懷舊與超現實 動畫藝術家張小濤的現代中國

CHONGQING, China — ZHANG XIAOTAO, one of China’s leading animation artists, grew up in a village in western China where the ferocity of the Cultural Revolution left indelible marks on everyone. His father, a leader of the local Red Guards, emerged with his spirit broken by what he saw and did.

中國重慶——中國頂尖動畫藝術家張小濤在中國西部的一個村莊長大，殘暴的文化大革命給這裏的每個人都留下了不可磨滅的印記。他的父親是當地紅衛兵的領袖，他所看到及所做的事情，令他的精神受挫。

But that is not what Mr. Zhang remembers from his childhood. Instead of the violence, he recalls the imposing Catholic church near his home, 30 miles north of here, built by French missionaries at the turn of the 20th century. Its broad verandas and colonnades, encrusted with moss in the clammy summer months, remained after the violence, and tall stands of bamboo provided swaths of shade.

但張小濤對兒時的記憶不是這樣。他想起的不是暴行，而是位於他家以北30英里處的壯觀的天主教堂。教堂由法國傳教士在20世紀初建造，在文革動盪中得以留存，有着寬闊的走廊，廊柱在粘溼的夏季長滿苔蘚，高聳的竹林提供了大片的陰涼。

Mr. Zhang, 45, remembers the church so vividly because he would play on the grounds there. And by the time he was 10, when his parents had abandoned him to find work far away, it had become a place of dreams where he would take his sketchbook and paint.

由於曾在那裏玩耍，45歲的張小濤清楚地記得這座教堂。在他10歲的時候，他的父母留下他到遠方務工，教堂成爲一個夢想之地，他會帶着速寫本到那裏畫畫。

Nostalgia for the big whitewashed building infuses a number of Mr. Zhang’s award-winning digital animation films, which explore China’s rush to modernization. In sometimes surreal ways, the films try to show what the intense pressure to achieve wealth and success does to the soul.

張小濤創作的很多部獲獎的數字動畫電影，都體現了他對這棟宏偉的白色建築的懷念之情。這些電影探索了中國匆忙的現代化之路，時而以超現實的方式展示尋求獲得財富和成功的重壓對心靈造成的影響。

It is not so much the church’s physical structure that appears in his work, although it does occasionally. Rather, it is the building’s sense of calm that, he says, contrasts with the almost intolerable intensity of contemporary urban China.

他的作品在很大程度上不是呈現教堂的實體結構，儘管實體結構偶爾會出現。他表示，這棟建築給人的平靜與中國當代城市幾乎讓人無法忍受的緊張形成鮮明反差。

“I have deep memories from the church as a child,” he said in his studio at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, where he studied as a young man and now heads the new media department. Around him, dozens of young digital artists labored over computer screens to help complete one of his new works. “When I was playing there as a child I could see people praying, and I felt a profound sense of religion.” Those who prayed were not organized by priests or nuns. The official church had long been expelled from China. They were men and women who were too old to be dragged into the madness of the Cultural Revolution, and who turned to the church in his village as a place of solace, much as Mr. Zhang does today.

“小時候這個教堂給我留下了深深的記憶，”他在自己位於四川美術學院的工作室說道，他年輕的時候曾在這所學校學習，目前擔任其新媒體藝術系主任。在他身旁，數十名年輕的數字藝術家在電腦屏幕前努力工作，協助完成他的新作。“我小時候在那兒玩的時候，能看到人們祈禱，讓我對宗教有一種深刻感受 。”在那裏祈禱的人不是由神父或修女組織的。正規的教會早已被驅逐出中國。那些祈禱的男人和女人年紀太大，沒有被捲入瘋狂的文化大革命，他們將村中的教堂視作一個可以尋求安慰的地方，就像張小濤現在做的那樣。

Mr. Zhang ’s latest work, “Spring in Huangjueping,” is a two-hour digital animation movie that he has entered into the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival. He was elated that the film had made the jury’s first cut.

張小濤的最新作品——長兩個小時的數字動畫電影《黃桷坪的春天》——已經提交至2016年柏林國際電影節(Berlin International Film Festival)。讓他欣喜萬分的是，影片已經通過評委會的第一輪評審。

The idea of the film, he said, is to draw parallels between the Cultural Revolution and the dismal period nearly 20 years later when he sought entry to the institute. He failed the entrance exam three times, an experience that still haunts him.

