弗朗兹·克莱恩《火星黑白》（Mars Black and White，纽约佳士得）

阴山工作室 2018-06-13

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弗朗兹·克莱恩《火星黑白》（Mars <wbr>Black <wbr>and <wbr>White，纽约佳士得）

弗朗兹·克莱恩火星黑白 Mars Black and White 纽约佳士得2008.11 成交价512.25万美元

作品介绍

Franz Kline's Mars Black and White, painted in 1959, is epic in scale and in intent. Over two meters tall, the canvas sports an accumulation of black bar-like forms, the traces of both the white and the black brushstrokes adding to the surface texture and vigor. A brooding power looms in the black forms. Kline fills the picture with a strange dynamism that speaks both of his actions and of some internal energy, some force that has driven the composition itself. The rigorous black-and-white idiom which characterises Kline's paintings here has a vitality that is increased by the painterly quality, the deliberate looseness, of the forms. This looseness became more apparent throughout the 1950s, contasting with stricter shapes and strokes of his earlier works. Mars Black and White signals strangely an imprecise symbol, a glyph that has no linguistic meaning but which relies on its own visual power to communicate the energies and emotions that underpin our universe.

The use of black and white in Mars Black and White results in an Manichean duality, a struggle or perhaps symbiosis between light and dark, life and death, construction and destruction. In this way, Kline used an epic, Wagnerian visual language to capture a fundamental, elemental dimension of our existence revealing similar concerns to some of his fellow Abstract Ex-pressionists such as Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still. However, Kline relied on his instincts far more than most of his colleagues and contemporaries, shunning any overintellectualization of either his pictures or his painting process. He sought a visual immediacy in his paintings that spoke to the gut, that was visceral and instinctive.

This owed itself in part to Kline's early ambitions to be an illustrator. Like several other Abstract Ex-pressionists, Kline had been hugely influenced by comics because of their ability to grab the viewer's attention and keep it, because they could communicate a vast amount of information through a pictorial shorthand, and because they formed a visual lingua franca in the United States, able to cut across cultural and class divides alike. This democratic artform perfectly suited a nation founded on notions of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and these concerns drove Kline's abstract paintings too, as he sought a new visual language that was appropriate to this new country, this "new" continent. In the openness and immediacy of Mars Black and White we perceive Kline's desire to create an art that tapped into a modern universal equivalent to Old World mythologies, art that deepened our understanding of the new wonders that surround us. Perhaps for this reason, this painting's title invokes the epic, referencing the Roman god of war, just as one of Kline's earlier masterpieces had paid tribute to the Norse deity Wotan.

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In seeking out a new visual means of representing life in the post-war era United States, it is telling that Kline concerned himself with the urban and industrial experience. He lived for decades in New York, and that city informs the vertical composition and the architectural mass of forms in Mars Black and White. Allan Stone recalled a conversation with Charles Egan, one of Kline's early dealers, in which Egan pointed out that the forms of some of the abstract paintings came from such simple everyday objects as tables and chairs; Kline himself said that he did not mind people "reading" figurative forms in his paintings, as there was something familiar about them. The immediacy of the recognisable heightens the picture's visual impact. If people saw bridges, so be it -- not least because Kline liked bridges. And it appears to be a bridge-like, modern and industrial form that underpins the vivid, gestural strokes which climb like scaffolding in Mars Black and White. However, the deliberate lack of perspective or illusionistic depth in this painting emphasizes that it is as visual elements in their own right, rather than as a direct pictorial reference points to the outside world, that the powerful beams and brushstrokes of Mars Black and White exist.

Kline was often at pains to point out that his pictures had little to do with calligraphy. They were black and white, not black on white, and they were very much based on the world around him:

"Everybody likes calligraphy. You don't have to be an artist to like it, or go to Japan. Mine came out of drawing, and light. When I look out of the window -- I've always lived in the city -- I don't see trees in bloom or mountain laurel. What I do see -- or rather, not what I see but the feelings aroused in me by that looking -- is what I paint" (F. Kline, quoted in S. Rodman, "Revolution in Paint: Franz Kline," Franz Kline: 1910-1962, exh. cat., Milan, 2004, p. 110).

