I love museums. Have you guys ever been to the Natural History Museum? In New York City?
我爱博物馆。 你们去过自然历史博物馆吗? 在纽约市的?
(Applause)
(掌声)
So one of the things that I do is I take my kids to the museum. Recently I took them to the Natural History Museum. I had my two sons with me, Sabian and Dabith. And we go into the front entrance of the museum, and there's that amazing sculpture of Teddy Roosevelt out there. You guys know which one I'm talking about. Teddy Roosevelt is sitting there with one hand on the horse, bold, strong, sleeves rolled up. I don't know if he's bare-chested, but it kind of feels like it.
我会带着我的孩子去博物馆。 最近,我带他们去了 自然历史博物馆。 我有两个儿子,Sabian和Dabith。 我们从博物馆的前门进去, 那里有着西奥多·罗斯福 令人惊诧的雕塑。 你们知道我说的是哪个。 西奥多·罗斯福坐在那里, 一只手放在马背上, 勇敢,强壮,跃跃欲试。 我不知道他是不是没穿 内里衬衣,但我感觉是没穿。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And on the left-hand side of him is a Native American walking. And on the right-hand side of him is an African-American walking. And as we're moving up the stairs, getting closer to the sculpture, my oldest son, who's nine, says, "Dad, how come he gets to ride, and they have to walk?"
在他的左手边有一个印第安人站着。 在他的右手边有一个非裔美国人站着。 当我们走上台阶, 离雕塑越来越近时, 我九岁的大儿子说道, “爸爸,为什么他可以骑马, 而他们要走路呢?”
It stopped me in my tracks. It stopped me in my tracks. There was so much history that we would have to go through to try to explain that, and that's something I try to do with them anyways. It's a question that I probably would have never really asked. But fundamentally what he was saying was, "That doesn't look fair. Dad, that doesn't look fair. And why is this thing that's so not fair sitting outside of such an amazing institution." And his question got me wondering, is there a way for us to amend our public sculptures, our national monuments? Not erase them, but is there a way to amend them?
这个问题让我怔住了。 这个问题让我怔住了。 要回答这个问题 就要牵扯到很多历史, 我也一直想要回答这些问题。 这个问题,有可能我永远不会问。 但是本质上,他在说, “那看起来不公平。 爸爸,那看起来不公平。 为什么这么不公平的雕塑 可以摆放在那雄伟的博物馆外面?” 他的问题让我沉思, 有没有一种方式可以让我们 改变我们的公共雕塑, 改变我们的国家纪念碑? 不是移除它们, 而是找一种方式修改它们。
Now, I didn't grow up going to museums. That's not my history. My mother was 15 years old when I was born. She is amazing. My father was struggling with his own things for most of my life. If you really want to know the truth, the only reason I got into art is because of a woman. There was this amazing, amazing, fantastic, beautiful, smart woman, four years older than me, and I wanted to go out with her. But she said, "You're too young and you're not thinking about your future." So I ran on down to the junior college, registered for some classes, ran on back, and basically was like, "I'm thinking about my future now."
我小时候不常去博物馆。 我没有这个爱好。 我出生时,我的母亲才15岁。 她是伟大的。 在我生命的大部分时间, 我父亲都在挣扎于自己的事情。 如果你想知道真相, 我步入艺术殿堂的真正原因 只是为了一个女人。 那是一个优秀的,美丽的,聪明的女人, 比我大四岁, 我想和她约会。 但她说,“你太年轻了, 而且你没有考虑过未来。” 所以我跑到大专院校, 注册了几门课, 跑了回来, 基本上就像是, “我现在考虑了我的未来。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
"Can we go out?"
“我们可以约会了吗?”
For the record, she's even more amazing. I married her.
顺便说一下, 她比我想象的更让人惊叹。 我娶了她。
(Applause)
(掌声)
So when I randomly ran down to the junior college and registered for classes, I really wasn't paying attention to what I was registering to.
实际上,当我跑到大专院校 注册课程的时候, 我根本没有注意我注册了什么课。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
So I ended up with an art history class, and I didn't know a thing about art history. But something amazing happened when I went into that class. For the first time in my academic career, my visual intelligence was required of me. For the first time. The professor would put up an image, bold strokes of blues and yellows, and say, "Who's that?" And I'd go, "That's Van Gogh. Clearly that is Van Gogh. I got this."
结果我选的是艺术历史课, 而我对艺术历史一无所知。 但当我踏进课堂时, 不可思议的事情发生了。 在我的职业生涯中, 我第一次需要用到视觉智能。 第一次。 教授放了一张图片, 蓝色、黄色的粗线条, 问道,“这是谁?” 我回答,“这是梵高。很明显是梵高。 我知道。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I got a B in that class. For me, that was amazing. In high school, let's just say I wasn't a great student. OK? In high school, my GPA was .65.
