新興世界的文化自信 歷史短口氣不短

About 100 years ago, Pablo Picasso set off to the Musée du Trocadéro in Paris to study some plaster casts of Romanesque sculpture. Legend has it that, once inside the museum, he took a wrong turn. He ended up in a room of African masks. Picasso’s false move changed the way he looked at the world. He went back to his studio and made some changes to a painting he had been working on.

大約在100年前，畢加索(Pablo Picasso)動身前往巴黎人類學博物館(Musée du Trocadéro)學習一些羅馬式雕塑的石膏模型。按照後人的傳說，畢加索進入博物館後，拐錯了彎，最後進入一間非洲面具的陳列室。畢加索走錯了路，卻改變了他看待世界的方式。他回到自己的工作室，對他一直採用的繪畫方式作出了一些改變。

It was a group portrait of five prostitutes, looking defiantly at the viewer. Picasso changed three of the women’s faces into something that resembled the masks he had just seen. And with those few brush strokes, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” upset the course of 20th-century art. It was painting’s “African moment”, when artists turned their back on the academic strictures and barren themes of western art history, and re-found the energy and simplicity that had been lost over the centuries.

這是一幅由5個妓女的肖像構成的畫作，畫中人物挑釁地注視着觀賞者。畢加索把其中3張女性的臉換成了與他見過的面具類似的樣子。在幾筆筆觸的作用下，《亞維農的少女》(Les Demoiselles d'Avignon)攪亂了20世紀的藝術進程。這是繪畫界的“非洲時刻”，這一刻藝術家放棄了學術上的狹窄以及西方藝術史上沉悶無趣的主題，再次找到了已經消失了幾個世紀的活力和質樸。

In the changed world of the 21st century, that story already sounds ridiculous. Globalisation has shrunk the cultural and business worlds, while the rapid dissemination of material unleashed by new technologies means there are no wrong turnings any more, just the frenetic and relentless criss-crossings of more and more information superhighways.

在時過境遷的21世紀，這個故事聽起來有些荒唐。全球化縮小了文化和商業世界，新技術釋放的材料被迅速傳播，這意味着不會再有拐錯的彎，而只會有在越來越多的信息高速公路上狂熱而無情的縱橫交錯。

There are ever fewer discoveries to be made by the established cultural superpowers as they ransack the rest of the world’s artistic traditions. In London alone, there is art, theatre and cinema on offer from all over the world on a weekly basis. Divergent literary forms cross-fertilise to form new hybrids: you find magical realism set in the suburbs of Paris, satirical haikus bouncing around the internet, the taut prose of the great mid-century American authors used to describe village life in central Asia.

隨着老牌文化大國不斷探尋世界其他地區的藝術傳統，它們的發現越來越少。僅在倫敦，每週便有來自世界各地的藝術、戲劇和電影可供選擇。百花齊放的文學形式在相互影響下形成新題材：你能發現巴黎郊區的魔幻現實主義佈景，互聯網上頗爲流行的諷刺俳句，以及本世紀中期偉大美國作家創作的齊整散文被用來形容中亞鄉村生活。

The countries that constitute the emerging markets of the world — defined for these purposes by the World Bank Atlas categorisation of a gross national income per capita of less than $12,746 — are, in many cases, already leading players on the world’s arts scene.

在很多情況下，構成新興市場的那些國家，已經是世界藝術舞臺上的主角了。世界銀行(World Bank)的全球發展地圖將人均國民收入低於12746美元的國家定義爲新興國家。

Their economies may be playing catch-up with the world’s most developed nations, but their cultural offerings are already there. It is inconceivable to think of a global cultural discussion without reference to African literature, Asian cinema or the visual art scene of the Americas.

新興國家的經濟也許還在追趕世界上最爲發達的國家，但它們的文化產品已經趕上了發達國家。如果一場全球文化討論沒有提到非洲文學、亞洲電影或者美洲視覺藝術，那簡直是不可想象的。

The reasons for this self-confident blooming over the course of the past century are manifold. Some are related to Picasso’s “African moment”. Artists are always in need of formal refreshment, if only to react against their own traditions. As they began to travel, they encountered alien cultures, which in turn influenced their own work. The new mass media helped to spread the word.

