旅行的艺术:艺术 Ⅶ 令人眼界大开的艺术-7

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普罗旺斯并不是惟一因为艺术作品而让我开始欣赏继而想去游历的地方。因为看了文·温德斯 [15] 的《城里的爱丽丝》，我造访了德国的工业区。安德烈亚斯·古尔斯基拍摄的照片教我欣赏高速公路桥下方的区域。由于帕特里克·谢勒的记录片《现代鲁滨孙漂流记》，我围着英格兰南部的工厂、购物中心和商业园区度过了一个假期。

Provence was not the only place which I began to appreciate and wanted to explore because of its portrayal in works of art. I once visited Germany's industrial zones because of Wim Wenders's Alice in the Cities . The photographs of Andreas Gursky gave me a taste for the undersides of motorway bridges. Patrick Keiller's documentary Robinson in Space made me take a holiday around the factories, shopping malls and business parks of southern England.

一个地方经过伟大画家的描绘，往往会变得更为动人。阿尔勒的旅游服务处不过是普加利用艺术与旅行欲望的关系，翻开旅行史来看，这样的例子曾在不同国家出现（透过不同的艺术媒介），最显著最早的例子就是18世纪下半叶的英国。

In recognizing that a landscape can become more attractive to us once we have seen it through the eyes of a great artist, the tourist office in Arles was only exploiting a long-standing relationship between art and the desire to travel evident in different countries (and in different artistic media) throughout the history of tourism. Perhaps the most notable and earliest example occurred in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century.

历史学家们认为在18世纪之前，英格兰、苏格兰和威尔士乡村的大部分地区并没有吸引人们的目光。那些后来被认为是自然地、无可争辩地美丽的地方——瓦伊河谷，苏格兰高地，湖区——几个世纪以来一直无人闻问，甚至遭人蔑视。丹尼尔·笛福 [16] 于18世纪20年代游览了湖区，他对此地的描绘是“贫瘠、可怕”。在《苏格兰西部小岛之旅》中，约翰逊博士 [17] 写道，高地是“崎岖的”，令人遗憾地缺乏“植物的装饰”，一眼望去尽是绝望的贫瘠。在吉勒史尔时，鲍斯维尔为了激起约翰逊的兴致，指着一座山，说那山看起来很高，哪知约翰逊不耐烦地说：哪门子的高，不过是一个大土丘罢了。

Historians contend that large parts of the countryside of England, Scotland and Wales went unappreciated before the eighteenth century. Places that were later taken to be naturally and unarguably beautiful-the Wye valley, the Highlands of Scotland, the Lake District-were for centuries treated with indifference, even disdain. Daniel Defoe, travelling in the Lake District in the 1720s, described it as 'barren and frightful'. In his Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland, Dr Johnson wrote that the Highlands were 'rough', pitifully devoid of 'vegetable decoration' and 'a wide extent of hopeless sterility'. When, at Glenshiel, Boswell attempted to cheer him up by pointing out that a mountain seemed impressively high, Johnson snapped irritably, 'No; it is no more than a considerable protuberance.'

那时有钱人都喜欢到国外旅行。意大利是最受欢迎的目的地，尤其是罗马、那不勒斯及周边的乡村。这些地点常常出现在英国贵族欣赏的艺术作品中，如维吉尔 [18] 和贺拉斯 [19] 的诗集，普桑和克劳德的绘画作品。（其中的）绘画作品描绘了罗马的乡间风景和具有那不勒斯特色的海岸线。画作通常表现的是黎明或是薄暮，天空中是一些轻柔的云朵，云边是粉色和金色的。有人想象那天将会，或者已经是，非常炎热的一天。天空中似乎很安静，只有潺潺的溪水和划桨声划破寂静。几个牧羊女在原野上嬉戏，看管羊儿或照顾金发的小孩。在雨中的英国乡间房屋里看到这样的画面，许多人会期盼自己能尽可能早地找到机会，渡过英吉利海峡，到意大利一游。如同约瑟夫·爱迪生在1912年所言：“我们发现自然的作品越相似于艺术作品，就越令人愉悦。”

