他她话题:画家张晓刚的创作危机

For the past year, China's most expensive living artist hasn't been allowed to paint, doctor's orders.

去年一年，中国当今身价最高的画家没有得到作画的许可，发出这道禁令的人是医生。

Zhang Xiaogang, age 54, a Beijing-based painter whose hypnotic portraits have topped $10 million at auction, recently suffered a pair of heart attacks, and his doctors told him - for the first time in his three-decade career - to rest.

家住北京的张晓刚现年54岁，他那面无表情的人物肖像画拍卖价已经超过了1000万美元。最近两次心脏病发作之后，医生要求他休息──这是他30年画家生涯中的第一次。

Few artists embody China's art boom better than Mr. Zhang, who grew up amid the Cultural Revolution and gained fame for his large, haunting depictions of families dressed in Mao jackets and comrade's caps. Yet his desire to keep breakneck pace with China's developing art scene has taken a toll.

很少有画家能比张晓刚更好地代表中国美术的繁荣发展。他生长在文革时期，因创作了给人深刻印象的身着中山装、头戴旧军帽的全家福画像而一举成名。然而，他意欲紧跟中国美术界发展的愿望也让他付出了代价。

Mr. Zhang still spends his days at his soaring studio in a traditional village on the city's outskirts. His major collectors include former Swiss ambassador Uli Sigg, Beijing entrepreneur Liu Lan and Chinese-Indonesian farming tycoon Budi Tek. His earliest works fetch higher sums than ever at auction: In April 2011, 'Eternal Love,' a 1988 painting that he originally sold for $2,000, resold at Sotheby's Hong Kong for $10.2 million, an auction record for Chinese contemporary art.

张晓刚现在还是生活在北京郊外一个传统村庄里一个有着高耸屋顶的工作室中，收藏他作品的人主要有前瑞士大使乌里•希克（Uli Sigg）、北京企业家刘兰、以及印尼华人农业大亨余德耀（Budi Tek）。他最早期的作品在拍卖场卖出了前所未有的高价：一幅创作于1988年名为《永恒的爱》（Eternal Love）的作品，当初售价2,000美元，2011年4月在香港苏富比拍卖行（Sotheby's Hong Kong）再次拍卖时以1020万美元的价格成交，创造了中国当代美术作品的最高拍卖价格纪录。

But he said he's still learning how to navigate the pressures and expectations of the job. Six weeks after that record sale, Mr. Zhang was sitting in his studio with his 18-year-old daughter when he clutched his chest, struggling to breathe. Soon after, he underwent emergency bypass surgery to repair a blocked artery in his heart, his second heart surgery in 10 months. Afterward, his doctor told the artist he had to dramatically alter his lifestyle: No more whiskey or cigarettes (he was smoking two packs of Zhongnanhai a day) and no work-related stress for a year.

但是，张晓刚说他仍然在学习如何驾驭工作带来的压力与希望。就在那次创纪录的拍卖之后六周，他在工作室里手抓胸口、呼吸困难，当时他18岁的女儿跟他在一起。很快，他被送去急救，做了心脏搭桥手术，以修复堵塞了的心脏动脉血管。这是他在10个月的时间里做的第二次心脏手术。后来，医生告诉这位画家，他必须彻底改变生活方式：戒酒戒烟（他当时一天要抽两包中南海），一年之内不能承受任何工作上的压力。

When artists break out in art hubs like New York or London, they can usually look to experienced galleries to broker their sales and help manage their careers. China didn't have a single privately run art gallery when Mr. Zhang got his start in the early 1980s. For a long stretch, he single-handedly managed his own career, juggling demands from dealers and collectors and occasionally making artworks on commission. (Mr. Zhang is now represented by Pace Gallery.)

当画家们来到纽约或伦敦这样的艺术中心的时候，他们通常可以找到有资历的画廊，让其充当经纪人代理自己作品的出售并帮助自己进行职业谋划。20世纪80年代初期张晓刚的事业刚刚起步时，中国还没有一家私人经营的画廊。很长一段时间，他都是单打独斗地经营着自己的职业，应付艺术品经纪人、收藏家的需求，偶尔也受人之托进行艺术创作。（现在给张晓刚做代理的是佩斯画廊（Pace Gallery）。）

Now, his health scare has given him an excuse to slow down and reassess his art. Of his roughly 600 oil paintings, a third are part of 'Bloodlines,' a series he began in the early 1990s inspired by the kind of quasi-patriotic family portraits that were popular throughout China during the Cultural Revolution. In Mr. Zhang's versions, these clusters of men, women and children appear glassy-eyed and unsmiling - bound by blood but possibly little else. Mr. Zhang has become indelibly linked to this series, and he continues to paint these works on occasion, even though they serve to criticize China's Mao era more than its current political situation. But there are signs that demand could be tapering off: Dealers say an early 'Bloodline' from 1994 can sell for as much as $8 million, but his recent versions of couples have sold for around $1.5 million. Mr. Zhang said some of his stress has come from his attempts to find his next big idea.

