经济学人文艺 || 发现寻常之美

原文:http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzU1MDQwNTgzMg==&mid=2247491303&idx=1&sn=822a192465fe9df9f629cfdf981c122a&chksm=fba04d40ccd7c45637571556b3038980399c1b64f0c3b0e04253b5a3649ac58ffa63589b5a6a#rd

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导读


感谢思维导图作者
Jennie,女,MTI低才生,社会学爱好者


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听力|精读|翻译|词组

 Finding beauty in ordinary things

发现寻常之美

英文部分选自经济学人20200801期文艺版块

Ways of seeing

观察方式


Attention Pays

留心有益


Finding beauty in ordinary things

发现寻常之美


The Japanese aesthetic of mingei is a consolation during lockdown

日本民艺美学是疫情隔离期间的一种慰藉


扩展阅读:柳宗悦和柳宗理的民艺与设计·

http://www.360doc33.net/articlenew.aspx?id=857315902

Mingei: 民艺运动,简朴、实用、耐久是日本设计的基础理论,贯穿了整个1920年代的民艺运动(Mingei.


The bowl is small enough to balance in the palm of your hand. It is deep enough for tofu, but too shallow for soup. A ghostly white glaze, translucent in the right light, covers the surface. These clay walls are its maker’s gallery. A lone blue figure fills the centre of the bowl, his face a blank oval with a whiskery beard. His spine curves along the same arc as the rim.


这个碗很小,用手掌心就能稳稳托住。可以用来盛豆腐,但若要盛汤,还是太浅了。它的表面覆着幽幽的白釉,在合适的光照下显出半透明的模样。这些粘土墙是制作者的画廊。碗底中央画了一张蓝色的男子单人像,脸呈椭圆形,面无表情,留着络腮胡,脊背弯度与碗沿的弧度一致。


At the Nihon Mingeikan (Japan Folk Crafts Museum) in Tokyo, visitors find little by way of description or context alongside this artefact or the hundreds of other simple ceramics, textiles and crafts on display. Yanagi Soetsu, the museum’s founder, believed that nothing should distract from the beauty of the objects. For Yanagi, a prolific writer and collector, “miscellaneous things represent the most original of Japanese arts.” He and two potters, Hamada Shoji (who made the plates in the picture) and Kawai Kanjiro, dubbed these wares mingei, a neologism fusing the characters for “the masses” and “crafts”.


在东京的日本民艺馆,这件藏品和展出的其他数百件简朴的瓷器、纺织品和工艺品一样,参观者几乎找不到任何描述和简介。民艺馆创立者柳宗悦(Yanagi Soetsu)认为,展品本身的美不应有任何干扰。作为一个多产的作家和成果丰硕的收藏家,柳宗悦认为各式各样的物品是日本艺术最本真模样的代表。他与滨田庄司(Hamada Shoji)(画中盘子的制作者)和河井宽次郎(Kawai Kanjiro)两位陶瓷艺术家将这些器物称为民艺Mingei),这是一个结合了大众手工艺特点的新词。


注:

柳宗悦(Yanagi Soetsu,单姓柳,1889-1961),日本著名民艺理论家、美学家。被誉为民艺之父。著有《工匠自我修养》《民艺论》《工艺之道》《日本手工艺》等书,均有中文版。1957年获日本政府授予的文化功劳者荣誉称号,民艺一词的创造者。本段提及的滨田庄司和河井宽次郎均为其终生好友。


Over several decades from the 1910s, he amassed a collection of more than 17,000 such pieces from around Japan and its expanding empire, which became the foundation of the Mingeikan. By the time Yanagi died in 1961, mingei had entered the language. His ideas left an enduring mark on Japanese design, visible today in the fashion stylings of Issey Miyake and the popular homeware sold by the retailer Muji. At a time when people everywhere find themselves confined to familiar surroundings, his attentive way of looking at the world is a salutary consolation.


