collects work by female artists only.
我有一个朋友，他是一位非常富有的基金经理，他只收藏女性艺术家的作品。
That’s all he buys.
这就是他买的全部。
Yes, they’re also underpriced still.
是的，它们的价格仍然偏低。
He’s rediscovered a number of women artists of the prewar period in Britain.
他重新发现了英国战前时期的一些女性艺术家。
He tells me that they’re so unknown that once he’s discovered one, he can then find their work in other sales, but it’s often not listed as being by them because no one else really knows about this person.
他告诉我，他们是如此不知名，一旦他发现了一个人，他就可以在其他销售中找到他们的工作，但他们通常不会列出这些工作，因为没有其他人真正了解这个人。
He’s saying he’s put together 25 works by Phoebe, whoever she is, who was an RA in the 1920s, and he said, “I’m buying these things for £5 each.” He said it’s a great myth that the museums of the world are correcting the patriarchal imbalances of the past by buying female—
他说他整理了 Phoebe 的 25 件作品，不管她是谁，她是 1920 年代的一名 RA，他说，“我买这些东西每件 5 英镑。”他说，世界各地的博物馆正在通过购买女性来纠正过去的父权失衡，这是一个伟大的神话——
I agree.
我同意。
He said it’s not actually happening.
他说这实际上并没有发生。
There’s lots of fantastic work by women artists, and museums aren’t buying any of it.
女性艺术家有很多出色的作品，但博物馆却没有购买任何作品。
They could buy it for £5 if they actually just got their fingers out.
如果他们真的伸出手指，就可以花 5 英镑购买它。
Textiles are grossly underpriced, I think, relative to aesthetic quality.
我认为，相对于审美品质而言，纺织品的价格严重低估。
I agree.
我同意。
Actually, funnily enough, that’s a very good point.
事实上，有趣的是，这是一个非常好的观点。
One of the very few things I have bought in the last 10 years was a Mennonite textile made somewhere in the southern states of America out of little bits of the black suits of the mourning costumes of the men.
过去十年里我买的极少数东西之一是门诺派纺织品，它是在美国南部各州的某个地方用男士丧服的黑色西装的碎片制成的。
A beautiful thing, and it was, I think, $1,000.
一件漂亮的东西，我想，它价值 1,000 美元。
Goodness knows how long it took to make.
天知道花了多长时间才完成。
It’s a beautiful thing.
这是一件美好的事情。
It’s like an abstract work of art.
它就像一件抽象的艺术品。
Absolutely.
绝对地。
No, I agree.
不，我同意。
That’s the thing with art, once you find a corner that you like—that’s why I have to not get too involved.
艺术就是这样，一旦你找到了自己喜欢的角落——所以我不能太投入。
Because if I did—
因为如果我这样做——
You’d do nothing else.
你什么也不做。
—I’d end up buying 100 Mennonite quilts.
—我最终会买 100 条门诺会被子。
On neighborhood aesthetics
论邻里美学
Obviously, you live in Britain.
显然，你住在英国。
If you think about the physical environment of Britain, there are so many wonderful towns.
如果你想想英国的自然环境，就会发现有很多美妙的城镇。
Bath is famous.
巴斯很有名。
Somewhere like Bradford can be stunning, not every part of it.
像布拉德福德这样的地方可能令人惊叹，但不是它的每一部分。
If I think about more recent neighborhoods, I understand King Charles may be trying, but it’s hard for me to think of a single place in America also that I consider highly attractive in the same way that British-built neighborhoods might have been knockouts, say before World War II, whatever the cutoff date may be.
如果我想到最近的社区，我知道查尔斯国王可能正在尝试，但我很难想到美国有一个地方也像英国建造的社区一样具有高度吸引力，比如在第二次世界大战之前，无论截止日期是什么。
Why has that happened?
为什么会发生这种事？
Why do we not build beautiful neighborhoods anymore?
为什么我们不再建设美丽的社区？
Maybe you challenge the premise, but where is it really?
也许你会质疑这个前提，但它到底在哪里？
You could say maybe Copenhagen, maybe parts of Helsinki, but the Western world seems to be failing at that.