Those who could afford to travel went abroad. Italy was the most popular destination, especially Rome, Naples and the surrounding countryside. It was perhaps no coincidence that these locales featured heavily in the very works of art most favoured by the British aristocracy: the poetry of Virgil and Horace and the paintings of Poussin and Claude. The paintings depicted the Roman exurbs and the Neapolitan coastline. It was often dawn or dusk, there were a few fleecy clouds overhead, their borders were pink and golden. One imagined that it was going to be, or had been, a very hot day. The air seemed quiet, the silence interrupted only by the flow of a refreshing brook or the sound of oars cutting through a lake. A few shepherdesses might be gambolling through a field, or tending some sheep or a goldenhaired child. Looking at such scenes in English country houses in the rain, many would have dreamt of crossing the Channel at the earliest available opportunity. As Joseph Addison observed in 1712: 'We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of Art.'

不幸的是，那时英国的风景很少可以从艺术作品中看到。然而，在18世纪，这种作品慢慢多了起来，相应地，英国人不愿游历他们自己本岛的情形也开始改观。1727年，诗人詹姆斯·汤姆生 [20] 出版了《季节》，颂赞了英格兰南部的农村生活和风景。他的成功给其他的“农夫诗人”的作品带来了显赫的名声，这些人中包括史蒂芬·达克、罗伯特·彭斯和约翰·克拉尔 [21] 。画家们也开始注意他们自己的国家。肖本爵士委托托马斯·庚斯博罗 [22] 和乔治·巴雷特为他在威尔特郡的房子画一系列的风景画，并宣称他的目的是“为英国风景画派奠定基础”。理查德·威尔森 [23] 画了亭肯汉附近的泰晤士河，托马斯·赫恩 [24] 画了古德里克城堡，菲利普·詹姆斯·德·罗德保描绘了廷特恩修道院，托马斯·史密斯 [25] 画笔下则是德文特湖和温得米尔的风光。

Unfortunately for the works of British Nature, for a long time few works of art resembled them at all. Yet during the eighteenth century, this dearth was gradually overcome and so too, with uncanny synchronicity, was the reluctance of the British to travel around their own islands. In 1727, the poet James Thomson published The Seasons , which celebrated the agricultural life and the landscape of southern England. Its success helped to bring to prominence the work of other 'ploughmen poets': Stephen Duck, Robert Burns and John Clare. Painters began to consider their country too. Lord Shelburne commissioned Thomas Gainsborough and George Barrett to paint a series of landscapes for his Wiltshire house, Bowood, declaring his intention 'to lay the foundation of a school of British landscape'. Richard Wilson went to paint the Thames near Twickenham, Thomas Hearne painted Goodrich Castle, Philip James de Loutherbourg Tintern Abbey and Thomas Smith Derwentwater and Windermere.

凡·高：《阿尔勒附近的麦田》，1888年

结果，没多久英伦诸岛便成为了热门的旅游地。瓦伊河谷第一次人满为患，北威尔士的群山、湖区及苏格兰高地也是如此。这是一个近乎完美的注脚，证明了这样一个论点：只有那些世界的角落已经被艺术家们描画或描写之后，我们才会有兴趣去探索它们。

No sooner had the process begun than there was an explosion in the number of people travelling around the isles.For the first time, the Wye valley was filled with tourists, as were the mountains of North Wales, the Lake District and the Scottish Highlands-a story that seems perfectly to confirm the contention that we tend to seek out corners of the world only once they have been painted and written about by artists.

这个理论当然有点夸张，就像认为在惠斯勒之前没有人注意到伦敦的雾或者在凡·高之前没有人注意到普罗旺斯的柏树一样。艺术不可能完全凭借自身力量创造热情，也不可能是从凡人所缺乏的情感中产生，它只是推波助澜，诱发出更深刻的感受，使我们不至于因勿忙和随意而变得麻木。

The theory must of course be a sharp exaggeration, as sharp as the suggestion that no one paid any attention to fog in London before Whistler or to cypresses in Provence before Van Gogh. Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm, nor does it arise from sentiments of which non-artists are devoid; it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

明年去哪里旅行才好？艺术可能对挑选地点颇有影响力，阿尔勒旅游服务处似乎已经体会到了这一点。

But that may-as the tourist office in Arles seemed to understand-be enough to influence where we choose to go next year.