2021.04.09

培根:绘画世界里的刺点 Bacon: the thorn in the world of painting

在国际画坛上,如果没有培根这个画家,不知绘画的光芒要黯淡多少;如果培根那一代人(包括弗洛伊德、霍克尼)没有在绘画上做出了这样的成就和影响,可能二战后的艺术史的书写就缺少了一大篇章,甚至绘画的衰退和死亡的断语就得到了肯定。

 

事实上,正是有了培根他们这些画家,让飘绕在绘画头上的阴霾一扫而尽,让艺术史重新对绘画产生信心,让世界拥抱真正的绘画。之所以这样说,是因为我们处在一个全球化的时代里,我们对世界的看法很容易受到社会流传的观点的左右,被若干特定的媒体传播所固化。比如艺术,似乎经过了现代主义的洗礼后,绘画的衰退是不证自明的事,另一方面,与新兴的其他艺术媒介相比,一些流行的、应时的绘画确实缺少了内部的动力和感染力,而这些弊端正是绘画受到攻讦的地方。绘画经过了一个形式主义的轮回之后,被突然惊讶地发现:原来它是和人性的表达有关、和人的存在感有关。

 

至于培根则大大地不同,其不同源自他强烈的生命感和对生命真实的表现。看他的作品,即便是非专业的观众,也会受到震撼,夸张的形态、扭曲的躯干、痛苦的表情,一下打动观者的内心。这是对世界有着深刻感受与领会的艺术家才能行诸于笔端的,如果不是一个画家内在感觉敏锐,断不能有这样的表达。或者说,培根的出现让我们严肃地审视绘画,对绘画报以敬意和赞叹。在某种程度上,由于培根他们一辈的艺术家的涌现,使得许多对绘画误读的地方都被廓清。特别是再到了21世纪的今天,我们不是仍然需要绘画吗?这样的绘画渴望并非仅仅是画就足够。看看培根的一生和他的绘画生涯,就清楚什么样的绘画是需要的,同时什么样的绘画是艰难的,而画家则更是磨砺着人生,才创作了属于他(她)生命的绘画。

 

读培根的绘画就要读他的人生,而他的绘画又是在人生的规则之外展开。无论我们如何研究艺术的历史进程,都不应忽视、忘却艺术家的生命在场。我们读了培根的生平传记才会理解他的绘画为什么是那么震撼、那么促动人心,而在他被广为接受、得到认可之后所做的任何研究都无法抵消他的生命所加于他的绘画的真实意义的由来。

 

应该说,我们今天是一个物质消费的时代,人生的际遇在物质化的生活中似乎变得越来越平淡。表面上,物质富足、高楼林立,但人生的轨迹与速度却越来越不由自主、越来越脱离平衡。在如此匆匆的节奏中,有时候绘画反而变得迟缓,不能将生命体验的厚重倾泻出来;相反,越是规范地、程序化地学习绘画,越是不能尽得绘画本有的真谛。这可以从我们身边千千万万学习绘画的人那里看到这种情况,所以当我们感动于培根的绘画时,我们所思考所受感召的是他的那种肉身在世界中的苦楚、纠葛及伤痛。或者说,培根绘画的要点不是构图的不完整、背景的单纯,而是画面上的人物的极度紧张引起观者心理震动,撞击着灵魂。这种直击视觉冲击的绘画来自培根的生活经验,一种濒临困境与绝望的反应。

 