So it is that the city, the modern buzzing metropolis, the engineering, the girders, the fast cars, the nightlife, the jazz, the people, the Cedar Tavern, informed Kline's paintings. In Mars Black and White, he channelled these various modern elements into a new epic form. And he did so using darting forms that themselves echo the darting movements with which Kline danced to his beloved jazz, heightening the modernity, energy and internal rhythm that fill Mars Black and White.

The surface of Kline's paintings clearly shows the importance of the moment, of the gesture, of the artist's own sometimes frenzied movements in putting brush to canvas. However, it also matters that he nonetheless seldom created his pictures spontaneously, instead relying on sketches and studies. Sometimes, he jotted these onto small scraps of telephone directories. According to Abstract Ex-pressionist legend, Willem de Kooning encouraged Kline to place one of his small abstract drawings into a Bell-Opticon projector in de Kooning's studio. Kline was amazed at the intense visual impact that resulted; this was the epiphany that led to his large black and white paintings. Kline still depended on his studies, but they served only as springboards, their composition already, on this smaller scale, touching upon the visual and emotional stimulus that he wanted to crystallize in his paintings: "When I paint a picture, I don't know every line in advance, but I know in general what I'm about" (F. Kline, quoted in H. F. Gaugh, Franz Kline, exh. cat., New York, 1985, p. 16). Sometimes the transition from small study to large oil would be rapid; sometimes it would be direct and little changed; but sometimes the study merely prompt Kline, and the final picture would result from months of painting over paintings, adding mark upon mark, removing visual traces then rebuilding them, trying repeatedly to capture whatever would make the picture work. And then, it would be self-evidently completed, attaining its distinctive visual potency, proving the artist's statement that, "It just seems as though there are forms in some experience in your life that have an excitement for you" (F. Kline, quoted in D. Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London, 2002, p. 64).

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参考译文

弗兰兹·克莱恩《火星黑白》作于1959年，它是一部规模宏大、意味深长的史诗。超过两米高的画布，呈现出黑色条状的积淀，白色和黑色笔触的痕迹，增添了表面的质感和活力。一种沉思的力量在黑色的形态中隐现出来。克莱恩用一种奇怪的活力充满了这幅画，它既讲述了他的行为，也讲述了一些内在的能量，某种驱动构图本身的力量。克莱在这里的绘画特点是严格的黑白成语，它的生命力随着绘画的性质故意的松散而增加了。这种松散在整个20世纪50年代变得更加明显，与他早期作品的更严格的形状和笔触相竞争。奇怪的是，《火星黑白》表达的是一个不精确的符号，一个没有语言意义的字形，但它依靠自己的视觉力量来传达支撑我们宇宙的能量和情感。

《火星黑白》黑白的运用的结果是摩尼教二元性、光明与黑暗、生与死、建构与毁灭之间的斗争或共生。通过这种方式，克莱恩用瓦格纳式史诗般的视觉语言来捕捉我们存在的一个基本的、基本的维度，揭示出他的一些抽象表现主义者，正如马克·罗斯科和克莱福德仍然有的类似的担忧。然而，克莱恩比他的大多数同事和同时代人更依赖他的直觉，避免了对他的画或他的绘画过程的任何过度的知识化。他在他的绘画中寻找一种直观的直观性，这是发自内心和本能的。

这在一定程度上归功于克莱恩早期成为一名插画家的野心。和其他几位抽象表现主义者一样，克莱受到漫画的巨大影响，因为它们能够抓住观众的注意力并保持它，因为它们可以通过图像速记传达大量信息，并形成视觉效果。通用语言在美国能够跨越文化和阶级的分歧。这种民主的艺术形式非常适合一个建立在生命、自由和追求幸福观念之上的国家；这些关注也推动了克莱恩的抽象绘画，因为他寻求一种适合这个新国家这个“新”大陆的新的视觉语言。在开放和直接的火星黑白我们看到克莱恩想要创造一种艺术，这种艺术能够融入现代世界，就像旧世界的神话一样，这一艺术加深了我们对周围新奇迹的理解。也许出于这个原因，这幅画的标题引用史诗，引用罗马战神，就像克莱恩早期的杰作之一向北欧神沃坦致敬一样。