现在，健康上的顾虑让他找到理由放慢节奏，重新审视自己的艺术。在他的大约600幅油画中，三分之一属于他在20世纪90年代初期开始创作的“血缘”系列作品，激发他灵感的是文革期间在中国各地普遍流行的爱国式的全家福照。在张晓刚演绎的全家福中，一组组男人、女人和孩子都是目光呆滞、不苟言笑的表情──除血缘之外也许没别的东西把他们绑定在一起。张晓刚和这一系列的作品已经永远联系在一起，他偶尔还继续进行这类创作，尽管这些画对毛泽东时代的中国的批判甚于目前的政局。但是对这类作品的需求有逐渐减少的迹象：艺术品经纪人说一幅1994年创作的早期“血缘”系列油画可以卖到800万美元，但是他最近创作的几幅售价都只在150万美元左右。张晓刚说他的压力部分来自于他试图找到下一个大创意的努力。

Mr. Tek, a collector who has paid as much as $6.7 million for Mr. Zhang's work, said, 'Getting a Zhang Xiaogang is like buying a historic movement frozen in art - he's classic. But he should slow down on the 'Bloodlines' because they're not as relevant anymore.'

收藏家余德耀已经花了670万美元购买张晓刚的作品，他说，“买张晓刚的画就好像把凝固在一幅艺术品中的历史运动买回了家──他的作品很经典。但是在创作‘血缘’系列作品方面他应该慢下来，因为那些画与现在的时代不再有那么多相关性了。”

During his hiatus from painting, Mr. Zhang is turning to a different medium: bronze. He is casting groups of large figures in bronze and will paint them by hand - a nod to the colorful polychrome statues that popped up throughout ancient Egypt and Ming-era China. Though he has dabbled in bronze occasionally, he has never tried this technique before. The figures themselves comprise his usual cast of 'Bloodlines' characters - a boy in glasses, a girl with pigtails. Gary Xu, a cultural historian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has seen the clay models and calls them 'fantastic.'

在他暂时脱离创作油画的间隙里，张晓刚开始转向一种不同的创作媒介：铜。他现在正在铸造一组组大型人物青铜雕塑，随后还要进行手工着色──这是对远至古埃及近至中国明朝的彩色雕塑的致意。虽然他曾偶尔涉猎过用铜创作，但是之前从来没有尝试过这种技法。雕塑的形象就是他通常在“血缘”系列里画的人物──比如一名戴眼镜的男生和一名扎小辫的女生。伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校（University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign）的文化历史学家加里•许（Gary Xu）在看过这些雕塑的黏土模型之后称这些东西“奇妙无比”。

Mr. Zhang is part of an elite group of painters - including Fang Lijun, Zeng Fanzhi, Yang Shaobin, and Yue Minjun - who were once ignored by China's political leaders but are now hailed as cultural success stories. Beginning in the late 1980s, they experimented with modernism, expressionism and Pop at a time when Soviet Realism still held sway. Eventually, they helped kick-start a lasting conversation about what China's new art could look like. And as China's economy skyrocketed, so have their asking prices and reputations. Now, film director Zhang Yang said, these artists are 'better known in China than most movie stars.'

张晓刚是一个精英画家群体中的一员──这个群体还包括方力钧、曾梵志、杨少斌和岳敏君在内。中国的政界领导层曾经无人过问他们，但是现在他们却被作为文化成功的范例而得到褒奖。在上世纪80年代末苏联现实主义还占主导地位的时期，他们开始尝试现代主义、表现主义和波普（Pop）风格的绘画。最后，他们大力促成了一场旷日持久的讨论，话题是新时代中国艺术应该如何定位。随着中国经济的迅猛发展，这些画家的要价和声誉也跟着高歌猛进。电影导演张扬说，如今，这些画家“在中国的知名度超过了大多数电影明星。”

Mr. Zhang's friends say he has never felt entirely comfortable in the role of celebrity. He doesn't wear designer clothing, preferring jeans and Converse sneakers. For his part, he said one reason he started drinking heavily years ago was so he could shake off his natural shyness.

张晓刚的朋友们说，他对自己的名人身份一直都感到不太自在。他不穿名牌服装，喜欢牛仔服和匡威（Converse）帆布运动鞋。据他本人所言，他多年前开始过度饮酒的原因是喝酒可以让他摆脱口腆的天性。

In May, Mr. Zhang sat in a hotel overlooking the vast Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, which had become a warren of art-filled booths for the region's major contemporary-art fair, Art HK. Glancing at the crowds, he said, 'You have to use your imagination to conjure how it was before all this.'

5月，张晓刚坐在可以俯瞰香港会展中心（Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre）的一家酒店里，会展中心此时已是香港当代艺术的重要展会──香港艺博会（Art HK）──的展览场馆。他俯视着人群说，“你得施展想象力才能想象得出以前是什么样子。”

Anyone who visits Mr. Zhang's Beijing studio will likely notice his 'idea board.' This wall-size panel is covered with items he has pinned up for inspiration - from photos of artists he admires, like Franz Kafka and singer Sinead O'Connor, to movie-ticket stubs and photos of his first studio apartment in Kunming, the city in southwestern Yunnan province where he was born in 1958.