另一方面,培根生活在一个充满动荡的欧洲的时期,从一战到二战是他成长的年龄,从二战到冷战是他成熟的年龄,以及到他1963年代第一次在英国泰特美术馆做个展(当时已经53岁),后来又在法国做个展,大获法国人青睐,到他1992年去世,他都生活在充满情感纠葛、挑战的生活里。可以说,培根是学不来的,那么多对他的评论和研究如果仅仅停留在技法的分析上,实际上是买椟还珠,不得要领。培根出生于爱尔兰,他从小腼腆,曾受到父亲的苛责、驱赶,这是现在的孩子们无法想象的;他所遭遇的一次又一次同性之恋,又是非常态所知的;他在柏林读尼采,在法国逛博物馆,回到伦敦做室内设计,生活给了他非常多的磨难。他并不是一个学院内的毕业生,也不是一个常态中的画家,他的那些经历是他绘画的根本,他画的很多肖像都是他挚爱的人,那些画面的虚无的空间感是他生存的无感所知,那些躯干、怪物般的形象都是他寄托苦闷的象征。

 

培根的艺术是真实的自我写照,而这种写照超越了绘画,超越了一种平面的生活,这也是这个世界为什么如此看重培根的原因,是因为他刻画了我们在世界的真实,所以世界还培根以敬意。从1964年出版培根的《作品集》到大卫·西尔维斯特(David Sylvester)60年代末出版他的《培根访谈录》,再到2009年培根诞辰一百年泰特美术馆纪念大展所掀起的第二波培根研究热。对培根的解读和研究已经超出了艺术史的范围,而进入到了多学科的研究中,如精神分析方法、感知心理学、性征、性别、权力、时间与空间等。培根善于吸收他身边的任何内容,转化为自己的图像形式。对他的认识从一个单纯的画家升华到他是一个批评者和文化的思想者,他的绘画为哲学研究、宗教研究、批判理论都提供了足够丰富的可能性。特别是培根的绘画重塑了身体,他大量的作品都是显现身体状态的,他对身体的夸张描绘把人们潜藏的身体意识给以形象的表现,刺痛了所有的观者。

 

培根的艺术来源是他的生活,他的爱恨情仇;他所有刺痛于世人的也都是刺痛他自己的,他爱的人在他法国大皇宫美术馆个展开幕的当天自杀于他们住的酒店房间里。培根前前后后遭遇过多次至深的同性爱恋,他之天才是20世纪那个时代氛围社会的产物,他对同辈与后学的影响无与伦比,远播东土。

 

培根的影响在60年代后节节攀高,靠做室内设计艰难地挣点生活费的处境一去不返,名声鹊起市场对他大为青睐。随之收入暴增,他在伦敦的维多利亚博物馆对面的街区购置了一套房,作为自己的工作室。这个工作室放满了培根收集的书籍、画册、图片、照片、文献、绘画用品、画框、生活物品等等,随着他绘画的增加,日复一日,这里变得杂乱无比。正是在这样的创作空间状态里,培根又画出了盖世的作品。培根今天影响之大,与市场的作用也密不可分,他的作品一次次打破佳士得的拍卖记录,成为拍卖场上的硬通货。也是因为如此多的因素,培根甚至被誉为可比肩毕加索等一批20世纪绘画大师的艺术家,获得了神话般的被崇拜,他的爱好者、粉丝、收藏家遍及世界各地。

 

1992年,培根在西班牙马德里突发心脏病去世。留下的作品全部给了他后来的伴侣约翰·爱德华,而且由英国最高法院裁定,将培根的作品处理权从培根的代理画廊马尔波罗那里解除掉,成立培根遗产委员会,全权负责培根的艺术遗产。此后,培根艺术遗产委员会将培根在伦敦的工作室原封不动地搬到都柏林,仿佛文物考古一样,每件物品编号、拍照、登记、打包,按培根生活创作的原貌复原出来。这个复原工作花了几年的时间,可谓对培根敬若神明。在某种意义上是在培根的出生地都柏林复显出培根的精魂,为这样的一个给以神话般的英雄礼遇。

 