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《火星黑白》在寻找一种新的视觉手段来描述战后美国的生活，克莱关注的是城市和工业的经验。他在纽约住了几十年，那座城市告诉人们垂直的构图和建筑形式的质量。艾伦·斯通(Allan Stone)回忆起与克莱恩早期经销商查尔斯·伊根(Charles Egan)的一次谈话。伊根在谈话中指出，一些抽象画的形式来自于简单的日常用品，比如桌椅；克莱恩本人说，他不介意人们“阅读”他的绘画中的具象形式，因为他们有些熟悉的地方。可识别性的即时性提高了图像的视觉冲击力。如果人们看到了桥，那就去吧-尤其是因为克莱恩喜欢桥牌。它似乎是一种桥式、现代和工业形式，它支撑着生动的、手势式的笔触，就像脚手架一样爬上来。火星黑白。然而，在这幅画中故意缺乏透视或幻象的深度强调，这是作为视觉元素本身的权利，而不是作为一个直接的图像参考点的外部世界，强大的光束和笔触。火星黑白存在。

克莱恩经常费心地指出，他的画与书法毫无关系。他们是黑人和白色，不是黑色上怀特，他们很大程度上是建立在他周围的世界之上的：

“大家都喜欢书法。你不需要成为一个艺术家就能喜欢它，或者去日本。我的画是画出来的，光也照出来了。当我向窗外望去-我一直住在这座城市-我看不到盛开的树木，也没有看到月桂树。我所看到的-或者更确切地说，不是我看到的-而是我所看到的那种感觉-是我画的东西“(F.Kline，引用S.Rodman的话，”绘画革命：Franz Kline，“Franz Kline：1910-1962，CAT.，米兰，2004年，第一页。110)。

所以，这座城市，现代喧闹的大都市，工程，大梁，快车，夜生活，爵士乐，人民，雪松酒馆，都是克莱恩的绘画作品。在火星黑白他将这些现代元素引导成一种新的史诗形式。他用飞镖的形式来模仿克莱恩为他钟爱的爵士乐跳的飞镖动作，提高了充满现代性、活力和内在节奏。火星黑白.

克莱恩绘画的表面清楚地表明了这一时刻的重要性、手势的重要性，以及艺术家自己有时在画布上疯狂的动作的重要性。然而，他很少自发地创作他的画，而只是依靠草图和研究，这也很重要。有时，他会把这些写在电话簿上。根据抽象表现主义者的传说，威廉·德·库宁鼓励克莱因把他的一幅小抽象画放进德库宁工作室的贝尔光学投影仪中。克莱因对由此产生的强烈的视觉冲击感到惊讶，这就是他的大黑白画的顿悟。克莱因仍然依赖于他的研究，但他们只是作为跳板，他们的构图已经在这个较小的范围内，触及到他想要在他的绘画中具体化的视觉和情感刺激：“当我画一幅画时，我并不事先知道每一行，但我总体上知道我是关于什么的”(F.Kline，在H F.F.Gaugh，引用F.Kline的话说，弗兰兹·克莱恩，“猫”，纽约，1985年，p。16)有时，从小型研究向大型石油的转变会很快；有时会是直接的，变化不大；但有时研究只是提示克莱恩，最后一幅画的结果是几个月的绘画，在画上加上记号，去掉视觉痕迹，然后重建它们，反复尝试捕捉任何能使这幅画工作的东西。然后，它显然就完成了，达到了它独特的视觉效果，证明了艺术家的说法：“你的生活中似乎有某种形式让你感到兴奋”(F.Kline)，引用在D.西尔维斯特(D.Sylvester)中的话说，采访美国艺术家，伦敦，2002年，p.64)。

作品细节