What is the meaning of The Scream? 名画《呐喊》究竟蕴含着什么意义？ Beneath a boiling sky, aflame with yellow, orange and red, an androgynous figure stands upon a bridge. Wearing a sinuous blue coat, which appears to flow, surreally, into a torrent of aqua, indigo and ultramarine behind him, he holds up two elongated hands on either side of his hairless, skull-like head. 在一片沸腾的天空下，黄、橙、红三色交相辉映，一个男女莫辨的人站在桥上。他身上那超现实主义的蓝色衣服蜿蜒有致，似乎要汇入身后的湖绿色、靛蓝色和群青色的背景，他抬起两只长长的胳膊托住面颊，就像一具骷髅，头顶已经没了头发。 His eyes wide with shock, he unleashes a bloodcurdling shriek. Despite distant vestiges of normality – two figures upon the bridge, a boat on the fjord – everything is suffused with a sense of primal, overwhelming horror. 他恐惧地瞪大双眼，发出惊恐的尖叫。尽管远处有些许正常的元素——桥上有两个人，峡湾里还有一艘船——但画面上的一切都充斥着原始而压抑的恐怖氛围。 This, of course, is The Scream, by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch – the second most famous image in art history, after Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. 不用多说，这就是挪威画家爱德华·蒙克(Edvard Munch)创作的《呐喊》。它是美术史上仅次于《蒙娜·丽莎》的第二名画。 Or, to be precise, it is one of four versions of The Scream that Munch created in his lifetime. The earliest painted version, from 1893, is in Oslo’s National Gallery. Elsewhere in the city, the Munch Museum boasts the other painted version, from 1910, as well as a rendition in pastel from 1893. 不过，由于蒙克一生总共创作了4个版本的《呐喊》，所以精确地说，这只是其中的1个版本。最早的版本完成于1893年，目前藏于奥斯陆的挪威国家画廊。同样在奥斯陆，蒙克博物馆则收藏了分别创作于1910年和1893年的另外两个版本。 But the version I am describing, a pastel-on-board from 1895, still in its original frame, is the only one of the four that remains in private hands. In 2012, it briefly set the record for the most expensive artwork ever to sell at auction, when, after 12 minutes of bidding, it fetched almost $120 million (£75 million) at Sotheby’s in New York. The buyer was the American financier Leon Black, who has now lent the work to a new exhibition, Munch and Expressionism, at the Neue Galerie in New York. 但我现在描述的这个板上粉彩版创作于1895年，至今仍然使用最初的画框，这也是4个版本中唯一被私人收藏的。2012年，它曾经短暂保持过艺术作品拍卖成交价格最高纪录。当时，经过12分钟的竞拍后，它最终在纽约苏富比拍卖行以将近1.2亿美元(7,500万英镑)的天价成交。买家是美国金融家利昂·布莱克(Leon Black)，他现在将这幅作品租借给纽约新美术馆(Neue Galerie)的“蒙克与表现主义展”(Munch and Expressionism)进行展出。 “The most prized version is the oil painting in the National Gallery in Oslo,” says the art historian Jill Lloyd, who has curated the exhibition. “But the pastel version is incredible, because the colour is so vivid, so fresh, it’s like it was made yesterday. In my mind, it is the most intense version: because pastel is such a free medium, you can see Munch altering lines and changing contours. So it has this unbelievably charged, vital surface, which you don’t really get in the oil paintings in the same way.” “最珍贵的版本是挪威国家画廊的油画版，”艺术史学家吉尔·劳埃德(Jill Lloyd)说，他参与策划了“蒙克与表现主义展”。“但粉彩版同样让人难以置信，因为色彩鲜活而生动，就像昨天刚刚完成的作品一样。在我看来里，这是表现力最强的版本：因为粉彩是一种自由的媒介，你可以看到蒙克修改的线条和轮廓。所以才有了这种令人难以置信的鲜活效果，这是油画所无法比拟的。” Existential angst 存在性焦虑 The exhibition at the Neue Galerie explores the relationship between Munch, who was born the second of five children to an impoverished military doctor in 1863, and the avant-garde Expressionist art movement that emerged in Germany and Austria in the early years of the 20th Century. Although the show concentrates on the latter stages of the artist’s career (Munch died in 1944), it still finds room for The Scream of 1895, which he created three years after first arriving in Berlin, where he quickly made a notorious name for himself. 纽约新美术馆的这场展览探讨了蒙克与先锋派表现主义艺术运动之间的关系。蒙克1863年出生在一个贫困的军医家庭，家里共有5个孩子，他排行老二。而先锋派表现主义艺术运动则在20世纪初兴起于德国和奥地利。尽管展览着眼于是蒙克艺术生涯的后期(他于1944年去世)，但仍然为1895年创作的这幅《呐喊》找到了一席之地。那时的蒙克刚刚来到柏林3年，但却很快在那里声名鹊起。 