但另一方面,也因为培根艺术遗产的搬离造成了伦敦与都柏林的纷争。等到意大利作家、记者拉瓦里诺在培根去世后爆出他拥有培根赠予他几百幅油画棒作品后,又造成了英国和意大利之间的纷争,前者一开始拒绝承认这批作品是培根的真迹,后经专家鉴定(包括英国著名的艺术史家爱德华·鲁西-史密斯(Edward Lucie-Smith))是真迹后,保持沉默。这在培根的传记里、作品集里都不提,连培根在80年代去意大利度假的记述都没有,好像这段历史不存在一样。此过程引发了多起争议,甚至考陶徳艺术学院原定举办的“鉴定学的挑战:以培根意大利素描绘画为例(The Challenge of Authentication: Francis Bacon – a case study)”论坛(2011年)也因担心引起法律诉讼而取消。意大利这批培根绘画作品从90年代末开始展示,中间发生诸多争论,最后经过多方艺术史家、笔迹专家、档案专家的研究,这批作品真实性才不再存有疑虑。

 

为什么培根赠予他的意大利伴侣拉瓦里诺这么多作品而没有说出来?是因为培根去世前的作品独家代理是马尔波罗画廊,他不能在画廊代理之外将作品处理,但培根把意大利视为他的庇护所,获得安宁的地方,从1977年到去世前,经常去;而拉瓦里诺就是他的伴侣,他告诉拉瓦里诺“你不能说这仅仅是生活,……生活比艺术重要(You cannot say it’s only life… life is more important than art)”。经过长久的研究、讨论、回应、法院判决,围绕这批“培根意大利作品”,发生在英国与意大利之间的争议已经落下帷幕。在期间,这批“培根意大利作品”的展览连续不断,国际界由之增加了对培根的研究和了解,包括高雄美术馆2012年也举办了这批培根作品的首个亚洲展。目前,蓬皮杜、泰特都在计划这批作品的展览。

 

这次的培根意大利作品中国展也是一次让我们多方面了解培根的机会。之前计划在中央美院美术馆来举办,但由于时间原因,无法成行。但在准备展览过程中,接触、翻阅了关于这批作品的资料,发现这是一段非常精彩的探案故事剧。如果有人把它编成电影剧本,肯定红遍全球。从另一个意义上说,培根之为培根有着非常丰富、多样的人生,其艺术远非目前所知晓的那样,还有着更多的发掘与研究。他去世才三十余年,历史需要呈现的东西肯定还有待一代代学者去研究、整理、评述。

 

 

自然,培根之重要与影响已为世所瞩目,他是远方的一颗闪烁的星光,不仅照耀着艺术,也透映了20世纪以来的人生变革。

 

王春辰

In the international painting world, if there is no Bacon, I don't know how dim the light of painting will be. If Bacon's generation (including Freud and Hockney) did not make such achievements and influence on painting, there may lost a big chapter in the  writing of the art history after World War II. Even the determination of painting’s decline and death are affirmed.

 

In fact, it is Bacon and these painters swept away the haze on the heads of painting and made art history raising confidence in painting again. Their paintings made the world embrace the real painting as a genre. The reason for this is that we are in an era of globalization. Our views of the world are easily influenced by social opinions and solidified by certain types of media. For example, it seems that after the baptism of modernism, the decline of painting is self-evident. On the other hand, compared with other emerging art media, some popular and timely paintings do lack the internal motivation and appeal infection. These shortcomings are exactly where painting is criticized. After a cycle of formalism, painting is suddenly surprised to be found that it is related to the expression of human nature and the sense of human existence.

 

Painting is quite different for Bacon as such. These differences originate  from his strong senses of life and his expressions of the true life. When you look at his works, even the non professional audiences will be shocked. The exaggerated shapes, twisted trunks and painful expressions will move and touch audiences’ hearts. Only an artist who owns deep feelings and understandings of the world can do this. If it is not a painter's keen inner sense, there can be no such expressions. In other words, the appearance of Bacon allows us examine the paintings seriously and we pay homage and admiration to it. To some extent, because of the emergence of Bacon's generation of artists, many misunderstandings of painting have been cleared up since the emergence since the emergence of artists in Bacon’s generations. Especially in the 21st century, don't we still need painting? Such a desire for painting is not just enough for painting. Looking at Bacon's life and his painting’s career, we can see what kind of paintings are needed and what kind of paintings are difficult. The painters are honing his life to create his or her life’s paintings.

