I don't know what the hell I'm doing here. I was born in a Scots Presbyterian ghetto in Canada, and dropped out of high school. I don't own a cell phone, and I paint on paper using gouache, which hasn't changed in 600 years. But about three years ago I had an art show in New York, and I titled it "Serious Nonsense." So I think I'm actually the first one here -- I lead. I called it "Serious Nonsense" because on the serious side, I use a technique of painstaking realism of editorial illustration from when I was a kid. I copied it and I never unlearned it -- it's the only style I know. And it's very kind of staid and formal. And meanwhile, I use nonsense, as you can see.
我压根儿不明白我到底来这儿干嘛 我出生在加拿大一个苏格兰长老会(基督教)贫民窟 高中就辍学了。我没有手机。 另外,我用水粉在纸上画画,这工艺六百年来都没变过 但是,三年前,我在纽约有个画展。 我管它叫“严肃的胡说”(正经不着调) 所以我觉得我其实在这儿算第一人——我是始作俑者 我叫它“严肃的胡说”,因为从严肃的一面来说, 我用一种细致的现实主义手法进行社论式地描绘 是我还小的时候学的,我反复使用它,从没放弃过。 这是我知道的唯一一种画风。它是很保守很正统的。 与此同时呢,你发现,我也用了“胡说”
This is a Scottish castle where people are playing golf indoors, and the trick was to bang the golf ball off of suits of armor -- which you can't see there. This was one of a series called "Zany Afternoons," which became a book.
这是一座苏格兰城堡,人们在里面玩高尔夫 规则是要把高尔夫球从一身中世纪铠甲上打下来 你们在那儿可能看不太清 这是我的系列图画“滑稽下午”中的一幅,后来出了书
This is a home-built rocket-propelled car. That's a 1953 Henry J -- I'm a bug for authenticity -- in a quiet neighborhood in Toledo.
这叫家装(土制)火箭推进车。这是辆1953年产的亨利J 在拖雷多一个安静的社区中——我重视本真性
This is my submission for the L.A. Museum of Film. You can probably tell Frank Gehry and I come from the same town.
这幅是我提交的洛杉矶电影博物馆设计图 你都能看出来,我和弗兰克 盖里(著名建筑师)是从一个地方来的。
My work is so personal and so strange that I have to invent my own lexicon for it. And I work a lot in what I call "retrofuturism," which is looking back to see how yesterday viewed tomorrow. And they're always wrong, always hilariously, optimistically wrong. And the peak time for that was the 30s, because the Depression was so dismal that anything to get away from the present into the future ... and technology was going to carry us along.
我的作品很个性化很奇特 所以我不得不为它发明新的词汇 我创作了很多,我称之为“复古未来主义” 就是回顾一下昨天是怎么看明天的 他们总是犯错,总是以很搞笑、乐观地方式犯着错 最高潮的时间是三十年代 因为大萧条太凄凉了 任何东西只要能把大家从现在带进未来(就行) 科技就是这样的东西
This is Popular Workbench. Popular science magazines in those days -- I had a huge collection of them from the '30s -- all they are is just poor people being asked to make sunglasses out of wire coat hangers and everything improvised and dreaming about these wonderful giant radio robots playing ice hockey at 300 miles an hour -- it's all going to happen, it's all going to be wonderful.
这是本《大众工作间》,一本当时很流行的科学杂志, 我收集了很多这样的三十年代的杂志 这些可怜的人,就像叫他们用晾衣架的铁丝来造墨镜一样 都是即兴创作 梦想着这些神奇的巨大的无线电机器人 以每小时300英里的时速玩儿着冰球 都会实现的,都会变得妙极了
Automotive retrofuturism is one of my specialties. I was both an automobile illustrator and an advertising automobile copywriter, so I have a lot of revenge to take on the subject. Detroit has always been halfway into the future -- the advertising half. This is the '58 Bulgemobile: so new, they make tomorrow look like yesterday. This is a chain gang of guys admiring the car. That's from a whole catalog -- it's 18 pages or so -- ran back in the days of the Lampoon, where I cut my teeth.