你可以说也许是哥本哈根，也许是赫尔辛基的部分地区，但西方世界似乎在这方面失败了。
Yes.
是的。
Generally speaking, we appear to be living through a crisis of confidence in our own ability to make the world a better place.
一般来说，我们似乎正经历着对自己让世界变得更美好的能力的信心危机。
We talk about it a lot.
我们谈论了很多。
We agonize over things like the environment and issues like that, but there’s very little of that.
我们为环境之类的问题而苦恼，但这样的事情很少。
I made a TV series years ago about the art of Scandinavia.
几年前我制作了一部关于斯堪的纳维亚艺术的电视剧。
There was that amazing project in Scandinavia where they decided they were just going to build 5 million houses, and they did it.
斯堪的纳维亚半岛有一个令人惊叹的项目，他们决定建造 500 万栋房屋，并且他们做到了。
They were beautiful houses.
它们是美丽的房子。
They were made for ordinary people to live in.
它们是为普通人居住而设计的。
Even actually in America in the 1950s, there were not dissimilar projects to that, utopian schemes of that kind, which produced very beautiful neighborhoods.
实际上，即使在 20 世纪 50 年代的美国，也没有类似的项目，那种乌托邦计划，产生了非常美丽的社区。
It’s now a long time ago, isn’t it?
现在已经是很久以前的事了，不是吗？
It’s a long time ago.
这是很久以前的事了。
And I keep coming back to this book about Vermeer, but that’s what I find so touching about those people.
我不断地回顾这本关于维米尔的书，但这就是我觉得这些人如此感人的地方。
There’s a painting called The Little Street by Vermeer, which is on the cover of the book.
这本书的封面上有一幅维米尔的画作《小街》。
It shows us the house in which Vermeer’s paintings all hung.
它向我们展示了悬挂维米尔画作的房子。
I have discovered it’s actually the house of his patrons.
我发现这实际上是他的赞助人的房子。
If you could press way face to the window, you’d see Vermeer’s paintings inside that house.
如果你能把脸贴在窗户上，你就会在房子里看到维米尔的画作。
That painting is about what it is that makes a beautiful neighborhood, and it’s belief and it’s cooperation, it’s toleration, it’s love, it’s all the things.
那幅画讲述的是是什么造就了一个美丽的社区，它是信仰，它是合作，它是宽容，它是爱，它是所有的东西。
Vermeer’s Remonstrant preacher friend of the family wrote a book, and in his book he talks about religion and faith, and he says it’s like a house.
维米尔家族的抗议传教士朋友写了一本书，他在书中谈到了宗教和信仰，他说这就像一座房子。
Everyone has to put a brick in.
每个人都得搬一块砖。
It’s not a house one person makes and everyone else worships in.
它不是一个人建造的房子，其他人都在里面崇拜。
Everyone has to put a brick in.
每个人都得搬一块砖。
That painting, if you look at the join between the two houses, the house which used to hold all Vermeer’s paintings and the house next door, each owner of each house has mended a bit of it.
那幅画，如果你看看两栋房子之间的连接处，曾经放维米尔所有画作的房子和隔壁的房子，每栋房子的主人都对它进行了一些修补。
You’ve got this sense that in this neighborhood, everyone has contributed a bit to each other’s houses.
你会感觉到，在这个街区，每个人都为彼此的房子做出了一点贡献。
James Fenton wrote a great poem about Jerusalem, which is essentially a poem written a number of years ago about the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
詹姆斯·芬顿写了一首关于耶路撒冷的伟大诗，这基本上是一首多年前写的关于以色列-巴勒斯坦冲突的诗。
It’s got these two terrible crushing last lines: “I have destroyed your home, you have destroyed my home.” Vermeer’s painting is the opposite of that: “I have made your home, you have made my home.
它有两句可怕的、令人心碎的最后一句：“我毁了你的家，你也毁了我的家。”维米尔的画作则恰恰相反：“我建造了你的家，你建造了我的家。
I have repaired your home.” You can imagine that painting opening out into the whole of a beautiful town, and in Delft you can still visit that town.