1910年之后的几十年间,柳宗悦在日本国内和逐渐扩张的日本帝国势力范围内一点点收集工艺品,总计超过17000件,奠定了日本民艺馆的基础。柳宗悦于1961年去世,那时民艺一词已经在日文中经常出现了。去世后,他的理念仍深深影响着日本设计风格,无论是三宅一生(Issey Miyake)设计的时尚服装,还是无印良品(Muji)出品、广受欢迎的家具,都可见一斑。现在,世界各地的人们不得不待在家中,用柳宗悦细心观察的方式观察世界就成为了一剂良药。


注:

三宅一生(Issey Miyake)和无印良品(Muji)都是日本时尚设计品牌,前者专注于服装设计,后者专注于零售行业。


Mingei encompasses all manner of everyday things, from clothing and furniture to utensils and stationery. These objects, Yanagi wrote, are “deeply embedded in the life of ordinary people”. They stand in contrast to aristocratic fine arts and eschew needless decoration. Works of mingei are crafted with quotidian use and owners in mind; they are typically the handmade creations of anonymous artisans possessing “unconscious grace”. In the parlance of the pandemic, mingei might be called the essential workers of the material world: “Since these utilitarian objects have a commonplace task to perform, they are dressed, so to speak, in modest wear and lead quiet lives,” Yanagi wrote. “They work thoughtlessly and unselfishly, carrying out effortlessly and inconspicuously whatever duty comes their way.”


民艺包罗万象,涵盖了日常物品从服饰、家具到器皿、文具的方方面面。柳宗悦写道:这些物品与民众生活密不可分。它们摒弃无用的装饰,与贵族艺术形成鲜明对比。民艺品打造时多考虑日常使用,忠于使用者的需求,通常由拥有不经意的优雅的佚名工匠手工制造。在新冠肺炎大流行的背景下,民艺可以被称为物质世界的关键劳动者。柳宗悦还写道:因为这些平凡的物品都得满足日常使用,所以它们装饰简朴、造型低调。它们埋着头、无私地发挥功能,轻松低调地满足需要。


Yanagi sought to identify and celebrate the functional beauty of these overlooked items. He believed that defining beauty purely in visual terms, to the exclusion of practicality, was mistaken. “Our aesthetic sense has been severely impaired owing to the fact that beauty and life are treated as separate realms of being,” he argued. Yet this did not mean extolling any old (or new) thing. For Yanagi, objects made with vulgar colouring, shoddy materials and thoughtless forms were not simply eyesores, but “amoral and unethical”. Like the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain which it followed, mingei was in part a response to mechanisation, setting out to elevate older methods over mass production.


人们常常忽视实用之物,而柳宗悦试图寻找并颂扬其功能之美。他认为,单纯从视觉角度来定义美而不考虑实用性,是错误的。在他看来,由于美和生活被被分割看待,我们的审美观已经严重受损。然而,这并不代表赞美所有旧的(或新的)事物。在柳宗悦眼里,那些颜色庸俗、材质低劣、设计草率的物品不仅刺眼,更是不道德的。与其所追随的英国工艺美术运动一样,民艺运动在某种程度上是对机械化的回应,旨在提升传统生产的价值,而非强调规模化生产。


注:

1. 艺术和手工艺运动(Arts and Crafts movement)主要起源于19世纪的英国。其产生的背景是:工业革命以后大批量工业化生产以及维多利亚时期崇尚繁琐装饰的理念,使得当时的设计水准急剧下降。工艺美术运动意在抵制这一趋势而重建手工艺的价值,要求制造出艺术家中的工匠或者工匠中的艺术家。它的特点包括:1、强调手工艺生产,反对机械化生产;2、在装饰上反对矫揉造作的维多利亚风格和其他各种古典、传统的复兴风格;3、提倡哥特风格和其他中世纪风格,讲究 简单朴实;4、主张设计诚实,反对风格上华而不实;5、提倡自然主义风格和东方风格。


2. 扩展知识:艺术与手工艺运动

https://www.britannica.com/art/Arts-and-Crafts-movement


Eye of the holder

持有者的看法


Born in Tokyo in 1889 to a family of Meiji-era naval officers, Yanagi’s intellectual life began in the Shirakaba (White Birch) group, a collective of writers and thinkers who explored Western art and literature in their eponymous journal. Yanagi wrote on topics ranging from Tolstoy to Rodin to William Blake. He befriended the English ceramicist Bernard Leach, who would first render Yanagi’s thoughts into English in “The Unknown Craftsman” (published in 1972). A collection of his essays that was recently released as “The Beauty of Everyday Things” is the second widely available English-language volume of his work.