机动类复古未来主义是我的特长之一 因为我既是一个汽车插画画家,又是一个汽车广告文案 所以对这个主题我有点儿报复性心理 底特律总是已经有一只脚踏进未来了——广告中的那只脚—— 这是58年的Bulgemobile车:多新,他们让明天看上去像昨天 这是一票爱车族在膜拜这辆车。 那是从一整本目录册里来的,有差不多18页 回到我在《国家讽刺周刊》的日子,我那时候还把牙给磕了
Techno-archaeology is digging back and finding past miracles that never happened -- for good reason, usually. The zeppelin -- this was from a brochure about the zeppelin based, obviously, on the Hindenburg. But the zeppelin was the biggest thing that ever moved made by man. And it carried 56 people at the speed of a Buick at an altitude you could hear dogs bark, and it cost twice as much as a first-class cabin on the Normandie to fly it. So the Hindenburg wasn't, you know, it was inevitable it was going to go.
科技-考古的意思是说挖掘以前,找寻过去从未发生过的奇迹 当然通常是出于善意的。 齐柏林飞艇 - 这是从一个关于飞艇的小册子上来的 很显然,是取材于“兴登堡号” 飞艇是人类创造的会动的最大玩意儿 它能载56人,速度和一辆别克差不多,飞行高度能让你听见狗叫 另外想坐它飞,要比坐巨轮“诺曼底号”的头等舱还贵两倍 所以“兴登堡号”(惨剧)不是,你知道,它是不可避免,必将发生的。
This is auto-gyro jousting in Malibu in the 30s. The auto-gyro couldn't wait for the invention of the helicopter, but it should have -- it wasn't a big success. It's the only Spanish innovation, technologically, of the 20th century, by the way. You needed to know that.
这是1930年马里布的自转旋翼机长枪比武大赛 这个旋翼机还没等到直升飞机的发明, 但是它应该等等——它不是个巨大的成功 这是西班牙唯一的发明,科技类的,20世纪里,题外话 你要知道
The flying car which never got off the ground -- it was a post-war dream. My old man used to tell me we were going to get a flying car. This is pitched into the future from 1946, looking at the day all American families have them. "There's Moscow, Shirley. Hope they speak Esperanto!"
飞车从没离开过地面——算是后二战时代的一个梦吧 我老爸曾经告诉我,我们将来会有一辆飞车 这是从1946年跌进未来 看看将来,每个美国家庭都能拥有他们 插画的题注:“到莫斯科啦,雪莉,希望他们说世界语。”
Faux-nostalgia, which I'm sort of -- not, say, famous for, but I work an awful lot in it. It's the achingly sentimental yearning for times that never happened. Somebody once said that nostalgia is the one utterly most useless human emotion -- so I think that’s a case for serious play.
山寨怀旧,我其实,不是说成名于此吧,但是我画了很多这类的作品 那是一种对从未发生的过去柔情百转的留恋 有人曾经说过,怀旧是一种最最没用的人类情感 所以我觉得正好押住这个“严肃游戏”的主题
This is emblematic of it -- this is wing dining, recalling those balmy summer days somewhere over France in the 20s, dining on the wing of a plane. You can't see it very well here, but that's Hemingway reading some pages from his new novel to Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford until the slipstream blows him away.
这是其中有代表性的一个——这个叫机翼餐 回想起20年代的法国,那些温暖的夏日 在飞机的机翼上进餐。你在那儿可能看不太清 但是海明威正在朗读他的新小说 给菲茨杰拉德和福特 马多克斯 福特听,直到他被螺旋桨滑流吹走
This is tank polo in the South Hamptons. The brainless rich are more fun to make fun of than anybody. I do a lot of that.
这是南汉普顿的坦克马球,这是 开没脑子的有钱人的玩笑,比开其他人玩笑都好玩儿。我老干这事儿
And authenticity is a major part of my serious nonsense. I think it adds a huge amount. Those, for example, are Mark IV British tanks from 1916. They had two machine guns and a cannon, and they had 90 horsepower Ricardo engines. They went five miles an hour and inside it was 105 degrees in the pitch dark. And they had a canary hung inside the thing to make sure the Germans weren't going to use gas. Happy little story, isn't it?
还有,本真性是我“严肃的胡说”的一个重要部分 我觉得它给我的作品增色不少 那些,你比如,就是1916年英产的马克四型坦克 他们有两个机关枪和一个加农炮 还有90马力里卡多引擎 他们每小时只能走五英里,里面有华氏105度(摄氏40度),一片漆黑 他们这里面还挂着个金丝雀 以防德国人使用毒气。 多喜兴的小故事啊,不是么?
This is Motor Ritz Towers in Manhattan in the 30s, where you drove up to your front door, if you had the guts. Anybody who was anybody had an apartment there. I managed to stick in both the zeppelin and an ocean liner out of sheer enthusiasm. And I love cigars -- there's a cigar billboard down there.