It was in Germany, during several creatively frenzied years, while fraternising with like-minded artists and writers, such as his close friend August Strindberg, at a bar called the Black Piglet, that Munch created the major paintings which remain his best-known works, including The Vampire and Madonna. They were conceived for his epic, semi-autobiographical series The Frieze of Life, which transmuted his own high-keyed emotions concerning love, sexuality and death into universal symbols. The original, 1893 version of The Scream was one of 22 elements in the cycle. 在德国的几年间，蒙克的创作激情得到了充分激发，他当时在一家名叫“黑猪”(Black Piglet)的酒吧与志趣相投的画家和作家建立了深厚的友谊，包括他的好友奥古斯特·斯特林堡(August Strindberg)。正是在那段时期，蒙克创作了至今享誉世界的重要作品，包括《吸血鬼》(The Vampire)和《麦当娜》(Madonna)。这都是在为他后来那部半交响乐式的宏伟巨著《生命的饰带》(The Frieze of Life)做铺垫。这个系列的作品将他自己对爱情、性和死亡等问题的高亢情感转化成通用的符号。1893年创作的第一版《呐喊》就是这个系列的22幅作品之一。 In 1892, Munch painted a precursor of The Scream called Sick Mood at Sunset, Despair. The composition – bloody sky, bridge with three figures, bluey-green lake and landscape – is strikingly similar, but the style, though relatively radical for the time, didn’t assault tradition in the manner of The Scream. The latter painting was Munch’s breakthrough, as ferocious existential anguish overwhelmed the earlier mood of polite melancholy. 1892年，蒙克绘制了《呐喊》的前身《日落时的阴郁情绪，绝望》(Sick Mood at Sunset, Despair)。画面的构成与《呐喊》非常相似——血色的天空，3个人站在桥上、湖水和景色都涂成了蓝绿色。然而，尽管那幅画在当时看来有些激进，但却并不像《呐喊》那样离经叛道。后者是蒙克画风的一次突破，以强烈的“存在性焦虑”压倒了早先那“儒雅的忧郁”。 An entry in Munch’s diary, dated 22 January 1892, recorded the inspiration for The Scream: “I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun went down – I felt a gust of melancholy – suddenly the sky turned a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, tired to death – as the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends went on – I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I felt a vast infinite scream through nature.” 蒙克在1892年1月22日的一篇日记中记录了《呐喊》的灵感来源：“我跟两个朋友一起迎着落日散步——我感受到一阵忧郁——突然间，天空变得血红。我停下脚步，靠着栏杆，累得要死——感觉火红的天空像鲜血一样挂在上面，刺向蓝黑色的峡湾和城市——我的朋友继续前进——我则站在那里焦虑得发抖——我感觉到大自然那剧烈而又无尽的呐喊。” The figure in The Scream, then, may be a kind of self-portrait of the artist, whose older sister, Sophie, had died when he was 13. Art historians have also suggested another source for it – a Peruvian mummy that Munch saw at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889. 所以，《呐喊》中的人物或许是蒙克的自画像。他的姐姐索菲(Sophie)在他13岁时就去世了。艺术史学家还认为，《呐喊》中的人物或许还有另外一个来源，那就是蒙克在1889年巴黎世博会上看到的一具秘鲁木乃伊。 At the Neue Galerie, The Scream is the final image that visitors encounter in the exhibition, because, as Lloyd says, “Everything about it is the essence of Expressionism.” 在新美术馆里，《呐喊》是参观者们看到的最后一幅画。劳埃德表示，之所以这样设计，是因为“关于它的一切都是表现主义的精髓”。 We all scream 我们都在呐喊 Of course, from an art-historical perspective, Lloyd is correct. Within the exhibition, a glowering woodcut from 1917 by the German artist Erich Heckel makes plain the Expressionist debt to Munch: Heckel’s composition, in which a man holds his temples while standing in a forbidding wasteland that seems to explode into shards of light, is obviously indebted to Munch’s black-and-white 1895 lithograph of The Scream. In the early 20th Century, this print was the most widely circulated version of Munch’s picture. 当然，从艺术史学的角度来看，劳埃德做的没错。在那次展览中，德国艺术家艾里希·黑克尔(Erich Heckel)创作于1917年的一幅木版画阐明了这位表现主义画家对蒙克的敬意：黑克尔的作品里有一个男子，他捂着太阳穴站在一片似乎要爆裂成光束的荒地里。这显然是在对蒙克1895年创作的《呐喊》黑白平版印刷画致敬。在20世纪早期，这也是蒙克作品最广为流传的一个版本。 Yet it wasn’t only the Expressionists who were influenced by Munch. The Scream was the ancestor of Francis Bacon’s pictures of howling popes. In 1984, Andy Warhol made a series of screen-prints that recast The Scream in bright, eye-popping colours. 