 

Reading Bacon's paintings is like reading his life. However, his paintings carried outside rules’ of life. No matter how we study the historical process of art, we should not ignore and forget the presence of artists’ life. Only after reading Bacon's biography can we understand why his paintings are so shocking and inspiring. After he is widely accepted and recognized, any research can not offset the origin of the true meaning of his paintings imposed by his life.

 

It should be said that today we are in an era of material consumption.The fate of life seems to become more and more insipid in the material life. Superficially, there are abundant materials and many tall buildings, but the tracks and speeds of life are more and more involuntary and out of balance. In such a hasty rhythm, sometimes painting becomes slow and unable to pour out the profundity of life experience; on the contrary, the more standardized and programmed of learning  painting, the more unable to get the true meaning of painting. This can be seen from the thousands of people among us who study painting. So when we are moved by Bacon's paintings, Our thinking and feeling are his physical pain, entanglement and pain in the world. In other words, the main point of Bacon's painting is not the incompleteness of the composition and the simplicity of the background, but the extreme tension of the characters in the picture.These cause the psychological shock to the audience and impacts the soul. This kind of direct visual impact painting comes from Bacon's life experience--- a kind of response on the verge of predicament and despair.

 

On the other hand, Bacon lived in a period of turbulent Europe. He grew up from World War I to World War II, and matured from World War II to cold war. In 1963, he made his first solo exhibition at Tate Gallery in England (he was 53 years old at that time), and later made his solo exhibition in France, which won the favor of the French. Until his death in 1992, he lived in a world full of emotion challenge. It can be said that people cannot learn from Bacon. If so many his comments and researches just stay on the analysis of techniques, they are actually buying something for nothing. Bacon was born in Ireland. He was shy when he was a child. He was scolded and expelled by his father, which is beyond the imagination of today's children. The same-sex love he encountered again and again is well known. He studied Nietzsche in Berlin, visited museums in France, and went back to London to do interior design. Life has given him a lot of hardships. He was not a college graduate. Also, he was not a normal painter. These experience was his root. The portraits are depicted the ones he loved. The nihility of the space symbols his living feeling. These torsos and monstrous images symbol his anguish.   

 

Bacon's art is a true self portrait, which goes beyond painting and a plane life. This is why the world values bacon so much. It is because he depicts our reality in the world. So the world pays homage to Bacon. From the publication of Bacon's collection of works in 1964 to David Sylvester's 《interview with bacon》 in the late 1960s, and then to the second wave of Bacon research’s fever initiated by the centenary exhibition of Tate Gallery in 2009. The interpretation and research of bacon has gone beyond the scope of art history, and entered into multi-disciplinary research, such as psychoanalysis, perceptual psychology, sexuality, gender, power, time and space. Bacon is good at absorbing everything around him and transforming it into his own image form. From a simple painter raises to a critic and cultural thinker, his paintings provide abundant possibilities for philosophical research, religious research and critical theory. In particular, Bacon's paintings reshape the body. A large number of his works show the body state, his exaggerated description of the body presents people’s hidden body consciousness. It stabs all the viewers.

 

Bacon's art comes from his life, his love and hatred; all the things that hurt the world are also himself. The people he loves committed suicide in their hotel rooms on the day when his solo exhibition at the Grand Palace Museum of art in France began. Bacon has experienced many deep homosexual love before and after. His genius is the product of the atmosphere and society of the 20th century. His influence on his peers and posterity is unparalleled and has spread far to the East.