这是三十年代的曼哈顿,奢华的还能进车的丽兹大厦 你有胆的话,可以开车直达你房间的正门 丽兹大厦有公寓的人非富则贵 纯粹为了个人喜好,我还想方设法把飞艇和一个巨轮给画进去了 我喜欢雪茄,那下面还有个雪茄的广告牌
And faux-nostalgia works even in serious subjects like war. This is those wonderful days of the Battle of Britain in 1940, when a Messerschmitt ME109 bursts into the House of Commons and buzzes around, just to piss off Churchill, who's down there somewhere. It's a fond memory of times past.
山寨怀旧还能用在很多严肃的主题上,比如说战争 这是1940年不列颠之战中的那些好日子 当梅塞斯密特Me-109型战斗机闯进英国下议院 嗡嗡做响,就为了气一气坐在下面的丘吉尔, 多么美妙的“往事”啊
Hyperbolic overkill is a way of taking exaggeration to the absolute ultimate limit, just for the fun of it. This was a piece I did -- a brochure again -- "RMS Tyrannic: The Biggest Thing in All the World." The copy, which you can't see because it goes on and on for several pages, says that steerage passengers can't get their to bunks before the voyage is over, and it's so safe it carries no insurance. It's obviously modeled on the Titanic. But it's not a cri de coeur about man's hubris in the face of the elements. It's just a sick, silly joke.
巨无霸是一种把夸张伸展到绝对极限的表达方式 就为了它的好玩儿。这幅画我画的,又是一个小册子 英国皇家邮轮泰霸尼克号,世上最大的玩意儿 这一版,你没法儿看,因为它就这么下去好多好多页 说下等舱的乘客还没到他们的铺位呢,整个行程已经结束了 它太安全都不需要保险 这原型当然是泰坦尼克号 但是它不是对人类夜郎自大的心灵恸哭 它就是一个疯疯癫癫,傻了吧唧的笑话
Shamelessly cheap is something, I think -- this will wake you up. It has no meaning, just -- Desoto discovers the Mississippi, and it's a Desoto discovering the Mississippi. I did that as a quick back page -- I had like four hours to do a back page for an issue of the Lampoon, and I did that, and I thought, "Well, I'm ashamed. I hope nobody knows it." People wrote in for reprints of that thing.
不知廉耻的低俗是,我觉得,绝对能把你叫醒的 它没有什么任何意义,就是,迪索托发现密西西比 而这就是,一辆迪索托汽车发现密西西比河 我是速成的这个封底画,我当时只有四个小时画一个封底 为一期《国家讽刺周刊》,我就画了它 我想:“就这样吧,虽然很惭愧,希望没人注意到。” 结果居然有读者写信来要求再版那幅画。
Urban absurdism -- that's what the New Yorker really calls for. I try to make life in New York look even weirder than it is with those covers. I've done about 40 of them, and I'd say 30 of them are based on that concept. I was driving down 7th Avenue one night at 3 a.m., and this steam pouring out of the street, and I thought, "What causes that?" And that -- who’s to say?
城市荒诞主义——这是纽约客给它取的大名儿 我画这些封面的时候,试图让纽约的生活看上去比实际上更光怪陆离 我画了大概40幅左右,其中有大概30幅是基于这个理念 我有一次夜里三点开车过第七街 就看见一股蒸汽从地下冒出来,然后我就想:“这是什么造成的呢?”之后—— 谁又能说什么呢?
The Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan in New York -- it's a very somber place. I thought I could jazz it up a bit, have a little fun with it.
纽约大都会博物馆里的古埃及顿都神庙——是个很阴郁的地方 我就想把它弄活泼点儿,搞得有意思点儿
This is a very un-PC cover. Not in New York. I couldn't resist, and I got a nasty email from some environmental group saying, "This is too serious and solemn to make fun of. You should be ashamed, please apologize on our website." Haven't got around to it yet but -- I may.
这封面很不合时宜,至少在纽约不合适。 我是实在忍不住要画,之后我收到一封从什么环保组织发来的烦人电邮 “这个问题神圣不可搞笑,你应该感到惭愧 请在我们的网站上道歉” 我一直没时间做这件事儿——但说不定我会
This is the word side of my brain. (Laughter) I love the word "Eurotrash." (Laughter) That's all the Eurotrash coming through JFK customs.