我已经把你的家修好了。”你可以想象这幅画展开到整个美丽的小镇，而在代尔夫特你仍然可以参观那个小镇。
The more I’ve thought about this book I’ve been writing, the more I’ve felt I’ve been writing almost meditations on the lessons that those people, Vermeer and his friends, had to teach us, because you can’t make anything beautiful, you can’t make a good community unless you have beliefs.
我对我写的这本书思考得越多，我就越觉得我写的几乎是对那些人，维米尔和他的朋友们必须教给我们的教训的沉思，因为除非你有信仰，否则你无法创造任何美丽的东西，你无法建立一个良好的社区。
To me, people have just lost their beliefs, and they don’t believe strongly enough in the importance of cooperation, and it’s sad.
对我来说，人们刚刚失去了信仰，他们对合作的重要性的信念不够坚定，这令人悲伤。
It’s not that it can’t be got back.
并不是说无法收回。
I don’t believe it can’t be got back.
我不相信它无法收回。
What you touch on, it’s a raw nerve.
你所触及的，是原始的神经。
On advice for aspiring art critics
给有抱负的艺术评论家的建议
Two final questions.
最后两个问题。
First, let’s say you meet a young British person who wants to be some version of the next Andrew Graham-Dixon.
首先，假设您遇到一位英国年轻人，他想成为下一个安德鲁·格雷厄姆·迪克森。
What non-obvious advice do you have for them?
您对他们有哪些非显而易见的建议？
Work hard, look at art, sure, but what do they really need to hear from you?
当然，努力工作，欣赏艺术，但他们真正需要从你那里听到什么？
My first advice is never, ever, ever try to be a version of someone else.
我的第一个建议是永远、永远、永远不要尝试成为别人的版本。
They want to be in the world of art and do TV documentaries and YouTube and write books.
他们想要进入艺术世界，制作电视纪录片和 YouTube，并写书。
That’s what I mean.
这就是我的意思。
Yes, I know.
是的，我知道。
I think build networks of friends and don’t rely on corporations.
我认为建立朋友网络而不是依赖公司。
Do it yourself, that would be my advice.
自己做吧，这是我的建议。
I was lucky because I was a young would-be art critic and all the jobs were taken.
我很幸运，因为我是一名年轻的想成为艺术评论家的人，所有的工作都被抢走了。
There were six national newspapers and they all had art critics.
有六家全国性报纸，它们都有艺术评论家。
They were all over 60 and they’d been in their jobs for 20 years.
他们都已经 60 多岁了，工作已经 20 年了。
I was lucky because a new newspaper was founded called The Independent, and they hired me to be the art critic.
我很幸运，因为一份名为《独立报》的新报纸成立了，他们聘请我担任艺术评论家。
That’s not going to happen for most people.
对于大多数人来说，这不会发生。
The BBC employed me to make art documentaries.
英国广播公司雇用我制作艺术纪录片。
The BBC doesn’t do that anymore.
BBC不再这样做了。
They’re not interested in culture anymore, which is weird, but they’re not.
他们对文化不再感兴趣，这很奇怪，但他们不是。
Nowadays, you’d have to do it for yourself—self-fund, self-finance, and above all, have fun.
如今，你必须自己做——自筹资金，自筹资金，最重要的是，玩得开心。
Just to plug your book again, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found.
只是再次插入您的书，安德鲁·格雷厄姆·迪克森，《维米尔：失而复得的生命》。
I like this very much, as I do all of Andrew’s other books.
我非常喜欢这本书，就像我喜欢安德鲁的所有其他书一样。
Last question, what will you do next?
最后一个问题，接下来你会做什么？
I’ve found a really interesting painting by one of the greats, and I’m writing a book about it.
我发现了一位伟人的一幅非常有趣的画作，我正在写一本关于它的书。
That’s a secret, that painting?
那幅画是秘密吗？
It is a secret.
这是一个秘密。
Great.
伟大的。
It is a secret.
这是一个秘密。
I look forward to the book.
我很期待这本书。
Andrew, thank you very much.
安德鲁，非常感谢你。
Cheers, Tyler.
干杯，泰勒。
Image Credit: Aliona Adrianova
图片来源：Aliona Adrianova