越來越多的美術館允許盲人用手欣賞名畫

MADRID — Guards make sure visitors to the Museo del Prado stay at arm’s length from its masterpieces. But here on a recent morning was José Pedro González running his fingers over one of El Greco’s most famous paintings, “The Nobleman With His Hand on His Chest.” He went back and forth over the nobleman’s eyes, rubbed his beard and eventually reached his hand, tracing the edges of each digit.

馬德里——在普拉多博物館，保安需確保參觀者與畫作保持一定距離。不過，最近的一個早晨，何塞·佩德羅·岡薩雷斯(José Pedro González) 把手指放在了畫作《手撫胸膛的貴族男人》(The Noble man With His Hand on His Chest)上，這是埃爾·格列柯(El Greco)最著名的作品之一。岡薩雷斯在貴族的雙眼上來來回回，摩挲他的鬍子，最終抵達他的手部，感受着每根手指的輪廓。

The work, of course, was a copy. But more surprisingly, the copy was in three dimensions so that Mr. González, who is 56 and has been blind since the age of 14, could experience the painting firsthand.

當然，這幅畫是一件複製品。不過比這件事更令人驚訝的是，這幅畫是三維的，正因如此，現年56歲、14歲失明的岡薩雷斯可以親身感受它。

“It’s an unbelievable sensation,” Mr. González said. “I’m feeling this painting down to the detail of each fingernail.”

“這種感覺太神奇了，”岡薩雷斯說，“我能感受到他每個指甲蓋上的細節。”

Mr. González was visiting a small, highly unusual exhibition, “Touching the Prado,” designed to give the blind or those with limited sight an opportunity to create a mental image of a painting by feeling it. The show, which runs through June 28, occupies a side passage of the museum, near a room that contains an original of another work copied for the blind: a version of the Mona Lisa by a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci. Altogether, six 3-D copies are on display, all of them rendering famous works in the Prado. They include Goya’s “The Parasol”; a still life by van der Hamen; “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan” by Velázquez; and “Noli Me Tangere,” Correggio’s painting of Christ meeting Mary Magdalene.

岡薩雷斯參觀的是一個規模很小但極不尋常的展覽，名爲“觸摸普拉多”。這個展覽爲失明者和視障人士提供機會，使他們通過觸覺在心中生成作品的圖像。展覽位於普拉多博物館的一條側廊內，將持續到今年6月28日。在走廊附近的一個屋子裏，陳列着此次展覽另一幅展品的原作，即列奧納多·達·芬奇(Leonardo da Vinci)的學生所作的《蒙娜麗莎》。“觸摸普拉多”一共展覽了六件畫作的三維副本，全部來自普拉多的知名館藏，另外四件是戈雅(Goya)的《陽傘》(The Parasol)、範·德·哈曼(van der Hamen)的靜物畫、委拉斯奎茲(Velázquez)的《阿波羅在伏爾甘的熔爐》，以及柯雷喬(Correggio)描繪耶穌會見抹大拉瑪利亞的作品《別碰我》。

The exhibition is one of the most sophisticated yet in efforts to unlock the beauty of the visual arts for those unable to see them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery in London are among several museums that organize activities for blind visitors, including special guided tours, drawing classes, and “touch” workshops, in which blind people can feel sculptures. The Louvre in Paris also has a Tactile Gallery that contains copies of some of its sculptures.

這個展覽爲盲人開啓了欣賞視覺藝術之門，是類似嘗試的典範之一。其他一些博物館也曾做出相應努力，如舉辦有特殊引導的參觀活動、開展繪畫課程和“觸覺”工坊等，在“觸覺”工坊內，盲人可以觸摸雕塑。紐約大都會藝術博物館(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)和倫敦國家美術館(National Gallery)就在這麼做。巴黎的盧浮宮也設有觸覺畫廊(Tactile Gallery)，展出館內部分雕塑的副本。

Other examples include the Museo Nacional de San Carlos, in Mexico City, which was among the pioneers in using collage to reproduce paintings that could be felt by the blind, and the Denver Art Museum, which has been collaborating with Ann Cunningham, an art teacher at the Colorado Center for the Blind, to create tactile art.

