人形白石头

People-Shaped White Rocks

# non-fiction, 2021-04-03

# 节选自《袖套应该被禁，以及其他在弗里克艺术品前的沉思》

# Authored by Chris Ware, “The Sleeve Should Be Illegal & Other Reflections on Art at the Frick” (The Paris Review 2021-02-12)

没有什么词能比“十八世纪大理石人像”更没趣的了，光是打出这几个字都好像在准备高考（PSAT）。但也有些十八世纪大理石人像不太寻常，特别是那位有着和伏尔泰以及乔治·华盛顿一样古板长相的让·安托万·乌东（Jean-Antoine Houdon）的作品。不过，除了几张低分辨率的缩略图，你的手机上没法找到本文要举的例子。就是说，你必须得亲自去弗里克收藏馆（Frick Collection）才能看到它们。

There are few uncooler-sounding words than “eighteenth-century marble portraiture.” Even typing these words makes me feel like I’m prepping for the PSAT. But eighteenth-century marble portraiture—specifically that of Jean-Antoine Houdon, known for his uncool likenesses of Voltaire and George Washington—can be extraordinarily strange. Furthermore, the examples here are nearly nowhere to be found on your phone except in lo-res preview form. In other words, you have to actually go to the Frick to see them.

这两尊雕像先后在两年内作成，被成对摆放在博物馆一个偏僻的走廊里：分别是名叫希斯夫人（Madame His）的女性和名叫阿曼德·托马斯·休（Armand-Thomas Hue）的男性。这两座人形的白石头微微透亮，与真人等大，被雕刻出启蒙运动时期的衣着，由四方基座托举着腰部以上的半身。它们被陈列于此就是为了能让来博物馆的二十一世纪人类们经过时心想：“哦，艺术品。”我在去打算撰文的贝利尼（Bellini）画厅的路上，就是这么做的。但除此之外，它们身上还有某种东西吸引我停留。希斯夫人看起来不像我见过的大多数十八世纪人像画，她们都突兀地躺卧在浮夸的乡野间，展示着自己水汪汪的大眼睛，蛋白似的下巴，和娇小的红唇。我绕着雕像转了几圈，越来越钦佩于它是如何诠释了我对“真实人体”的心理认知。我惊异于这大理石雕刻的皮肤下看似涌动着肌肉和肌腱，那胸衣微微粗糙的布料多么轻柔地环抱着她温软的双肩。我抬起头，更神奇的事发生了：希斯夫人正与我对视。

Two busts, sculpted within two years of each other, are paired in an out-of-the way hall of the museum: a woman, Madame His, and a man, Armand-Thomas Hue. Translucent, actual-sized, people-shaped white rocks carved in Enlightenment dress and balanced atop quadrangular pedestals at eyeball height, both are lopped off somewhere above the waist and function as the sort of thing that museum-going twenty-first-century humans are likely to walk right past and think, “Oh, art.” Which is just what I did, on my way to the Bellini painting I’d planned to write about. But something stopped me. Madame His doesn’t look like the majority of eighteenth-century painted portraits I’d seen, which largely crash-land somewhere in flyover caricature country: big watery eyes, boiled-egg chins, tiny red lips. As I circled the bust, I increasingly admired how it substantiated my mental template of “actual human being,” how Houdon had worked outside his epoch’s stylizations. I was surprised by how the marble skin seemed to suggest hidden muscles and tendons, by how the slightly rougher fabric of the bodice lightly met her soft shoulders. Then I looked up, and something even more surprising happened: Madame His met my gaze.