他表示，這部電影是想將文化大革命與20年後的黯淡時期做個對比，他那時候設法進入四川美術學院。但他考了三次，都沒成功，這段經歷仍然困擾着他。

The movie is cast with figures drawn in the style of a graphic novel: skinny young men and women from Mr. Zhang’s student days are dressed in basic T-shirts and pants, while Red Guards from the earlier era appear in drab olive uniforms with rifles. The landscape resembles the gritty parts of the industrial city of Chongqing, and its outskirts in Huangjueping, where the art institute and his studio are. “The brutal college entrance exam and the frenetic beliefs of my father’s generation: How similar are they?” Very, he concludes.

電影中的人物以漫畫書的形式呈現：張小濤學生時代的那些骨瘦如材的年輕男女穿着簡單的短袖衫和褲子，早年的紅衛兵則穿着土黃色制服，攜帶步槍。場景很像工業城市重慶市的一些破舊地方以及郊區黃桷坪，四川美術學院和張小濤的工作室都位於該區。“殘酷的高考和我父親那一代的狂熱信仰有多相似？”他斷定，極其相似。

LIKE many artists in China who are known in the West, Mr. Zhang seems to be in perpetual motion. He shuttles between Chongqing and Beijing, the commercial center of China’s art world where he shows up at gallery exhibits, does deals and still paints in a studio in the 798 complex, the contemporary art area. There, in the entrance to his studio hang two paintings with distinctly religious motifs: a copy of El Greco’s “The Burial of the Count of Orgaz” and a contemporary version of Buddha, the kind of images that are perfectly acceptable in China as long as they are not flaunted.

就像很多在西方馳名的中國藝術家一樣，張小濤似乎在不停奔波。他往來於重慶和北京之間，在北京——中國藝術領域的商業中心，他現身畫廊展覽，達成交易，還在一個位於798當代藝術區的工作室畫畫。該工作室的入口處掛着兩幅明顯以宗教爲主題的畫作： 埃爾·格列柯(El Greco) 的《奧爾加斯伯爵的葬禮》(The Burial of the Count of Orgaz)的複製品及一幅當代風格的佛像，只要沒有情色意味，這種圖像在中國是完全可以接受的。

As a child, Mr. Zhang showed a knack for making money to support his painting, a skill that serves him now as he plunges into animation, one of the more expensive forms of contemporary art.

孩童時期，張小濤展示出了通過自己賺錢來獲得畫畫所需的費用的本領，在他投身動畫產業這種成本較高的當代藝術形式的時候，相關技能給他帶來幫助。

“I bought comic books and rented them to classmates,” he said. “And from sixth grade, when I was living by myself because my parents went away, the business grew from renting 50 comic books to 1,000 comic books.”

“我買了漫畫書，然後租給同學，”他說。“從六年級開始，我就開始獨自生活，因爲父母不在，租書的規模從50冊增加至1000冊。“

When he finally conquered the exam and got into art school, he found himself in the tumult of the ’90s art scene, when Chinese artists were the newest fad in the West. At the time, the Sichuan institute’s oil painting department, whose graduates include Zhang Xiaogang, now one of China’s most sought-after contemporary painters, was a crucible of experimentation.

當他最終通過考試，進入藝術學院時，他發現自己處於90年代藝術領域的騷動之中，當時中國藝術家在西方風靡一時。當時，四川藝術學院的油畫系成爲了實驗藝術的熔爐，從該系畢業的張曉剛現在已經成爲中國最受追捧的當代畫家之一。

In the late ’90s, Meg Maggio, an American lawyer who ran a contemporary gallery in Beijing, met Mr. Zhang when he was showing his work in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

90年代末，在北京開設當代藝廊的美國律師馬芝安(Meg Maggio)遇到了張小濤，那時他會在北京、上海及香港展示自己的作品。

“He was painting surreal fantasy paintings of candy-colored condoms,” said Ms. Maggio, who still represents Mr. Zhang through her gallery Pékin Fine Arts in Beijing. “Later, he became well known for painting a long series of overripe, slightly rotten, occasionally moldy strawberries.” In 2006, she sold a number of his paintings to the British collector, Charles Saatchi, including a six-foot painting of a drowning rat.