柳宗悦在1889年(明治时代)出生于东京的一个海军军官家庭。他的智者生涯始于加入白桦派,这是一个由作家和思想家组成的团体,在同名杂志(《白桦》)上探讨西方艺术与文学。柳宗悦的文章涵盖了托尔斯泰、罗丹、威廉·布莱克等一系列广泛题材。他与英国陶艺家伯纳德利奇(Bernard Leach)结为好友,而利奇在其1972年出版的《无名工匠》一书中,首次将柳宗悦的思想译成英文。最近出版的文集《物与美》(The Beauty of Everyday Things)则是第二本广为流传的柳宗悦作品英文版书籍。


扩展知识:白桦派:日本现代文学中的重要流派之一,以创刊于1910年的文艺刊物《白桦》为中心的作家与美术家形成。

他们主张新理想主义为文艺思想的主流,因此也称为新理想派。该派的作家主要有武者小路实笃、有岛武郎、有岛生马、志贺直哉、木下利玄、长与善郎等人。受白桦派的影响而成长起来的日本知名人士有剧作家仓田百三、诗人千家元等。


Like many of his peers, Yanagi’s interests drifted towards questions of cultural identity. How should the East assert itself in response to the West? What was Japan’s relationship with the rest of the region? What made Japanese culture distinctive? An encounter with Korean ceramics in 1914 led to his interest in folk crafts. He spent years collecting and promoting Korean work, ultimately opening a small museum in Seoul. His engagement with the crafts of Japan’s colonies led him to speak out against the Japanese empire’s assimilationist and expansionist policies in both Korea and Okinawa, another important venue for his collecting. In “A Letter to My Korean Friends”, written amid a crackdown on Korean independence movements in 1919, Yanagi lamented that “Japan does not yet fully possess a human heart.”


和很多同辈人一样,柳宗悦对文化认同的问题产生了兴趣,譬如:面对西方,东方该如何坚持自己的主张?日本与东方其他国家的关系如何?日本文化缘何与众不同?1914年,与朝鲜李朝瓷器的一次偶然邂逅引起了柳宗悦对民间工艺品的兴趣。在那之后,他花费数年时间,收集并推广朝鲜工艺品,并最终在汉城建立了一座小型美术馆。他潜心研究日本殖民地区的工艺品,由此公然抗议日本帝国在朝鲜和冲绳(他收藏工艺品的另一个重要地点)实行的同化主义和扩张主义政策。1919年,朝鲜民族独立运动遭到镇压期间,柳宗悦写下《致朝鲜友人书》,文中哀叹道:日本尚未完全拥有悲悯之心。


注:

1. 柳宗悦发现寻常之美

https://m.sohu.com/a/192113343_265568

2. 朝鲜民族独立运动:亦称朝鲜独立运动。1910年日本迫使大韩帝国(1897-1910)和日本签订《日朝合并条约》(日朝合并),朝鲜半岛成为日本的一部分,沦为日本的殖民地。从朝鲜被日本吞并到朝鲜半岛独立的过程中,一切朝鲜人民争取独立的行为都被视为朝鲜民族独立运动的一部分。


Yet for all his humanism and pacifism, his views could also be interpreted more darkly. In recent decades scholars have advanced a revisionist sense of mingei as a kind of cultural nationalism, an “oriental Orientalism” that became the aesthetic accompaniment to Japanese imperialism. Japanese ultranationalists found much to like in Yanagi’s promotion of the collective over the individual, his search for beauty among the masses, his championing of tradition and his quest for an essential Japaneseness. As Kim Brandt argues in “Kingdom of Beauty”, her study of mingei, “Government ideologues and propagandists embraced the arts and crafts of an idealised folk as a means of insisting on national, and also imperial, unity.” When, during the second world war, the American firebombing of Tokyo brought flames to the Mingeikan’s walls, Yanagi and his wife doused them with brooms and buckets of water, their son Yanagi Sori later recalled.


