怀旧与超现实 动画艺术家张小涛的现代中国

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.

中国重庆——中国顶尖动画艺术家张小涛在中国西部的一个村庄长大，残暴的文化大革命给这里的每个人都留下了不可磨灭的印记。他的父亲是当地红卫兵的领袖，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.

但张小涛对儿时的记忆不是这样。他想起的不是暴行，而是位于他家以北30英里处的壮观的天主教堂。教堂由法国传教士在20世纪初建造，在文革动荡中得以留存，有着宽阔的走廊，廊柱在粘湿的夏季长满苔藓，高耸的竹林提供了大片的阴凉。

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.

由于曾在那里玩耍，45岁的张小涛清楚地记得这座教堂。在他10岁的时候，他的父母留下他到远方务工，教堂成为一个梦想之地，他会带着速写本到那里画画。

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.

张小涛创作的很多部获奖的数字动画电影，都体现了他对这栋宏伟的白色建筑的怀念之情。这些电影探索了中国匆忙的现代化之路，时而以超现实的方式展示寻求获得财富和成功的重压对心灵造成的影响。

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现教堂的实体结构，尽管实体结构偶尔会出现。他表示，这栋建筑给人的平静与中国当代城市几乎让人无法忍受的紧张形成鲜明反差。

“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.

“小时候这个教堂给我留下了深深的记忆，”他在自己位于四川美术学院的工作室说道，他年轻的时候曾在这所学校学习，目前担任其新媒体艺术系主任。在他身旁，数十名年轻的数字艺术家在电脑屏幕前努力工作，协助完成他的新作。“我小时候在那儿玩的时候，能看到人们祈祷，让我对宗教有一种深刻感受 。”在那里祈祷的人不是由神父或修女组织的。正规的教会早已被驱逐出中国。那些祈祷的男人和女人年纪太大，没有被卷入疯狂的文化大革命，他们将村中的教堂视作一个可以寻求安慰的地方，就像张小涛现在做的那样。

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.

张小涛的最新作品——长两个小时的数字动画电影《黄桷坪的春天》——已经提交至2016年柏林国际电影节(Berlin International Film Festival)。让他欣喜万分的是，影片已经通过评委会的第一轮评审。

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，这部电影是想将文化大革命与20年后的黯淡时期做个对比，他那时候设法进入四川美术学院。但他考了三次，都没成功，这段经历仍然困扰着他。

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.

电影中的人物以漫画书的形式呈现：张小涛学生时代的那些骨瘦如材的年轻男女穿着简单的短袖衫和裤子，早年的红卫兵则穿着土黄色制服，携带步枪。场景很像工业城市重庆市的一些破旧地方以及郊区黄桷坪，四川美术学院和张小涛的工作室都位于该区。“残酷的高考和我父亲那一代的狂热信仰有多相似？”他断定，极其相似。

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.

就像很多在西方驰名的中国艺术家一样，张小涛似乎在不停奔波。他往来于重庆和北京之间，在北京——中国艺术领域的商业中心，他现身画廊展览，达成交易，还在一个位于798当代艺术区的工作室画画。该工作室的入口处挂着两幅明显以宗教为主题的画作： 埃尔·格列柯(El Greco) 的《奥尔加斯伯爵的葬礼》(The Burial of the Count of Orgaz)的复制品及一幅当代风格的佛像，只要没有情色意味，这种图像在中国是完全可以接受的。

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.

孩童时期，张小涛展示出了通过自己赚钱来获得画画所需的费用的本领，在他投身动画产业这种成本较高的当代艺术形式的时候，相关技能给他带来帮助。

“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.”

“我买了漫画书，然后租给同学，”他说。“从六年级开始，我就开始独自生活，因为父母不在，租书的规模从50册增加至1000册。“

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.

当他最终通过考试，进入艺术学院时，他发现自己处于90年代艺术领域的骚动之中，当时中国艺术家在西方风靡一时。当时，四川艺术学院的油画系成为了实验艺术的熔炉，从该系毕业的张晓刚现在已经成为中国最受追捧的当代画家之一。

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，在北京开设当代艺廊的美国律师马芝安(Meg Maggio)遇到了张小涛，那时他会在北京、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.

“他画了一些以糖果色安全套为主题的超现实的奇妙画作，”马芝安说。“后来，他因为一系列呈现熟透、有点腐烂，偶尔发霉的草莓的画作而成名。”2006年，她将张小涛的一些画作卖给了英国收藏家查尔斯·萨奇(Charles Saatchi)，其中包括一幅六英尺长的描绘溺水老鼠的画作。现在，马芝安仍通过自己位于北京的画廊——北京艺门(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.

但张小涛当时正从油画创作转向其他领域。他在欧洲学了一段时间摄影，然后于2000年在旧金山转入动画创作。“它改变了我的人生，”他说。他很容易就掌握了动画技术。尽管他觉得纽约这个城市让人为之振奋，一时曾想常驻那里，最终还是决定回中国创建自己的公司。

“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.”

“我回来中国，是因为在这里进行动画创作的成本非常低——不用花太多钱就可以雇一整个团队，”他说。不过，他的第一次尝试失败了。“我找了四名画油画的学生。他们做不了动画。”

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.

他的第一部有影响力的动画作品是《迷雾》(Mist)，花了两年时间制作完成，时长32分钟。这部影片的主角是由红色蚂蚁和形状如恐龙的生物组成的大军，它们如军队般整齐行进，最终陷入血战，留下一片废墟和斑斑血迹。在其中一个场景里，一辆装满人类骸骨的列车掠过屏幕，列车上飘扬着一面象征中国的红旗。

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.

这部影片被他的一些同事指责太过好莱坞化，但它其实是对2008年中国举办奥运会期间笼罩于北京的那种狂热气氛的一种隐喻，他说当时中国“大搞建设，然后又拆掉它们。”在影片的最后，出现了一个佛陀的形象，暗喻一片疯狂之中存在的安宁。

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.

他接下来创作的影片《萨迦》(Sakya)和《迷雾》都于2013年在威尼斯双年展上展出。《萨迦》这个片名取自西藏一座佛寺的名字，这部影片通过3-D建模软件营建了一种围绕着朝圣者和西藏坛场的神圣气氛，因对宗教自由所受的限制进行了探讨，它赢得了赞誉。

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.

谈及下一步的计划，张小涛打算离开四川美院，前往北京，担任麒麟当代艺术中心的负责人。他说他会在那里展示来自世界各地的艺术，并把中国的艺术介绍到国外。

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，他希望能有更多时间陪伴儿子亮亮。“我小的时候，父母就没有太多时间陪我，”他说。“和儿子在一起的时间比较少，我感到内疚，而且我很想念他。我已经答应他，要带他去纽约看伟大的艺术。”