I was asked to come here and speak about creation. And I only have 15 minutes, and I see they're counting already. And I can -- in 15 minutes, I think I can touch only a very rather janitorial branch of creation, which I call "creativity." Creativity is how we cope with creation. While creation sometimes seems a bit un-graspable, or even pointless, creativity is always meaningful. See, for instance, in this picture. You know, creation is what put that dog in that picture, and creativity is what makes us see a chicken on his hindquarters.
我受邀来这里讲讲艺术创造。 我只有15分钟,而且我看到他们已经开始计时了。 我可以——在15分钟内,我认为我只能触及有关创作的入门部分, 我称之为创意。 创意就是我们如何理解创作。 尽管创作有时看上去有点让人摸不着头脑,甚至毫无意义, 但创意通常都是有意义的。 比如,在这幅图中, 你知道,创作就是何以将这条狗放入画中, 而创意就是何以我们会看到它后腿上的那只鸡。
When you think about -- you know, creativity has a lot to do with causality too. You know, when I was a teenager, I was a creator. I just did things. Then I became an adult and started knowing who I was, and tried to maintain that persona -- I became creative. It wasn't until I actually did a book and a retrospective exhibition, that I could track exactly -- looks like all the craziest things that I had done, all my drinking, all my parties -- they followed a straight line that brings me to the point that actually I'm talking to you at this moment. Though it's actually true, you know, the reason I'm talking to you right now is because I was born in Brazil. If I was born in Monterey, probably would be in Brazil.
如果你仔细想想,你知道,创意也经常涉及到因果关系。 你知道,当我十来岁时,我是创作艺术的。 我成天做这做那。 而当我成年并开始了解我是谁, 并努力保持这一人格时——我变得有创意。 这些是直到我写了一本书并完成了一次巡回展后,我才确切地回想出来的—— 就好像我以前干过的那些疯狂的事儿,那些酩酊大醉,那些狂欢派对—— 这些都连成一条直线把我带领到此时此刻 让我站在这里和大家说话。 真是这样的,你知道 我现在跟大家说话的原因就是我生于巴西。 如果我出生于蒙特雷,那也应该是在巴西。
You know, I was born in Brazil and grew up in the '70s under a climate of political distress, and I was forced to learn to communicate in a very specific way -- in a sort of a semiotic black market. You couldn't really say what you wanted to say; you had to invent ways of doing it. You didn't trust information very much. That led me to another step of why I'm here today, is because I really liked media of all kinds. I was a media junkie, and eventually got involved with advertising. My first job in Brazil was actually to develop a way to improve the readability of billboards, and based on speed, angle of approach and actually blocks of text. It was very -- actually, it was a very good study, and got me a job in an ad agency. And they also decided that I had to -- to give me a very ugly Plexiglas trophy for it.
要知道我生在巴西,成长于70年代, 政治压迫的年代, 我被迫学会以一种特殊的方法沟通—— 类似一种符号黑话。 你不能说你真正想说的, 你不得不想别的法子去说。 你也不太相信那些消息。 而导致我迈出走到今天的另一步就是 因为我真是非常喜欢所有类型的媒体。 我是一个媒体痴,而最终投身到广告行业。 我在巴西的第一份工作 就是想办法提高告示牌的可读性, 这可读性就是基于速度、展示的角度以及实际的文字块。 这是一次非常好的学习, 让我得到一份广告公司的工作。 而且他们还决定必须 要发给我一个很丑的塑料奖杯来奖励我的工作。
And another point -- why I'm here -- is that the day I went to pick up the Plexiglas trophy, I rented a tuxedo for the first time in my life, picked the thing -- didn't have any friends. On my way out, I had to break a fight apart. Somebody was hitting somebody else with brass knuckles. They were in tuxedos, and fighting. It was very ugly. And also -- advertising people do that all the time -- (Laughter) -- and I -- well, what happened is when I went back, it was on the way back to my car, the guy who got hit decided to grab a gun -- I don't know why he had a gun -- and shoot the first person he decided to be his aggressor. The first person was wearing a black tie, a tuxedo. It was me. Luckily, it wasn't fatal, as you can all see. And, even more luckily, the guy said that he was sorry and I bribed him for compensation money, otherwise I press charges. And that's how -- with this money I paid for a ticket to come to the United States in 1983, and that's very -- the basic reason I'm talking to you here today: because I got shot. (Laughter) (Applause)
而另外一点造成我今天站在这里—— 就是我去领那个塑料奖杯的那天, 我平生第一次租了一套晚礼服, 领了那个奖杯——身边没一个朋友。 当我出去时,我不得不杀出一条血路。 有人戴着铜指节环在痛揍别的什么人。 他们都穿着晚礼服在打架。那场面太丑陋了。 而且——广告界的人每天都是这样的——(观众笑声)—— ——然后,当我走回我的车时,事情发生了, 那个被打的家伙决定去拿把枪—— 我也不知道他为什么会有把手枪—— 去射他认为在跟他挑衅的第一个人。 这第一个人打着黑色领带,穿着件黑色晚礼服。就是我。 幸好,没把我打死,要不你们也看不到我了。 而更幸运地是,这家伙还说他很抱歉, 于是我管他要了笔赔偿金,否则我就要起诉他。 而就是这样,在1983年,我用这笔钱买了张机票来到美国, 而这就是我今天能在这里跟大家说话的根本原因。 因为我挨了一枪(笑声,掌声)
Well, when I started working with my own work, I decided that I shouldn't do images. You know, I became -- I took this very iconoclastic approach. Because when I decided to go into advertising, I wanted to do -- I wanted to airbrush naked people on ice, for whiskey commercials, that's what I really wanted to do. (Laughter) But I -- they didn't let me do it, so I just -- you know, they would only let me do other things. But I wasn't into selling whiskey; I was into selling ice. The first works were actually objects. It was kind of a mixture of found object, product design and advertising. And I called them relics. They were displayed first at Stux Gallery in 1983.