这是我大脑中文字的一面 (笑声) 我喜欢这个词“欧洲滥人” (笑声) 这是所有“欧洲滥人”经纽约肯尼迪机场入海关时的特别通道
This was the New York bike messenger meeting the Tour de France. If you live in New York, you know how the bike messengers move. Except that he's carrying a tube for blueprints and stuff -- they all do -- and a lot of people thought that meant it was a terrorist about to shoot rockets at the Tour de France -- sign of our times, I guess.
这是纽约自行车递送小弟迎战环法自行车大赛 如果你住在纽约,你就知道这些递送员是怎么辗转腾挪的 除了他们还会背个装图纸一类的画筒——他们全都这样 很多读者还以为他是恐怖分子 正要向环法自行车赛发射火箭炮呢 算是我们时代的印记了,我猜
This is the only fashion cover I've ever done. It's the little old lady that lives in a shoe, and then this thing -- the title of that was, "There Goes the Neighborhood." I don't know a hell of a lot about fashion -- I was told to do what they call a Mary Jane, and then I got into this terrible fight between the art director and the editor saying: "Put a strap on it" -- "No, don't put a strap on it" -- "Put a strap on it -- "Don't put a strap on it" -- because it obscures the logo and looks terrible and it's bad and -- I finally chickened out and did it for the sake of the authenticity of the shoe.
这是我画的唯一一个时尚封面 这些老太太们住在鞋里面,然后出来这么个东西 这个题目叫:“瞧瞧那个小区” 对时尚,我懂得不多 我被叫来画一个被她们称作玛丽简的鞋 之后我被卷进艺术总监和总编的一场旷日持久的争论中 一个说要鞋带,一个说不要,要,不要 因为要的话就会挡住杂志标题,而且看上去也不美,不好 但是我最后还是打退堂鼓了,为了保证这个鞋的本真性
This is a tiny joke -- E-ZR pass. One letter makes an idea.
这是一个小玩笑——“更”快捷收费站,一字之差就是个好主意
This is a big joke. This is the audition for "King Kong." (Laughter) People always ask me, where do you get your ideas, how do your ideas come? Truth about that one is I had a horrible red wine hangover, in the middle of the night, this came to me like a Xerox -- all I had to do was write it down. It was perfectly clear. I didn't do any thinking about it. And then when it ran, a lovely lady, an old lady named Mrs. Edgar Rosenberg -- if you know that name -- called me and said she loved the cover, it was so sweet. Her former name was Fay Wray, and so that was -- I didn't have the wit to say, "Take the painting."
这是个大玩笑 这是金刚的试镜现场 (笑声) 总有人问我,你都是哪里找到灵感的,你怎么想到这些点子的 说实在的,这是在有一天我喝红酒宿醉 大半夜,这个想法突然闪现——我唯一要做的就是把它写下来 清晰无比,我想都不需要想 出版以后,一个可爱的女士,叫埃德加 罗森伯格女士 如果你知道她是谁的话——打电话给我,跟我说她特别喜欢这幅画,太贴心了 她以前叫菲伊·雷,(1933年版金刚的女主角),所以呢 我当时傻了吧唧的,也没说,“把画拿走吧”
Finally, this was a three-page cover, never done before, and I don't think it will ever be done again -- successive pages in the front of the magazine. It's the ascent of man using an escalator, and it's in three parts. You can't see it all together, unfortunately, but if you look at it enough, you can sort of start to see how it actually starts to move. (Applause)
最后,这是个三页的封面,以前从来没做过 我估计也不会再有了 连页的杂志封面 这是《人类的攀升》利用了一个自动扶梯,分三个部分 你没法一下看全,遗憾的是,但是如果你看得足够久 你就能发现它实际上是会动的 (掌声)
Pretty elegant. Nothing like a crash to end a joke. That completes my oeuvre. I would just like to add a crass commercial -- I have a kids' book coming out in the fall called "Marvel Sandwiches," a compendium of all the serious play that ever was, and it’s going to be available in fine bookstores, crummy bookstores, tables on the street in October. So thank you very much.
不错吧,什么都没有最后摔一跤更适合结束一个笑话。这就是我的艺术生涯。 我还想贸然插一个的广告 我马上有个儿童读物今年秋天要出了,叫“神奇的三明治” 算是对所有“严肃游戏”的提纲携领吧 在高雅的,不高雅的书店 路边的书报亭有售,尽在十月 非常感谢