 

Bacon's influence rose steadily after the 1960s. The situation of struggling to earn some living expenses by doing interior design is gone forever and his reputation raised. The market is very fond of him. As his income soared, he bought a suite in the block opposite to the Victoria Museum in London as his studio. This studio is full of books, picture albums, pictures, photos, documents, painting supplies, picture frames, daily necessities and so on collected by Bacon. With the increase of his paintings, day after day, it becomes extremely messy. It is in this state of creative space that Bacon draws the works of the world. Bacon's great influence today is closely related to the role of the market. His works have broken Christie's auction records and become the hard currency in the auction house. It is also because of so many factors that Bacon is even known as an artist comparable to Picasso and other 20th century painting masters, who has won a mythical adoration. His fans and collectors are all over the world.

 

In 1992, Bacon died since the heart attack in Madrid, Spain. All the works left were given to his later partner John Edwards. The Supreme Court of England judged that Bacon's right to deal with his works was removed from Malboro, Bacon's acting Gallery Bacon’s Heritage Committee was established to take full charge of Bacon's art heritage. Since then, the Bacon’s Art Heritage Committee has moved Bacon's studio in London to Dublin intact, just like the cultural relics and archaeology. Each article is numbered, photographed, registered, packed and restored according to the original appearance of Bacon's life creation. It took several years for this restoration to be a godlike tribute to bacon. In a sense, it is in Dublin, the birthplace of bacon, that Bacon's spirit reappears to give such a hero a mythical treatment.

 

But on the other hand, it also caused the dispute between London and Dublin since the removal of Bacon's art heritage. When Italian writer and journalist CRISTIANO LOVATELLI RAVARINO revealed after Bacon's death that he owned hundreds of oil painting sticks donated to him by Bacon, there was a dispute between Britain and Italy. The former refused to admit that these works were real works of Bacon at the beginning, and then they were identified by experts (including the famous British Art historian Edward Luci Smith)that the works were original. They keep silent. This is not mentioned in Bacon's biography or his collection. There is no record of Bacon's vacation in Italy in the 1980s, as if this period of history did not exist. This process has caused many controversies, and even the "challenge of authentication: Francis Bacon – a case study" Forum (2011) was canceled for fear of legal proceedings. This batch of Bacon's paintings in Italy began to be displayed in the late 1990s, during which there were many disputes. Finally, after the research of many art historians, handwriting experts and archival experts, there was no doubt about the authenticity of these works.

 

Why didn't Bacon give so many works to his Italian partner CRISTIANO LOVATELLI RAVARINO? Because Bacon's exclusive agency for his works before his death was Malboro Gallery, he could not deal with his works outside the agency of the gallery. However, Bacon regarded Italy as his refuge and a place of peace. He often went there from 1977 to his death, and CRISTIANO LOVATELLI RAVARINO was his partner. He told RAVARINO, "you can't say it's just life Life is more important than art  life is more important than art)”. After a long period of research, discussion, response and court judgment, the dispute between Britain and Italy has come to an end. During this period, the exhibition of "Bacon's Italian works" exhibit continuously, which increased the international community's research and understanding of Bacon. In 2012, the Kaohsiung Art Museum also held the first Asian exhibition of this batch of Bacon's works. At present, Pompidou and Tate are planning the exhibition of these works.

 

This exhibition of Bacon's Italian works in China is also an opportunity for us to learn about Bacon in many aspects. Previously, it was planned to be held in the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. But due to the time reasons, it could not be held. But in the process of preparing the exhibition, I contacted and read the materials about these works and found that this was a very wonderful detective story play. If someone makes it into a screenplay, it will be popular all over the world. In another sense, Bacon is Bacon. Bacon has a very rich and diverse life. His art is far from what we know at present, and there will be more exploration and research. He has only passed away for more than 30 years. What history needs to present must be studied, sorted out and commented by generations of scholars.

 

Naturally, Bacon's importance and influence have attracted worldwide attention. He is a shining star in the distance. Shining not only on art, but also reflecting his life changes since the 20th century.

 

Wang Chunchen