双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史32 最初的雕刻

 
 
32 THE FIRST SCULPTURE最初的雕刻
 
WHEN I was a kindergarten kid, I used to make out of clay a bird’s nest with round eggs and a bird sitting on top. Perhaps you have made the same thing. That was sculpture, but I didn’t know it. 
When I was a bigger boy, I used to make in the winter a snow man with a broom handle for a gun and lumps of coal for eyes. That was sculpture, too, though I didn’t know it. 
When I was a still bigger boy, I used to take the soft part of a piece of doughy bread and press it into a dog with a head, tail, and feet. That was sculpture, though I didn’t know it and my mother didn’t know it, either, and sent me to the kitchen for playing with my food. 
So I was a sculptor until I was twelve years old—and have never been a sculptor since. 
But other boys have not stopped being sculptors when they became young men. Once upon a time a boy in a kitchen carved a lion out of a piece of butter and sent it to the table. He became a great sculptor when he grew up. His name was Canova. I’ll tell you about him later. 
Men have made sculpture ever since the world was young. But at first the sculpture that men made was very little different from drawing. The artist first drew his picture on something flat, then he carved the lines deeper so that, if it were outside, the rain would not wash the drawing away, nor the weather wear it down. This kind of drawing or sculpture is called sunken relief. 
Then, after that, sculptors rounded the edges of the figures they had carved and cut away the background so that the figures stood up a little above the background. This is called low relief or bas relief (spelled bas but pronounced bah), which means the same thing. You may have a bas relief in your pocket and not know it. A penny, nickel, dime, or any other piece of money that has figures on it is bas relief. 
Then sculptors began to round the figure still more and cut away still more of the background so that the figure stood out still more. This is called high relief or half round, for the figures were half–way out of the background. 
Later, sculptors cut away the background entirely, so that the figure stood out all by itself. This is called full round—you can go “round” it. You will see such pieces of sculpture of men or animals in the parks or squares or museums. 
Long, long before Christ was born, the Egyptians had artists who carved pictures in sunken relief on the walls of their great buildings. Here is the front wall of a great temple in Egypt on which you can see such figures cut all over the wall. 
 
No.32-1　GREAT TEMPLE GATES（神庙大门） 
Some figures are sitting and some are standing and all may look peculiar to you. Can you tell why? 
All of these carved Egyptian pictures or sunken reliefs have two things quite wrong with them, two things quite impossible, besides several things very peculiar. I wonder if you can see what the two wrong things are. 
Here is the first thing: the feet are stepping directly sideways and the faces are all turned sideways too, but the shoulders are front view. Now, of course, no one really walks that way, with head and feet sideways and shoulders front view. So the first wrong thing is that the figure is twisted. 
The second thing is the eye. What you see is the side face—not the front—yet the eye is the shape of an eye when you see it from the front, not as seen from the side. All their reliefs had the same peculiar shaped eye, also the same twisted bodies. Shoulders and eye are front view, while everything else—hips, legs, and feet—you see sideways. 
But there are other strange things to notice about these figures. The man and woman have very little clothing on and, though they are king and queen, they are barefooted. That’s because Egypt is a very warm country. In some warm countries, even to–day, neither rich nor poor, prince nor pauper, wear shoes and stockings. I once went to a dinner party in one of these warm countries and all of the ladies and gentlemen were barefooted. It seemed very peculiar to see the ladies and gentlemen, all gorgeously dressed and wearing many rich jewels, go to the table barefooted! 
But to make up for having little on their bodies, these Egyptian figures have a lot on their heads—not regular hats but crowns. These crowns mean something. The woman’s crown— she is a queen—is like a bird cap. The bird is the vulture that feeds only on dead bodies, and above the vulture cap is a moon between two horns. The man’s crown— he is a king—is called a pschent. 
These figures are all sunken relief. Now here is the next kind of relief called low relief or bas relief. 
This shows the Goddess Isis—the famous goddess of old Egypt—sitting. She is wearing a head–dress and you can see very clearly the shape of the eye and the details of the headdress. In her right hand she carries a rod or scepter—it looks something like a poker—to show she is a queen and in her left hand a strange object which is called the Nile Key. 
The peculiar designs on the sides of this picture are the kind of picture writing you read about in the first part of this book—do you remember? They are called hieroglyphics. 
For high relief, I’Il show you four huge figures on the front of another temple in Egypt—the Temple at Abou Simbel. They are almost cut away from the background, but not quite. These figures are colossal—that means gigantic, huge, or mammoth—a real man standing beside one, wouldn’t reach half–way to the knee. The Egyptians liked to make giant figures. You’ll notice also that these giant figures are seated in a very stiff position, sitting bolt upright, with both feet flat on the ground and both hands flat on the knees. They are all figures of the same king, Rameses II, called Rameses the Great, for he was the greatest of all the Egyptian king’s, though one of the most cruel. 
 
No.32-2　THE GODDESS ISIS 
（伊西斯女神） 
Rameses II was the Pharaoh who ordered all the Israelite babies killed and it was his daughter who found the baby Moses in the bulrushes and saved his life. Rameses’s hobby was building temples and statues of himself. He had this temple cut out of the rocky cliff and these huge statues of himself made on the front. The one to the left is the best preserved. Little remains of the next figure. That funny thing on his chin is a beard. 
 
No.32-3　TEMPLE OF ABOU SIMBEL（阿布辛贝神庙）