另有一些博物館利用拼貼畫來再現作品，供盲人體驗，墨西哥城的聖卡洛斯博物館(Museo Nacional de San Carlos)是此類方法的先行者之一。丹佛藝術博物館(Denver Art Museum)則與科羅拉盲人中心(Colorado Center for the Blind)的藝術老師安·坎寧安(Ann Cunningham)合作，創造觸覺藝術。

Ms. Cunningham said she had seen “real momentum” recently in making art accessible to the blind. She attributed part of the growing interest in tactile art to the fact that “blind educators figured out that they definitely need to make information more accessible to students” because “as textbooks got more and more heavy on the graphics, all that information that students used to get through text was beginning to pass them by.”

坎寧安說，最近在爲盲人創作可觸藝術時，她找到了“真正的動力”。她將人們對於觸覺藝術與日俱增的興趣部分歸結於“盲人教育者發現，他們得讓信息變得更容易爲學生所接觸到”，因爲“隨着教科書中的圖片越來越多，過去學生能夠從文字獲取的信息，現在接觸不到了。”

The idea that blind people should touch 3-D print copies of paintings, however, goes significantly further than other efforts to make art accessible, and it represents a costly investment as well as a technological challenge.

然而，就爲盲人接觸藝術提供便利而言，製作畫作的三維版本比其他方法意義更大，而且它也意味着高額的投資和技術挑戰。

In 2011, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, exhibited a more modest version of the Prado’s 3-D method, a downsized copy of one of its masterworks, “The Birth of Venus” by Botticelli.

2011年，意大利佛羅倫薩的烏菲齊美術館(Uffizi Gallery)利用普拉多博物館的三維制畫法也舉辦了一個展覽，不過規模更小，展品是其館藏之一、波提切(Botticelli)《維納斯的誕生》(The Birth of Venus)的縮小版副本。

Other Italian museums have followed suit using that method, but without venturing beyond black-and-white copies, according to Fernando Pérez Suescun, the curator of the Prado exhibition, who works in the museum’s education department.

費爾南多·佩雷斯·蘇埃斯昆(Fernando Pérez Suescun) 是本次普拉多展覽的策展人，在普拉多博物館教育部門工作。據他說，其他一些意大利博物館已經對這種方法進行效仿，但沒有做出冒險的嘗試，展品僅限於黑白版本。

“It seemed important to us to add color, because the visually impaired often can still perceive some color,” he said.

“對於我們來說，添加顏色似乎很重要，視覺上有障礙的人仍然經常可以感受到一些顏色，”他說。

The Prado used a relief printing technique developed by Estudios Durero, a printing company near Bilbao, Spain. Works it has produced also have been displayed in the fine arts museum of Bilbao.

普拉多博物館使用的凸版印刷技術來自Estudios Durero，這家印刷企業位於西班牙畢爾巴鄂附近，它製作的作品也在畢爾巴鄂的藝術博物館中展出。

Starting with a high-resolution photo of the painting, employees at Durero select textures and features that make sense to enhance for the blind. Next, they create a print, with a special ink, and then use a chemical process to add volume to what would otherwise be a flat reproduction. As part of the chemical process, ultraviolet light is applied to the special ink, so that the print gains a few millimeters of volume while maintaining the colors of the ink, “like if you would add baking powder to a cake,” Mr. Pérez Suescun said.

在製作畫作的三維版本時，Durero的工作人員首先在一張原畫的高分辨率照片上選定利於盲人理解作品的紋理和特徵。接下來，他們用特殊的印墨將照片打印。然後，利用化學過程使作品呈現出三維效果，否則，作品就僅僅是二維的。處理過程包括用紫外線照射一種特殊的油墨，從而製作出幾毫米高的三維隆起。油墨的顏色並不會因此丟失，“就像在蛋糕加入發酵粉”，佩雷斯·蘇埃斯昆說。

Each work displayed at the Prado cost about $6,680.

本次展覽的展品單件價值在6680美元左右。

The museum’s initiative is also testimony to the special status of the blind in Spanish society, thanks to Spain’s national organization for the blind, known by the acronym ONCE (pronounced OHN-say). Founded in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War, the organization was allowed by Gen. Francisco Franco to run a nationwide lottery. In a lottery-obsessed country, ONCE became an economic powerhouse, while guaranteeing employment, mostly as lottery vendors, to almost all of Spain’s blind citizens to this day. The organization collaborated with the Prado for its project, offering advice on how to improve visits for the blind, notably by leaning the 3-D canvases so that they would be easier to touch. Some of the copies were also downsized slightly from the original artwork.