關於百年來這種自信綻放的解釋有很多。一些原因與畢加索的“非洲時刻”有關。藝術家總是需要形式上的新鮮補充，即便只是爲了反抗他們本身的傳統。當開始旅行時，他們會遇到異國文化，這反過來會影響他們自己的作品。新的大衆媒體有助於傳播訊息。

Each country, too, has developed its own popular culture tradition. For years, India has been the biggest film-producing country in the world, with roughly double the output of US movies. Bollywood blockbusters traditionally have been treated with disdain as “bad girl, good girl, bad guy, good guy, romance (with no kisses), tears, guffaws, fights, chases, melodrama”.

每個國家也會發展自己的流行文化傳統。多年來，印度一直是世界上最大的電影出品國家，其電影產量幾乎是美國的兩倍。寶萊塢大片通常會被輕視爲“壞女孩、好女孩、壞男人、好男人、浪漫（沒有接吻）、眼淚、爆笑、打鬥、追逐、情節劇”的代名詞。

But that very quote comes not from a patronising westerner, but from India’s own Satyajit Ray, the country’s most distinguished director, who helped to form a “parallel cinema” movement in the 1950s that produced beautifully crafted works that found respect all over the globe.

但是，這種描述並非來自傲慢的西方人，而是出自印度最著名的導演薩蒂亞吉特•雷伊(Satyajit Ray)之口。上世紀50年代，雷伊幫助造就了“並行電影”(Parallel Cinema)運動，該運動帶來的精美作品贏得了全球的尊重。

Each nation has mirrored this bifurcation between a vigorous, accessible and profitable cultural sector, and one, often subsidised by governments, that champions more difficult and ambitious work. The best of these offerings find cultish box office success far outside the country of their origin: the small gems of Iranian cinema, the visually sumptuous movies of the Chinese new wave, the melancholic masterpieces of eastern Europe — all are avidly followed by an international audience.

每個國家都有這種分化現象：一方面是充滿活力、普通人喜聞樂見、有利可圖的文化產業，另一方面是往往由政府資助、以更難懂和更加雄心勃勃的作品爲代表的文化領域。這些作品中最優秀的代表會在本國以外取得豐厚的票房成功：伊朗電影佳作、中國新一代視覺盛宴型電影、東歐憂鬱系傑作——這一切都受到國際觀衆的熱情追捧。

The art market, that shrewd and volatile performance indicator of cultural preferences, has not been slow to cast its voracious eye over emerging nations. A couples of decades ago, examples of the best Chinese contemporary art could be purchased for between $20,000 and $30,000 a piece. Those prices increased spectacularly in the intervening period, reaching respectable, if not quite Picasso-esque, levels: an oil on paper landscape by Wu Guanzhong sold for a record $23.5m in November 2011.

藝術市場是有關文化偏好的精明而易波動的表現指標，在將貪婪的目光投向新興國家時從不遲鈍。大約20年前，中國最好的當代藝術作品可能以每幅2萬至3萬美元買到手。自那以來，這些作品的價格大幅提高，達到了相當高的水平，即便還趕不上畢加索作品的身價：2011年11月，吳冠中的一幅風景油畫以創紀錄的2350萬美元售出。

The growing market for Chinese contemporary art is a good indicator of what the developed world looks for in the arts of the emerging nations: not only novelty value, but also a feeling that the art is helping to define those countries’ sense of nationhood. Often the artists have to work on forbidden themes and in defiance of repressive governments.

日益增長的中國當代藝術市場，很好地表明瞭發達世界在新興國家藝術中所尋找的東西：不僅在於新奇價值，還有一種藝術正在幫助界定這些國家的民族認同感的感覺。藝術家往往不得不挖掘被禁的主題，無視政府的壓制。

Much of that sense of danger and existential heft has disappeared from the art of the developed world, which becomes tied down in ever more internal formal dialogues. The art and literature of those countries that are still finding their way towards greater economic prosperity and civic maturity feel like it matters. There is no greater allure for any art-lover than that.

此類危險感以及存在的凝重感大部分已從發達世界的藝術中消失（後者越來越拘泥於內向的形式對話）。在那些仍然向着更大的經濟繁榮和更成熟的公民社會摸索着前進的國家，藝術和文學給人的感覺是它們是重要的。對藝術愛好者來說，沒有比這更大的誘惑了。