（原标题：巴尔蒂斯谈艺术家和一幅画）
艺术家
我憎恶“艺术家”这个词，而且发现“创造”这个词太多被那些自称为艺术家的人使用。——狂妄自负。在丁丁历险记里，我发现很强有趣的是哈达克船长最凶的咒骂总是：“艺术家！”就像毕加索曾经说的：“我不是一个艺术家。”对我来说， 我只愿简单地叫我自己一个手艺人。 艺术家同义于个人主义以及对一个人的个性的主张，当今社会两个主导的观念。我记得有一次一个波兰画家问，“人必须做什么才能画？”我回答说第一要做的是忘记自己并尽快去除一个人的个性。重要的是隐匿无名。谁相信个性就依然不清楚明白。当然，人们常说，“一个人必须是他自己。”可什么是“自己”？谁真的知道？
个性，照美国人的说法，是现代主义的一场瘟疫。我发现美国人比较可爱的是他们没什么历史。现代性，真正意义上是始于文艺复兴，决定了艺术的悲剧。作为个人的艺术家出现，而传统的绘画方式消亡。从那时的艺术家开始，艺术家开始追求表达他的内在世界，那是一个有限的宇宙：他试图使他的个性充满力量，并且将绘画当作自我表达的工具。然而伟大的绘画必须有普世意义。令人悲哀的是现在再不是这样了，这也就是为什么我想要重新给予绘画丢失的普世性和无名性，因为绘画越是隐匿无名，它就越真实。东方的哲学家Kumala Suami令人赞叹地阐述了这一切。特别是，他回忆了中世纪，那时在西方与东方艺术之间没有边界，艺术家也更多地与精神世界联系，上帝的世界。但是自文艺复兴之后，一切都围绕人和个性。中世纪绘画的普世性退到一旁，为个人首位让道。西方艺术的衰落是缓慢而渐进的，但它最终导致遗忘了为了绘画的名义而热爱绘画。
Artist
I detested the word “artist” and find the word “creation” –so often used by those who call themselves artists.—pretentious. In Tintin, I find it amusing that Captain Haddock’s ultimate insult is always “Artist!” As Picasso once said: “I am not an artist.” As for me, I would simply call myself a craftsman. The word artist is synonymous with individualism and the assertion of one’s personality, two predominant notions in today’s society. I remember a Polish painter once asked, “What must one do to paint?” I replied that the first thing to do was forget oneself and quickly get rid of one’s personality. The important thing is anonymity. He who believes in personality remains unclear. Of course, people often say, “One must be oneself.” But what is “oneself”? Who really knows?
“Personality,” as the Americans says, is one of the plagues of modernism. What I find likeable about Americans is that they don’t really have a past. Modernity, which began in the true sense with the Renaissance, determined the tragedy of art. The artist emerged as individual and the traditional way of painting disappeared. From them on the artist sought to express his inner world, which is a limited universe: He tried to place his personality in power and used painting as a means of self-expression. But great painting has to have universal meaning. This is sadly no longer so today and this is why I want to give painting back its lost universality and anonymity, because the more anonymous painting is, the more real it is. The oriental philosopher Kumala Suami explains all this admirably. In particular, he recalls the Middle Ages, when there was no frontier between Western and Oriental art and the artist was also much more in contact with the spiritual world, the world of God. But after the Renaissance, everything centered around man and personality. The universality of medieval painting stepped aside to make way for the primacy of the individual. This decline of Western art was slow and gradual, but it led finally to forgetting the love of painting for painting’s sake.
From Balthus In His Own Words
这段话中我感兴趣两点，一是关于手艺人，一是关于隐匿无名、普世（宇宙）和个人。巴尔蒂斯关于手艺人与艺术家的话，最先让我想到了陕甘两地民窑老艺人日常的青花瓷器。器形与画工往往流露出某些说不清楚的生动流畅，而同时又遵循简朴的规矩，不会是奇形怪状或艳异繁复。我们过去流传的手艺人铸剑烧瓷的一些传说，那些绝世奇作往往是艺人苦思竭技，最终在传说的诱导或莫名绝望的试探下而完成。我不知道他们会不会也把这成为灵感或创造。“艺”首先应该是训练，“术”为思考和方法，如果总是观念和情感先行，怕总要露出笨拙和死翘翘的僵硬来。
普世性、宇宙和个人、个性是不是两相违背呢？把个体放到显微镜放大镜扩音器下，再美再真怕也要失去审美的距离。何况每个人都是个人，谁会对另一个个人有持久、完整、平衡、包容的欣赏接纳呢？怕是怕最终都以己化他，最终混淆聚集，再也分不清哪个的个性与个体。比如说很个体的情感的表达，以前我们会说：细草微风岸，微樯独夜舟；会有：江畔何人初见月，江月何年初照人；身无彩凤双飞翼，心有灵犀一点通。读这些句子的人，隔了千年还是能感受到诗人的情思，可也不会特别地觉得这是诗人一己私密的情感。如何能脱离不必要的自我表现，把微我放到大世界里，不再是自我中心，甚至没有中心，或许可接近艺术之道了。
about The Mountain
In 1935, I believe, I painted a canvas evoking a grand view, The Mountain. I included seven people in it, remnants of those I knew and who stayed close to me, graven in my memory; there are curious tourists at the edge of a chasm, a young girl at a dazzling gorge, some childhood friends, one of whom died of appendicitis,and another, a shepherd in a purple vest with puffed sleeves. A silhouette seen from the back--doubtless the painter himself-walks alone, leaving his figures. I recall the slow and difficult labor required for this painting, I sustained it for two years, helped by advice from Giacometti and Derain, both of who offered judgments on the design.
Let's not sin through false modesty. Alberto greatly liked the painting's structure, and the rock's arrangement. In it, he saw some kind of Freudian interpretation that made me smile, as I myself knew I have painted The Mountain exactly as it still is today, with its herds that clear a narrow path between the valleys, moos-green topsoil, and slanted shadows that bring into relief the rock's brightness, ridges and anfractuosities that reveal frightful, mysterious geological upheavals. Derain, surely motivated by friendship and the flow of sympathy he always felt for me, compared them to Giotto's rocks, which can be seen at Padua.
I have preserved this mountain intuition until today, with the understanding and learning to which it leads. In the same spot, while reading the Chinese masters, I had a revelation of certainty that the Occident and Far East are identical. The rocky, gravelly slopes of the Niederhorn are sisters of ancient China's Sung mountains.
Everything converges and combines. There is only vast earthly beauty to be grasped in its youthfully vibrant and intact luster.
from Vanished Splendors: A Memoir
巴尔蒂斯的回忆录让我读出惊喜来。他十三岁出版第一本画册之前，已经读过王维，看过里尔克赠送的南宋山水画。他对大山的情怀，一部分是自幼与山的亲近，一部分源于唐代的山水诗，南宋的山水画。他昔日的读诗读画和我今日读他的文字，有同一质地的非时间性。
（转载于豆瓣http://www.douban.com/note/178044601/）
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