然而，受到蒙克影响的不只是表现主义画家。弗朗西斯·培根(Francis Bacon)《尖叫的教皇》(Howling Pope)系列作品也受到了《呐喊》的启发。1984年，安迪·沃霍尔(Andy Warhol)也创作了一系列丝网印刷作品，用夺人眼球的明亮色彩重新诠释了《呐喊》。 The Scream also happens to be Tracey Emin’s favourite “historical” painting: in 1998, she even made a film in which she visited a Norwegian fjord and hollered for a full minute, while the camera lingered on the water. The charismatic Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic persuaded inhabitants of Oslo to scream in public as a tribute to Munch. Echo Lake (1998), a sinister painting by the British artist Peter Doig, features a spectral policeman clutching his head in the manner of Munch’s Scream. 《呐喊》还是翠西·艾敏(Tracey Emin)最喜欢的“历史”绘画：1998年，她甚至专门拍摄了一部影片。在片中，她来到了挪威的一个峡湾，在那里呼喊了整整1分钟时间，镜头则始终落在水面上。塞尔维亚行为艺术家玛丽娜·阿布拉莫维奇(Marina Abramovic)也说服奥斯陆的居民一起在公共场合尖叫，以此纪念蒙克。英国画家彼得·多伊格(Peter Doig)在1998年创作了《回声湖》(Echo Lake)，里面有一个幽灵般的警察像蒙克《呐喊》里的主人公一样抓住自己的头。 Arguably, though, the most stunning thing about The Scream isn’t its impact upon subsequent art, but the way it transcended art history to become a touchstone of popular culture. The Scream has been ripped off, caricatured and lampooned so often that it is now far more famous, in its own right, than its creator. 但《呐喊》最令人惊奇的或许并非它对后来的艺术所产生的影响，而在于它竟然超脱了艺术史的范畴，成为了流行文化的试金石。《呐喊》经常被改编成漫画或讽刺作品，使得这幅画本身的知名度远远超过了它的创作者。 People who have never heard of Munch still recognise The Scream, thanks to the innumerable references that have been made to it, in everything from The Simpsons to Wes Craven’s slasher franchise Scream, with its ‘Ghostface’ mask, inspired by Munch’s painting, worn by the killers. The thefts from museums in Oslo of different versions of The Scream – one in 1994, the other a decade later – only enhanced the image’s notoriety. 由于经常在各种场合被人引用，所以很多人虽然从未听说过蒙克，但却仍然认识《呐喊》这幅画。无论是《辛普森一家》(The Simpsons)还是韦斯·克雷文(Wes Craven)的《惊声尖叫》(Scream)系列恐怖片中的杀手佩戴的“鬼脸面具”，都可以看到《呐喊》的身影。挪威国家画廊两个版本的《呐喊》虽然曾经先后被盗——一幅在1994年，另外一幅发生在10年后——但却进一步提升了这幅作品的知名度。 In part, says Lloyd, the ubiquity of The Scream is a result of the fact that “it’s easy to make into a caricature – and that is not the case with many paintings. As an image, it is pared down to the essence, which means that once you’ve seen it, you don’t forget it: it’s very easy to understand as a visual idea. And, of course, by now, it has been everywhere: on handbags, posters, mugs, God knows what.” 劳埃德表示，《呐喊》之所以受到流行文化的追捧，是因为“很容易用它改编成漫画作品——这是很多名画所不具备的特点。作为一幅画作，它的元素十分简练，因此可以达到过目不忘的效果：作为一种视觉观念，它很容易被人理解。所以，它如今随处可见也就成了理所当然的事情，手袋、海报、马克杯，几乎任何地方都能看到它的身影。” At the same time, it is hard fully to explain its universal appeal. For Lloyd, it was successful, as an image, because it articulated an important shift that occurred within Western culture around the turn of the 20th Century. “The Scream is one of those images that sums up a changing point in history,” she explains. “It presents man cut loose from all the certainties that had comforted him up until that point in the 19th Century: there is no God now, no tradition, no habits or customs – just poor man in a moment of existential crisis, facing a universe he doesn’t understand and can only relate to in a feeling of panic.” 但与此同时，却很难完全解释它的广泛吸引力。对劳埃德来说，《呐喊》作为一幅绘画作品来说是成功的，因为它在20世纪初期给西方文化带来了重要的改变。“《呐喊》是众多合力促成历史转折的绘画作品之一。”她解释道，“在之前的19世纪，确定性正是令人们感到安逸的关键，而这幅画则呈现了一个完全感受不到确定性的人：没有上帝，没有传统，没有习俗——只有一个深感存在危机的男人，面对着一个他完全不了解的宇宙，只能感受到深深的痛苦。” She adds: “That may sound very negative, but that is the modern state. This is what distinguishes modern man from post-Renaissance history up until that moment: this feeling that we have lost all the anchors that bind us to the world.”