随便哪个会用蜡笔涂画的小孩子都知道，人眼很善于发现面孔。观者通过两眼锁定对象，反之亦然。我们总是在寻找其他的心灵，想把他们的思绪笼罩在自己的视线中，并以此为纽带交流情感。那个满大街都是的1975年黄色笑脸就是明证。而在艺术中，是艺术家的技艺与感受力决定了最终的成品能不能刻画出生命的情感，或是像一句“祝你愉快”一样令人乏味。因此，在希斯夫人像前的这个奇迹时刻要归功于艺术家乌东：是他抚平了几个世纪的时代鸿沟，让我哪怕在那一瞬间，真实地感受到了某个死于两百年前的人。转而更让人痛苦的是，随着我微微转头，她再次变成了一块石头，竟和我来纽约的航班上遇到的乘客颇有些相似：他们几乎都把侧窗拉上，充足地沉浸在自己屏幕的辉光里。

As any kid with a crayon knows, the human eye is attuned to finding faces. Two dots will fix the seen for the seer, and vice versa; we are constantly seeking to pin other consciousnesses down, catching in our headlights the thoughts of others at our shared twin fulcrums of empathy. That ubiquitous 1975 smiling yellow disc proves it. But in art, it’s up to the artist’s skill and sensitivity whether the sensation of life or the sentiment of “have a nice day” is the result. So it’s to Houdon’s credit that at that moment in front of Madame His, the chasm of the centuries sprang together, and I felt, if just for a moment, like I was uncannily and most genuinely in the presence of someone two hundred years dead. Even more painfully, if I moved ever so slightly one way or the other, she turned once again to stone—not unlike the passengers on the plane with whom I’d traveled to New York, nearly all of whom had closed the shades of their windows to more effectively bury themselves in the light of their screens.

在飞机上，我坐在一个穿着亮红色裙子的六旬女人旁边。（因为只斜眼瞟了几次，我印象最深的细节就是裙子，不过我也注意到了她打卷的栗色头发，银色的方耳坠，和微微塌下的鼻子。）尽管两个多小时里，我们紧挨在间隔五英尺的座舱中，一起吸着免费饮料嚼着脆饼干，却默契地没有说过一句话，并在拉瓜迪亚机场诀别了。之前我几乎已经完全忘了这个人，直到在弗里克收藏馆，端详文艺复兴时期的画片时，她又一次出现在了我身边：一样的亮红色裙子，一样的卷发，一样的银色的方耳坠，一样的鼻子。一时间我找不到合适的词来形容这件难以置信的怪事——在容纳百万人的城市里，我们却两次相遇。可显然，不论在飞机上或是此时，她都没有注意到我，并转身离开了。

On that flight, I’d sat next to a sixtyish woman in an alarmingly bright red dress. (Her dress was the detail I remembered most as I’d only gotten in a couple of sidelong glances at her, but I also noted her frizzy chestnut hair, square silver earrings, and slightly downturned nose.) Despite more than two hours spent sipping complimentary soft drinks and crinkling pretzel bags within five uncomfortable inches of each other, we—agreeably—didn’t exchange a word and parted at the LaGuardia jet bridge forever. I had completely forgotten about her until the following morning at the Frick, when I looked over from a painted slice of the Renaissance and there she was, right next to me, again: the same alarming red dress, the same frizzy hair, same square silver earrings, same nose. I began to seek the right words to try to express how fabulously weird it was, here in a city of millions, that we’d cross paths twice. But she clearly hadn’t noticed me either on the plane or at that moment, and she turned and walked away.

希斯夫人在廊厅里永远的伴侣，阿曼德·托马斯·休，也不会注意到你。尽管去试试吧，但你绝对没法和他对视。我好奇这会不会是让·安托万·乌东有意为之，一方面是丰富人物的内涵，使其艺术成就更胜前作希斯夫人，另一方面也是因为这正是我们大多数人在生活中的实际状态。

Madame His’s hallway companion in eternity, Armand-Thomas Hue, won’t look at you either. Try as you might, you absolutely will not be able to meet his eyes. I wonder if this was Jean-Antoine Houdon’s subtle aim, as it ultimately says more about his subject and is almost more of an artistic accomplishment than what he managed with Madame His—and also because it’s what most of us spend our lives actually doing.