展覽體現了盲人在西班牙社會中的特殊地位，這主要得益於一個以”ONCE”（發音爲OHN-say）縮寫著稱的西班牙全國盲人組織。1938年西班牙內戰期間，該組織經弗朗西斯科·佛朗哥將軍(Gen. Francisco Franco)允許，在全國範圍內發售彩票。在這個對彩票過分熱衷的國家裏，ONCE成爲了強大的經濟團體，直至今天仍爲幾乎所有西班牙盲人提供就業機會，職位大部分爲彩票售賣。本次展覽由該組織和普拉多博物館聯合舉辦。ONCE就如何提高參觀質量提供建議，比如擺放靠牆式的三維帆布展板，爲觸摸畫作提供便利。此外，一些畫作相比於原作在畫幅上稍微縮小。

“A painting should really be no more than 120 centimeters wide, because that’s how far a person can comfortably reach without having to move,” Mr. Pérez Suescun said. (That’s roughly 47 inches.)

“作品一定不要寬於120釐米（約爲47英寸），因爲這樣就可以在不移動的前提下，舒服地觸摸作品，”佩雷斯·蘇埃斯昆說。

An audio guide accompanies blind visitors through the special show, but regular visitors are also provided with an audio guide, as well as a mask so they can relate better to what a blind person perceives. “I think it’s great to integrate the blind even as far as making it possible for them to appreciate paintings,” said Carlos Hernández, a 19-year-old student who chose to touch the copies without covering his eyes.

參觀展覽的過程中，音頻介紹自始至終陪伴着盲人遊客，不過普通遊客也可以使用這段介紹，還可以獲得一個眼罩，以便更好地體會盲人世界。“我認爲讓盲人融入進來是很好的，即便只是爲他們欣賞藝術提供便利，”19歲的學生卡洛斯·埃爾南德斯(Carlos Hernández)說，他選擇不遮擋眼睛觸摸作品。

Still, Mr. Pérez Suescun said that watching blind visitors discover masterworks was in itself an experience, allowing him to rediscover paintings that he had considered very familiar. “The first question that I got from one of our blind visitors about El Greco’s nobleman was what color were his eyes — and I had to check,” Mr. Pérez Suescun said. “There are really plenty of details to which I had never paid any attention.”

佩雷斯·蘇埃斯昆也說，觀看盲人遊客探索優秀作品，本身就是一種經歷，這讓他重新欣賞原來看似熟悉不過的作品。“我從一位盲人蔘觀者那裏得到的有關埃爾·格列柯作品的第一個問題是，他的眼睛是什麼顏色——我不得不去確認，”佩雷斯·蘇埃斯昆說，“真的有許多細節我之前並沒有注意到。”

Mr. González had never seen the El Greco portrait of the nobleman, one of the many masterworks in the Prado. But he had visited museums as a child and has continued to do so since going blind, helped by his wife, who describes the paintings to him. “It’s great to look at paintings with my wife and spend time with her, but it’s clearly a big difference when I can discover a painting for myself or have to listen to what she tells me,” he said.

岡薩雷斯從未見過埃爾·格列柯的這幅描繪貴族的作品，這是普拉多博物館衆多優秀的館藏之一。不過他小時候參觀過博物館，失明之後在妻子的幫助下也仍然繼續，他的妻子會把畫作形容給他。“在妻子的幫助下去欣賞作品，以及和她共度時光是很美妙的，但顯然自己去探索和聽她講給我還是有很大區別的，”他說。

Another blind visitor, Andrés Oteo, said touching a 3-D copy “created a clear link between what I feel in my fingers and what is in my mind,” even if there was still room for improvement in terms of defining some textures. On the copy of the Goya painting, he said, “the clothing and the hair felt so similar that I couldn’t distinguish them well.”

另一位盲人蔘觀者安德烈斯·奧特奧(Andres Oteo)說，三維展品“在我手指的觸覺和我的腦海之間建造了一種清晰的連接”，即便就識別紋理而言，仍有一些改進的空間。針對戈雅的作品，他說，“衣服和頭髮感覺上去很相似，我不是很能分得清。”

Mr. Oteo, 56, who went blind from glaucoma 35 years ago, said he had seen the portrait of the nobleman in his youth, but “it’s one thing to more or less remember what it was like and another to be able to touch it in all its details.” He added, “It’s like getting back my eyesight.”

56歲的奧特奧35年前因爲青光眼失明，他說自己曾在年輕時見過這幅貴族畫像，但“能或多或少記住它是一回事，通過觸碰感受全部的細節是另外一回事”。他又補充道，“現在，我彷彿重見光明一般。”