Books and Arts;Artists and photographers;Point and paint

　　文藝;書評;藝術家和攝影師;瞬間與永恒;

　　A long overdue study of the influence early photography had on painting;

　　早期攝影對繪畫的影響，一項遲來的研究;

　　“I have all my subjects to hand”, Pierre Bonnard, a French post-impressionist painter, once wrote. “I go to see them. I take notes. Then I go home. And before I start painting I reflect, I dream.” At the turn of the 19th century, the “notes” Bonnard made included snapshots that he took with his flexible hand-held Kodak camera, which had first been introduced in 1888.

　　“我手頭上有全部素材”，法國后印象主義畫家皮埃爾·波納爾曾經寫道。“我去采風。做記錄。然后回到家。開始作畫前我會在腦中回想，讓思緒放飛。”在19世紀之交，柯達推出第一臺相機(1888年)，這里波納爾所說的“記錄”就包括用輕巧便攜的柯達相機拍的快照。

　　Unhampered by hefty equipment (the Kodak was held at waist level and had an arrow marked on top to help point the lens) or long exposures, Bonnard and his fellow painters from the Nabi group, Edouard Vuillard and Félix Vallotton, were among the first artists to use the camera toobserve fine details, perspectives and light effects too fleeting to see with the naked eye. Apainstakingly curated new show juxtaposes 220 mostly unpublished vintage snapshots by seven fin-de-siècle artists along with their paintings, prints and drawings in an effort todemonstrate how this new way of seeing inspired and expanded the painters' creative vision.

　　不受笨重機器的束縛(這款柯達相機可以挎在腰部，相機頂端的箭頭幫助對準鏡頭)，不用拍長曝光的照片，波納爾和其他兩位納比派畫家——愛德華·維亞爾和菲利克斯·瓦洛通，首開先河利用照相機觀察景物的細枝末節、透視圖像和光影效果，這些轉瞬即逝的景象很難用肉眼觀察。最近一個新的作品展展出了由7位“世紀末”藝術家拍攝的220幅老式照片(大部分未曾公開)，同時展出的還有他們的油畫、印刷品和素描作品。此次展覽的舉辦頗費周折，目的在于向人們展示這種全新的觀察方法如何激發和拓寬了畫家的創作視角。

　　Henri Rivière, a French printmaker and designer, climbed the soaring Eiffel Tower before it was completed in 1889 to photograph the exhilarating lines and angles of its iron girders set against the Paris sky for a series of 36 lithographs. Vuillard and a gifted, yet little-known, Belgian painter named Henri Evenepoel used the camera as a sketch book and aide-mémoire tocapture everyday moments with family and friends. Bonnard in turn photographed his slender, round-faced mistress and muse, Marthe de Méligny, naked in a glade, as inspiration for his illustrations of “Daphnis and Chloé” by a second-century Greek novelist and romancer, Longus.

　　亨利·里維埃，法國版畫家和設計師，為了完成由36個石版畫組成的一系列作品，曾爬上還未竣工的高聳的艾菲爾鐵塔(鐵塔于1889年落成)，拍攝下了以巴黎的天空為背景，鐵塔的鋼筋鐵架縱橫交錯構成的振奮人心的畫面。維亞爾和另一位才華橫溢但名不見經傳的比利時畫家亨利·埃費內普爾把照相機當作素描本和備忘錄，用以撲捉和家人朋友的日常生活瞬間。而波納爾拍攝的則是他那身材苗條臉盤很圓的情婦，以及他靈感的源泉瑪莎·Méligny在樹林中一絲不掛的照片。他在給公元2世紀希臘傳奇小說家隆古斯的小說《達佛涅斯和克洛伊》做插圖時，靈感就來自這些照片。

　　Neither Vuillard nor Bonnard, with whom he shared a studio, actually copied photographs in their resonant, small-scale paintings of domestic interiors. Instead, both tried to replicatethe immediacy of snapshots (or instantanés as they were called in France) often catching their subjects mid-gesture. Using his photographs only as an occasional reference point, or toreflect a mood, Vuillard recomposed his subjects at will. “At Table, Lunch” and “In Front of theTapestry: Misia and Thadée Natanson” both show abbreviated figures, whether absorbed in eating a meal, or with their backs to the viewer. Vuillard's figures, who are almost swallowed up by the vibrant decor, have an apparitional quality that appealed to the 20th-century Frenchphotographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, who described Vuillard and Bonnard as among the artists he most admired.

　　波納爾和維亞爾共用一個畫室，兩人的小幅裝飾畫均有一定反響，但實際上這些畫并非選自他們拍攝的照片。他們想要嘗試的是重現快照(法語為instantanés)中被瞬間定格的運動中的人物。對于維亞爾來說照片僅是一種臨時的參考或某種情感的反應，他會隨心所欲地對主題進行重塑。《餐桌邊的午餐》和《在掛毯前：米西亞和塔德·納坦松》呈現的都是縮影式的人物，或是在全神貫注的用餐，或是背對著觀眾。維亞爾畫中的人物幾乎會被色彩鮮明的畫面所淹沒，有種若隱若現的效果。20世紀法國攝影師亨利·卡帝爾·布烈松對這種畫風極為欣賞，他把維亞爾和波納爾視為偶像。

　　A Dutch painter, George Hendrik Breitner, also seizes a moment in time in a bustlingAmsterdam street scene that is dominated by a veiled figure holding a fur muff up to her face, looking blurred and fugitive, as in real life. Now acknowledged as a gifted photographer in his own right, Breitner used his camera for “Girl in Red Kimono” (pictured right above with its photographic model, left). This precise yet atmospheric re-creation of his snapshot of a girl curled up on a divan, shows her intricately patterned kimono in sharp contrast with thedesign of the Persian carpet at her feet.