虽然柳宗悦倡导人文主义和反战主义,但是他的观点也可以有负面的阐释。最近几十年,有学者给民艺增加了一丝修正主义的意味,将其看作一种文化民族主义,即东方的东方主义,是伴随日本帝国主义而生的美学思想。柳宗悦提倡集体高于个人,乐于在普通大众中探寻美,同时拥护捍卫文化传统,不断追寻属于日本的最本质的东西。日本极端民族主义者部分采纳了他的很多观点。正如金·布兰特(Kim Brandt)在研究民艺的《美的王国》一书中所写:政府的理论家和宣传者推崇理想化人民的艺术和工艺品,不过是要将其作为一种手段,来加强民族团结及帝国的统一。二战期间,美国用燃烧弹轰炸东京时,民艺馆的墙垣也起了火。据儿子柳宗理(Yanagi Sori)之后回忆,父亲和母亲拿着扫帚、提着水桶,扑灭了民艺馆墙上的火焰。


Sori helped give mingei a second life through his work as a pioneering industrial designer. His iconic pieces, such as his graceful butterfly stool, fused a European modernist training with his father’s mingei spirit. Sori saw an overlap with the Bauhaus movement in mingei’s emphasis on function over form, and, in its belief in the craftsman’s unconscious intimation of beauty, with Surrealism.


柳宗理作为一名工业设计的先驱人物,让民艺焕发了第二次生命。他的标志性作品,例如优雅的蝴蝶凳,将欧洲现代主义设计思想与父亲的民艺精神融合在一起。在他看来,民艺强调功能胜过形式,这一点与包豪斯运动不谋而合,而追求工匠不经意流露出的美,从这里又可以看到超现实主义的影子。


扩展阅读:包豪斯运动,影响了整个世界。

http://www.360doc33.net/articlenew.aspx?id=706472716


After his father’s death, Sori took over as the Mingeikan’s director, inspiring a generation of designers to seek models in mingei. Today there are dozens of affiliated mingei museums in Japan. Martha Longenecker, an American potter, founded the Mingei International Museum in San Diego in the 1970s. Sori’s successor as director of the Mingeikan, the designer Fukasawa Naoto, is himself evidence of mingei’s enduring influence. Mr Fukasawa had a hand in Muji’s designs for suitcases, chairs, lamps, kettles and much else, aiding the firm’s rise to global prominence. Its goods, he says, are examples of “modern-day mingei”. (The name Muji means “no brand”.)


父亲去世后,柳宗理接任日本民艺馆馆长,激励了一代设计师参考民艺作品。如今,日本有数十家附属民艺博物馆。美国陶艺家玛莎·朗格纳克(Martha Longenecker)于20世纪70年代在圣地亚哥成立了民艺国际博物馆。柳宗理的继任者是设计师深泽直人(Fukasawa Naoto),他本人就深受民艺的影响。深泽先生参与设计了无印良品的手提箱、椅子、灯、水壶等产品,助力该公司在全球范围内的崛起。他表示,无印的产品就是现代民艺的典范。(无印良品意为无品牌的好物品。)


Mingei involves approaching the world with a heightened awareness of the objects that fill everyday lives. Yanagi urges you to ponder the coffee mug that fuels endless Zoom meetings with the same intensity as you contemplate a Cézanne (whose work he once hung in the reception room of the Mingeikan). “Today, when everything is trending toward the frail and sickly, the beauty we see in these common objects is both a blessing and a joy,” he wrote with eerie resonance. He asks people, in short, to appreciate what is under their noses.