那门课我拿了B。 对我来说,这已经很棒了。 在高中,我不是个好学生。知道吗? 在高中,我的GPA只有0.65。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Decimal point first, six five. So me getting a B was huge, huge, absolutely huge. And because of the fact that I realized that I was able to learn things visually that I couldn't learn in other ways, this became my strategy, this became my tactic for understanding everything else. I wanted to stay in this relationship. Things were going well.
前面只有小数点,六,五。 所以拿到B是一个很大很大的 成就。 正因为我意识到我可以 通过视觉来学习一些 用其它方式无法学习到的东西, 这变成了我的策略,变成了 我理解其他事物的手段。 我想留在这段关系中。 事情发展得很顺利。
I decided, let me keep taking these art history classes. One of the last art history classes, I will not forget, I will never forget. It was one of those survey art history classes. Anybody ever have one of those survey art history classes, where they try to teach you the entire history of art in a single semester? I'm talking about cave paintings and Jackson Pollock just crunched together all in the same -- It doesn't really work, but they try anyway. Well, at the beginning of the semester, I looked at the book, and in this 400-page book was about a 14-page section that was on black people in painting. Now, this was a crammed in section that had representations of black people in painting and black people who painted. It was poorly curated, let's just put it that way.
我决定继续上这些艺术历史课。 我永远不会忘记艺术历史 的最后一堂课,永远不会忘记。 那是一堂艺术史概论。 有人上过艺术史概论课吗? 那种在短短一学期,就试图讲完 整个艺术史的课。 我说的是从洞穴壁画 到杰克逊·波洛克, 把所有艺术史都放进来 其实学不到什么, 但是还是有这门课存在。 刚开学的时候, 我看了看教科书。 在这本400页的书里面 有14页的篇幅 讲了关于绘画里的黑人。 就这么一点儿的篇幅 涵盖了所有画里出现的黑人 和黑人画家。 说白了,没什么人会注意。
(Laughter)
(笑声)
Nonetheless I was really excited about it, because in all the other classes that I had, we didn't even have that conversation. We didn't talk about it at all. So imagine my surprise when I get to class and on the day that we're supposed to go over that particular chapter, my professor announces, "We're going to skip this chapter today because we do not have time to go through it."
但我对此感到很兴奋, 因为我上的所有其他的课 连这么一点点篇幅都没有。 压根儿没有人讨论。 所以我带着疑惑 走入课堂, 那天我们应该讲那个章节, 我的教授说, “我们今天就跳过这章, “因为我们没时间了。”
"Whoa, I'm sorry, hold on, professor, professor. I'm sorry. This is a really important chapter to me. Are we going to go over it at any point?"
“哇,不好意思, 等一下,教授,教授。” “很抱歉,但那章对我来说意义非凡。 我们真的完全略过吗?”
"Titus, we don't have time for this."
“Titus,我们没时间过这章了。”
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please, I really need to understand. Clearly the author thinks that this is significant. Why are we skipping over this?"
“很抱歉,真的很抱歉, 但我真的需要搞清楚缘由。 很明显,作者本人 觉得这一篇很重要。 为什么我们要略过呢?”
"Titus, I do not have time for this."
“Titus,我没时间。”
"OK, last question, I'm really sorry here. When can we talk, because we need to talk."
“好吧,最后一个问题, 非常不好意思。 我们什么时候能谈谈?必须谈谈。”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
I went to her office hours. I ended up getting kicked out of her office. I went to the dean. The dean finally told me, "I can't force her to teach anything." And I knew in that moment if I wanted to understand this history, if I wanted to understand the roles of those folks who had to walk, I was probably going to have to figure that out myself. So ... above you right here on the slide is a painting by Frans Hals. This is one of the kinds of images that was in that chapter. I taught myself how to paint by going to museums and looking at images like this.
我去了她的答疑时段。 结果呢,被她赶了出来。 我去找院长。 院长告诉我:“我不能 对她的教学指手画脚。” 那一刻我明白了, 如果我想要了解那段历史, 如果我想要了解 为什么那群人必须得走, 我需要靠自己找到答案。 所以, 你们看到的这张幻灯片, 是弗兰斯·哈尔斯的一幅画。 这是在那篇章节里的 其中一幅画。 我通过去博物馆 观摩类似的画作,自学了画画。
I want to show you something.