　　與此同時，荷蘭畫家喬治·亨德里克·布賴特納也抓住時機記錄下來阿姆斯特丹川流不息的街景，畫面突顯了一位頭戴面紗的女子，身上包裹著毛皮披肩，只露出臉，神情隱約難辨，整幅畫作看起來非常逼真。布賴特納憑借自己的努力被公認為天才攝影師，他利用相機繪制出《穿紅色和服的女子》(右上圖為畫作，左圖為模特照片)。照片中的女孩蜷曲在沙發上，身上的和服花紋精致復雜，與腳下的波斯地毯的圖案對比鮮明，布賴特納根據這張照片進行的再創作描繪精確，完美的再現了原照的氛圍。

　　Unlike their official work, none of this exhibition's seven artists ever intended their photographs to go on public display. Photography, for them, was a mechanical process rather than an art form. Some of the images come from the attics and albums of the artists' families; Rivière's photographs, now at the Musée d'Orsay, were catalogued only in 1988. Vallotton, who left just 20 images, compared with 2,000 left by Vuillard, may even have destroyed theevidence following accusations that he copied a central figure from a photograph published in a French magazine in 1908. Snapshot studies for two of his paintings, “Beach at Etretat” and aportrait of his wife entitled “Red Room, Etretat”, show how he worked from photographs, eliminating extraneous details and grey shadows. He used this pared-down style to create powerful groups of figures or psychological portraits.

　　此次展覽涉及的7位藝術家從未打算把這些照片作為正式作品公布于眾。對于他們來說攝影只是一個機械加工過程，并非藝術。許多圖片是他們的家人從閣樓上或是影集里找到的。里維爾拍攝的照片現在展覽于奧賽博物館，但也只是在1988年才被收入博物館。而瓦洛東僅留下20幅圖片，相比維亞爾的2000幅照片，他的數量就少多了。他曾被指責抄襲了1908年出版的一本法國雜志里的照片——照片中的一個主要人物，但如今從這些少量留存的照片中已找不到任何證據。瓦洛東有兩幅畫作，《埃特爾塔的沙灘》以及他為妻子畫的題為《紅色房間，埃特爾塔》的肖像畫，對照相片進行研究，可以發現他如何利用照片學習去除冗余的細節和不必要的陰影。采用這種簡潔的風格瓦洛東創作出很多場面宏大的畫作以及心理肖像描寫。

　　Vallotton and Vuillard liked to exchange photographs. Evenepoel, a pupil of Gustave Moreau who took almost 900 photographs, including a series of searching self-portraits, in the two years before he died of typhoid aged 27, described his camera as a “real gem”. A photograph of his hesitant family about to cross the Place de la Concorde recalls Edgar Degas's famousportrait of Vicomte Lepic and his daughters, while images of his cousin Louise de Mey and their son Charles embody the emotion he invested in his portraits.

　　瓦洛東和維亞爾喜歡交換照片。另一位藝術家埃費內普爾，師從古斯塔夫·莫羅，在短短2年間拍攝了近900幅照片，包括一系列探索式的自畫像，但他隨后不幸死于傷寒，年僅27歲。他曾描述他的相機是“真正的寶物”。埃費內普爾有一張照片記錄了他的家人躑躅著準備穿過協和廣場，這張照片讓人想起埃德加德加著名的肖像畫《會計師和女兒們》。另一張畫像描繪了他的表姐路易絲·梅伊和兒子查爾斯，畫面體現出他作畫時的情感投入。

　　“I savour them all [my snapshots] with the slightly sad joy of reflecting that all this good time is past”, Evenepoel wrote to his father in 1897. These images, like most in the exhibition, are startlingly small. But close inspection reveals a finely detailed portrait of how this group of artists lived and worked, and it conveys the real sense of the excitement they felt as they experimented with their seemingly miraculous new gadget.

　　“我細細地品味它們(我的照片)，但一想到照片中美好的時光都已逝去，喜悅中不免略帶感傷”，1897年埃費內普爾在寫給父親的信中說到。這些圖片和其他展出的作品一樣畫幅都非常小。但經過細細觀察，這些藝術家生活和工作的細節便詳盡地呈現在眼前，同時藝術家們在用這個看似不可思議的新型小玩意兒做嘗試時的喜悅和興奮也流露無余。

　　“Snapshot: Painters and Photography 1888-1915” is at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, until January 8th 2012. It will be displayed at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, from February 4th until May 6th and at the Indianapolis Museum of Art from June 3rd until September 2nd.

　　“照片：畫家與攝影師 1888-1915”在阿姆斯特丹梵高博物館展出，結束日期2012年1月8日。該展覽還將于2月4日至5月6日在華盛頓菲利普斯陳列館展出，6月3日至9月2日在印第安納波利斯藝術博物館展出。

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