民艺还包含以高度重视日常物品的方式感知世界。柳宗悦鼓励你像思考塞尚的作品一样(他曾把塞尚的作品挂在民艺馆的会客厅里),去思索那个支撑你度过无休止Zoom会议的咖啡马克杯。带着难以言说的共鸣感,他写道:如今,当世界日趋脆弱,我们在这些日常物品中看到的美感既是福祉、也是乐趣。简而言之,他要求人们好好欣赏眼前的事物。


Take the humble face mask. Your correspondent’s is sewn out of tan cloth and patterned with fish. Its light-blue ear straps, now frayed, suggest the ocean. A blue mahi-mahi stretches its bulbous forehead over the crease of the nose. A silver tigerperch edges towards the ear. The yellow spines of a John Dory’s dorsal fin spread across the cheek, evoking the beard of the man in the bottom of the mingei bowl.


就拿平凡的口罩来说吧。你客户的口罩是用黄褐色的布料缝制的,上面绘有鱼形图案。已磨损的淡蓝色耳带象征着海洋。蓝色鲯鳅圆滚滚的头正好伸到了鼻子的褶皱处。靠近耳朵的部分绘有银色的虎斑鱼,两腮则画上海鲂鱼的黄色背鳍,不禁让人想起民艺碗底部的那一抹胡须。


注:

John Dory,海舫鱼


翻译组: 

Echo,北漂北外的江南人,央视boys and girls 的粉丝儿

Piggy,爱吃鱼,爱跳舞,爱睡回笼觉的小能猫,NUS食品系

Iris 少女心爆棚的前职场老阿姨,现国际女子修道院MTIer,外刊爱好者

无忌,心怀梦想不断努力的理想主义男孩 


校核组:

Nikolai,爱想象的小双鱼,蒙特雷候补生,AKB49

Rachel,学理工科,爱跳芭蕾,热爱文艺的非典型翻译

Anne,女,爱读书爱Borges的小翻译,热爱文艺,经济学人爱好者


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观点|评论|思考


本周感想

Anne,女,爱读书爱Borges的小翻译,热爱文艺,经济学人爱好者

今日的民艺馆外观

一、美

柳宗悦曾在书中写道,“我的生活一天也不能离开美的世界"。提到美丽的器具,人们联想起的,或许是超凡的奇物,又或是一些守旧传统的器具,为了避免这种易出现的错误联想,我要在此事上声明,民艺不是摆放在壁龛上,为华美的房间增加意趣,而是出现在厨房里,散置在起居间的各种器皿。民艺的美在于淡泊。其意为“寻常之美”。与用于鉴赏的美术品不同,民艺以生活为目的。可为何长期以来,人们忽视寻常器具之美呢?甚至,傍晚的日落,晨间的朝霞,窗边的莺声婉转,这些寻常之美,我们常常忽视。所谓久居兰室不闻其香,习以为常则失审视之心。

“问渠哪得清如许?为有源头活水来”。发现美的生活就是有“源头活水”的生活。俗人迷于名利,与世浮沉,心里没有“天光云影”,就因为没有源头活水。对美的向往、追寻,让人不至于沦为机器。

   当今时代早已不同于过去,或许这会是万事万物最变幻不定的时期。在我们眼中,万物冲击人心。如同擦拭过的光洁如新的镜子,所有的一切都变得新鲜。我们慌忙得奔波于通勤路途,忙于工作学习,一心想着晋升和人生中的大小考试,却忽略了寻常之美。

况且,我们进入了一个美好的时代,在这个时代,我们必须辨明,什么是真正的美。现在是批判的时代,是意识苏醒的时代,我们赋予了担当审判者的职责,对时代的恩泽,我们不可辜负。