凡是到访张晓刚北京工作室的人都可能会注意到他的“点子板”，这块 面大小的板子上全是他为获取灵感而钉在上面的东西──从他敬仰的艺术家的照片（比如弗兰兹•卡夫卡（Franz Kafka），歌手西尼德•奥康娜（Sinead O'Connor））到电影票存根以及他在昆明的第一间一室公寓的照片，1958年他出生于位于中国西南云南省的昆明。

Memory is the central theme of Mr. Zhang's art - what we choose to remember, forget or distort. In 1966, Mr. Zhang was 8 years old and living with his family in Chengdu in southwestern China when Mao Zedong ushered in the Cultural Revolution, a decadelong attempt to rid China of anything antique or foreign. Schools were shut down and his parents were sent away to separate work camps to be 're-educated,' leaving him and his three young brothers to fend largely for themselves. Their mother, who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic, left them pencils and a sheaf of paper with instructions to doodle whenever they felt bored or tempted to roam outside.

张晓刚艺术创作的核心主题是记忆──我们选择回首、忘却或者扭曲的东西。1966年，毛泽东发动了文化大革命，一场长达10年时间旨在消灭所有旧有及外来事物的运动。此时张晓刚八岁，和家人一起生活在中国西南的成都。学校都停课了，他的父母被送到不同的干校去接受“再教育”，留下他和他的三个弟弟，他们的生活基本上只能自己来料理。他们的母亲（后来被诊断出患有精神分裂症）给他们留下了铅笔和一大捆纸，让他们在感到无聊或想要出去游荡的时候就在纸上涂鸦。

Eventually, Mr. Zhang befriended a former art teacher who taught him the basics of watercolors. At 17, he took his pens and paper with him when he was assigned by the government to plant potatoes and wheat at a mountainside re-education farm. By the end of his two-year stint, a local party official had pulled him from the fields to paint revolutionary slogans. 'Art helped me transcend the miserable situation,' he said.

最终，张晓刚和一位曾经当过美术老师的人交上了朋友，这位老师教了他水彩画的基本功。17岁那年，当政府分配他到一个山区再教育农场去种土豆和小麦时，他带上了纸和笔。两年期满的时候，一名地方党政官员把他从地里抽调出来负责革命标语的绘制。他说，“艺术帮助我摆脱了痛苦的境遇。”

When China reopened its colleges in 1977, Mr. Zhang was one of only two students in his province admitted to the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing. He was a decade younger than his 20 classmates. There, he first encountered images of Western art - Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, modern abstract painters - along with Soviet Realists. 'It was like going from hell to heaven,' he said.

当中国的大学1977年恢复招生的时候，张晓刚是全省仅有的两名被位于重庆的四川美术学院（Sichuan Fine Arts Institute）录取的学生之一，他比其他20名同班同学年轻10岁。在那里，他第一次看到了西方艺术的影像──文森特•梵高（Vincent van Gogh）、保罗•高更（Paul Gauguin）、现代抽象主义画家──还有苏联现实主义画家。他说，“那感觉就像从地狱走进了天堂。”

After graduation, though, he spent a decade in an existential, creative funk. He married an outgoing woman in Chengdu who loved rock music and later owned a bar. He spent his days teaching art at his alma mater and his nights drinking. His mother's schizophrenia worsened. At age 26, he suffered a gastric hemorrhage and he was hospitalized for two months.

然而，毕业后，他有10年时间是在小心翼翼的生活和创作中度过的。他在成都与一名性格外向的女人结了婚，她喜欢摇滚乐，后来开了间酒吧。白天，他在自己的母校教美术，晚上则饮酒贪杯。他母亲的精神病恶化了。26岁的时候，他得了胃出血，住了两个月的医院。

Weng Ling, artistic director of New York's China Center, met him in Chongqing in 1986. He was an 'angry artist, writing poems and painting pieces that looked like sad songs,' she said. Leng Lin, an art-history student at the time who has since become his dealer at Pace, also saw a show of Mr. Zhang's art around that time and said the artist was primarily painting figures in toga-like robes surrounded by symbols culled from pagan, Christian and Buddhist faiths. 'He was wrestling with Europe,' Mr. Leng said.

纽约中国中心（China Center）的艺术总监翁菱1986年在重庆与张晓刚会面。她说，他是“一名激愤的艺术家，写了很多诗，画的画就像一曲曲悲歌。”冷林当时是一名学习艺术史的学生，后来成了张晓刚在佩斯画廊的经纪人。他也曾参观过张晓刚在那一时期画作的展览，他说张晓刚那时主要画的是身着托加式长袍的人物，四周是异教、基督教及佛教信仰的标志符号。冷林说，“他在与欧洲较劲。”