“他畫了一些以糖果色安全套爲主題的超現實的奇妙畫作，”馬芝安說。“後來，他因爲一系列呈現熟透、有點腐爛，偶爾發黴的草莓的畫作而成名。”2006年，她將張小濤的一些畫作賣給了英國收藏家查爾斯·薩奇(Charles Saatchi)，其中包括一幅六英尺長的描繪溺水老鼠的畫作。現在，馬芝安仍通過自己位於北京的畫廊——北京藝門(Pékin Fine Arts)代理出售他的作品。

But Mr. Zhang was moving on from oil painting. He studied photography for a while in Europe, and then in 2000 in San Francisco he fell into animation. “It changed my life,” he said. He easily adapted to the skills of animation, and though he was tempted to set up shop in New York, a city he finds exhilarating, he decided to return to China to establish his own company.

但張小濤當時正從油畫創作轉向其他領域。他在歐洲學了一段時間攝影，然後於2000年在舊金山轉入動畫創作。“它改變了我的人生，”他說。他很容易就掌握了動畫技術。儘管他覺得紐約這個城市讓人爲之振奮，一時曾想常駐那裏，最終還是決定回中國創建自己的公司。

“I came back to China because the cost for animation is very low — you can hire a complete team for not very much,” he said. His first effort, though, was a failure. “I hired four oil painting students. They were not capable.”

“我回來中國，是因爲在這裏進行動畫創作的成本非常低——不用花太多錢就可以僱一整個團隊，”他說。不過，他的第一次嘗試失敗了。“我找了四名畫油畫的學生。他們做不了動畫。”

HIS first big splash with animation came with “Mist,” a 32-minute film that took two years to make. The film features armies of red glossy ants and dinosaurlike creatures marching in militaristic unison, and eventually waging bloody battles that leave a trail of destruction and blood. In one scene, a truck filled with human skeletons carrying a red flag, symbolic of China, floats across the screen.

他的第一部有影響力的動畫作品是《迷霧》(Mist)，花了兩年時間製作完成，時長32分鐘。這部影片的主角是由紅色螞蟻和形狀如恐龍的生物組成的大軍，它們如軍隊般整齊行進，最終陷入血戰，留下一片廢墟和斑斑血跡。在其中一個場景裏，一輛裝滿人類骸骨的列車掠過屏幕，列車上飄揚着一面象徵中國的紅旗。

The film, criticized by some of his colleagues as too Hollywood, was intended as a metaphor for the frenzy around the Beijing Olympics in 2008 when China, he said, was “building things, and then tearing them down.” At the end of the film, an image of Buddha hints at serenity amid madness.

這部影片被他的一些同事指責太過好萊塢化，但它其實是對2008年中國舉辦奧運會期間籠罩於北京的那種狂熱氣氛的一種隱喻，他說當時中國“大搞建設，然後又拆掉它們。”在影片的最後，出現了一個佛陀的形象，暗喻一片瘋狂之中存在的安寧。

His next film, “Sakya,” which together with “Mist” was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2013, is named after a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. It uses 3-D modeling software to create a celestial mood of pilgrims and Tibetan mandalas, and won praise for its exploration on the limitations on freedom of religion.

他接下來創作的影片《薩迦》(Sakya)和《迷霧》都於2013年在威尼斯雙年展上展出。《薩迦》這個片名取自西藏一座佛寺的名字，這部影片通過3-D建模軟件營建了一種圍繞着朝聖者和西藏壇場的神聖氣氛，因對宗教自由所受的限制進行了探討，它贏得了讚譽。

For his next venture, Mr. Zhang plans to leave the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and take the helm of a Beijing gallery, the Kylin Center of Contemporary Art. There, he said, he will show art from around the world and send Chinese art abroad.

談及下一步的計劃，張小濤打算離開四川美院，前往北京，擔任麒麟當代藝術中心的負責人。他說他會在那裏展示來自世界各地的藝術，並把中國的藝術介紹到國外。

But most of all, he says, he looks forward to having more time to spend with his son, Liang-liang. “My parents did not spend much time with me,” he said. “I feel guilty that I have not seen enough of my son, and I miss him. I have promised to take him to New York to see the great art.”

但他也表示，最重要的是，他希望能有更多時間陪伴兒子亮亮。“我小的時候，父母就沒有太多時間陪我，”他說。“和兒子在一起的時間比較少，我感到內疚，而且我很想念他。我已經答應他，要帶他去紐約看偉大的藝術。”