二、手工

民间艺术必定是手工艺术,除去神明外,最令人惊叹的,莫过于人们的双手了,与人手相比,无论怎样的机器也不够自由灵活。不幸的是,如今所有的手工作业都转移到了机器身上,在不久的将来,机器操作成为主流,那时候我们看到过去的人们亲手创作的奇迹,大概会更难以置信吧。当然,机器也能创造某种美,我们不能厌弃机器制造的方式,但是,这种美是受限的,单一的机器制造只能带来闭塞的美。创造出来的物品冰冷、浅薄、毫无感情。真正的韵味与丰盈,是从人手中诞生的,打造出雅致感与灵魂,琢磨痕迹、刀工、笔势走向,试问这些机器怎可做到?机器做的只是循规蹈矩,而非创造。有了人的双手,美就会带上温度,得到升华。民艺的光芒也会随着时光的流转,与日俱增。

这正如我们今日所讲的工匠精神,同样,这种精神在工业化浪潮的洗礼下,渐渐地缺失了。在相当长一段时间内,人们对于工匠的认知是矮化的,人们认为他们单调、重复,认为他们在做一些拙劣的工作,甚至,认为他们的执着毫无价值。但当我们把作品拿出来看,我们发现,工匠用他们的双手,他们的汗,他们的血,甚至生命来铸造一个又一个物件。藏族绘画大师罗布斯达曾经在修复布达拉宫壁画时,因为担心打开灯光,壁画会氧化,于是,在伸手不见五指的洞穴里,他点燃了一根蜡烛,一笔一笔地修复,即使视力减退,几乎看不到了,他从未想过放弃。再看民艺的创始人柳宗悦,即便是工艺设计,他也从未放弃手工,在他的工作室里,设计产品绝不靠图纸,而是必须手作模型。他从未忘记,将美还给民众的使命。机械或许可以超越现在的工艺水平,但是工匠的光芒,永不可攀。

无论是民艺,还是工匠精神,我们看到了什么?坚守、执着、寂寞。这正是这个时代需要的。做“差不多”先生,永远赢不了。每一个细节都不能放弃。从粗制滥造到大国制造,或许只隔了一个工匠精神的距离。


三、纯粹

在过去,人们很少通过炫技来制造充满新意的艺术品,然而随着时代的变迁,人们开始在创作时越来越多地加入繁杂的技巧,由此创作出来的作品,或许足够精巧细致,但抹杀了美的本质——纯粹。殊不知,打磨与雕琢若参杂太多人的欲望,会为手上的作品套上枷锁。柳宗悦认为,器物有着自然的加护,器物之美便是自然之美”。民艺的诞生是效力于人们的生活,而非争誉扬名,正如劳动者不会在修建的道路上刻名一般,美术作品是极少数天才创作家的个人成就,而所有的器具都是出自籍籍无名的普通人,是凡夫俗子,芸芸众生。他们无欲无求的心,让器具的美更加纯粹。

佛教徒常常以“无佛法”自持,这是因为若陷入佛法,便有可能作茧自缚,拘泥于信仰,最后落得惨淡收场。加缪笔下得西西弗斯攀登过程是存粹的,他对生命是热爱的,他离开山顶得每个瞬息,他渐渐潜入诸神洞穴得每分每秒,都超越了自己的命运,他比所推的石头更坚强。攀登山顶的拼搏本身足以充实一颗人心,应当想象,西西弗斯是幸福的。阿甘是纯粹的,他的爱如此纯粹,对待生活亦如是。他只知道,做自己喜欢做的事情,成为真正的自己。他的每一个选择看似荒诞,却是自己真正所爱。

要有那种选择自己所爱得力量,且不掺杂念,坚持下去。我们亦要热爱生活,不忘记自己做每件事的初心,永远追随自己的内心。重视追寻的过程,纯粹地做最简单的自己,即使有一天被脚下碎石绊倒,也可以满怀热诚,爬起来继续追逐自己梦想。

同时,我们也没有必要将梦想和现实对立,借用著名导演刁亦男的一句话:成熟的人可以为了梦想卑微的活着,而不成熟的人会为了梦想英勇的死去。


4


愿景


打造

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