我想让你们看一个东西。
I made this. I --
我画了这幅, 我——
(Applause)
(掌声)
I made some alterations. You'll see there are some slight differences in the painting. All this art history that I had been absorbing helped me to realize that painting is a language. There is a reason why he is the highest in the composition here. There is a reason why the painter is showing us this gold necklace here. He's trying to tell us something about the economic status of these people in these paintings. Painting is a visual language where everything in the painting is meaningful, is important. It's coded. But sometimes, because of the compositional structure, because of compositional hierarchy, it's hard to see other things. This silk is supposed to tell us also that they have quite a bit of money. There's more written about dogs in art history than there are about this other character here. Historically speaking, in research on these kinds of paintings, I can find out more about the lace that the woman is wearing in this painting -- the manufacturer of the lace -- than I can about this character here, about his dreams, about his hopes, about what he wanted out of life.
我做了些调整。 你们可以看到这幅画 跟上面那幅有些不同的地方。 通过对艺术史的学习, 我意识到画画是一门语言。 他之所以这么高 是有原因的。 作者画了这条金项链, 也是有原因的。 他想要通过这个告诉我们 这些画中人的阶级。 画作是视觉语言。 画中的所有元素 都是有意义的,重要的。 都想要传达一些信息。 但有些时候,由于构造框架, 由于构造等级阶层, 我们很难看到别的东西。 这个丝缎试图告诉我们这些人很有钱。 艺术史里, 关于狗的描述, 要比这里的一位人物多得多。 从历史的角度来说, 通过对于这种类型的画作的研究, 我可以找出的 关于这幅画里女性 穿戴的蕾丝的信息, 关于蕾丝的制造商的信息—— 相比这位男性的梦想和追求, 以及关于他想要的 生活的信息还要多。
I want to show you something. I don't want you to think that this is about eradication. It's not. The oil that you saw me just put inside of this paint is linseed oil. It becomes transparent over time, so eventually what's going to happen is these faces will emerge a little bit. What I'm trying to do, what I'm trying to show you, is how to shift your gaze just slightly, just momentarily, just momentarily, to ask yourself the question, why do some have to walk? What is the impact of these kinds of sculptures at museums? What is the impact of these kinds of paintings on some of our most vulnerable in society, seeing these kinds of depictions of themselves all the time? I'm not saying erase it. We can't erase this history. It's real. We have to know it. I think of it in the same way we think of --
我还想要给你们看一些东西。 不要以为, 我在毁坏这幅作品。 我并没有。 我使用的这种油, 是亚麻籽油。 它过段时间会变透明。 所以最终, 这些脸, 还是会露出来。 我想要做的,以及 我想要让你们看的是, 如何轻微转移你们的注意力, 只是暂时的, 只是暂时的, 问问自己一个问题, 为什么有些人必须得走路呢? 这些在博物馆里的雕刻 会为我们带来什么样的影响呢? 当我们社会中最脆弱的群体 时时刻刻都会看到 这样的画面的时候, 这些画作会对他们 产生什么影响呢? 我不是说要抹除这样的画作, 我们无法抹除历史。 这些都是既定存在的, 我们必须对此有所了解。 我和大家的想法 是一致的。
Let me step back a second. You remember old-school cameras, where when you took a picture, you actually had to focus. Right? You'd put the camera up, and if I wanted you in focus, I would move the lens a little to the left and you would come forward. I could move the lens a little to the right, and you would go back and the folks in the background would come out. I'm just trying to do that here. I'm trying to give you that opportunity. I'm trying to answer that question that my son had. I want to make paintings, I want to make sculptures that are honest, that wrestle with the struggles of our past but speak to the diversity and the advances of our present. And we can't do that by taking an eraser and getting rid of stuff. That's just not going to work. I think that we should do it in the same way the American Constitution works. When we have a situation where we want to change a law in the American Constitution, we don't erase the other one. Alongside that is an amendment, something that says, "This is where we were, but this is where we are right now." I figure if we can do that, then that will help us understand a little bit about where we're going.
我们来回溯一下。 记得老式相机吗? 当你想要拍照的时候, 你需要对焦对吧? 你得架起相机, 如果我想对焦你, 我就得把镜头向左移一点, 你也得往前站一步。 我也可以把镜头往右移一点儿, 你就得往后走一点,在后面的 那些人镜头里也能看得清。 我现在就在做类似的事情。 我在试图让你们能够 有机会看清后面的人。 我在试图回答 我儿子问我的那个问题。 我想要做出真实的 绘画 和雕塑, 是和我们走过的曲折息息相关的, 和我们的多样性以及 现今社会的进步是息息相关的, 我们不能靠抹去历史来进步。 那样做是行不通的。 我认为我们应该 向美国国会学习。 当我们出现了问题, 想要更改美国国会的法律, 我们不用去推倒重来, 只需要对它们进行修改, 修改成 “这就是我们的历史, 但现在我们有所进步。” 我发现,如果能做到, 就会帮助我们更好的理解 我们的现在和未来。
Thank you.
谢谢。
(Applause)
(掌声)