当我开始创作自己的作品时,我决定不碰图像。 要知道,我采取的是非常反传统的进路。 因为当我决定从事广告行业时,我想做的是—— 在冰上喷绘裸体的人,这是为威士忌做广告, 我真正想干的是这个。 但是他们不让我这么干,所以我只好—— 他们只让我干些别的。 但我不太喜欢推销威士忌,我喜欢卖冰块。 最初的作品都是些实际的物体。 有点像是拾得艺术品,产品设计和广告的混合。 我称之为“崩溃”。 他们最早于1983年在司塔克斯美术馆(纽约)展出。
This is the clown skull. Is a remnant of a race of -- a very evolved race of entertainers. They lived in Brazil, long time ago. (Laughter) This is the Ashanti joystick. Unfortunately, it has become obsolete because it was designed for Atari platform. A Playstation II is in the works, maybe for the next TED I'll bring it. The rocking podium. (Laughter) This is the pre-Columbian coffeemaker. (Laughter) Actually, the idea came out of an argument that I had at Starbucks, that I insisted that I wasn't having Colombian coffee; the coffee was actually pre-Columbian. The Bonsai table. The entire Encyclopedia Britannica bound in a single volume, for travel purposes. And the half tombstone, for people who are not dead yet.
这个是小丑骨架。 这是一种进化程度很高的艺人物种的遗骸。 很久以前,他们生活在巴西。(笑声) 这是阿善提(非洲西部)游戏杆。 不幸的是,它已经没用了,因为它是为Atari游戏平台设计的。(1976年Atari公司在美国推出史上第一部正真意义上的家用游戏主机系统) 作品里还用到了一个PS2,也许下次TED请我我再带来。 摇摇领奖台。 这个是哥伦布发现美洲之前的咖啡机。 其实这个灵感来自有次我在星巴克里和他们争执, 我坚持认为我喝的不是哥伦比亚咖啡。 那咖啡是哥伦布发现美洲前的(指咖啡豆太陈了)。 盆景桌子。 大英百科全书一卷本,方便旅行携带。 以及半个墓碑,为那些还没死的人准备的。
I wanted to take that into the realm of images, and I decided to make things that had the same identity conflicts. So I decided to do work with clouds. Because clouds can mean anything you want. But now I wanted to work in a very low-tech way, so something that would mean at the same time a lump of cotton, a cloud and Durer's praying hands -- although this looks a lot more like Mickey Mouse's praying hands. But I was still, you know -- this is a kitty cloud. They're called "Equivalents," after Alfred Stieglitz's work. "The Snail." But I was still working with sculpture, and I was really trying to go flatter and flatter. "The Teapot."
我想把这些带入图片领域, 因此我决定要创造带有这类特性冲突的东西。 所以我决定要用云彩创作。 因为云彩可以任凭你去想像。 但是现在我想用技术含量非常低的方式创作, 因此有些东西可能同时意味着 一大团棉花,一片云彩,以及丢勒的《祈祷之手》(丢勒是文艺复兴时期德国艺术大师) 虽然这看上去更像米老鼠的祈祷之手。 但我还是在努力,——这个是猫咪云。 根据Alfred Stieglitz(20世界纪初叶美国摄影家)的作品,这叫做等价物。 蜗牛。 我还尝试雕塑创作, 而且我真的是越来越趋于平面化。 茶壶。
I had a chance to go to Florence, in -- I think it was '94, and I saw Ghiberti's "Door of Paradise." And he did something that was very tricky. He put together two different media from different periods of time. First, he got an age-old way of making it, which was relief, and he worked this with three-point perspective, which was brand-new technology at the time. And it's totally overkill. And your eye doesn't know which level to read. And you become trapped into this kind of representation. So I decided to make these very simple renderings, that at first they are taken as a line drawing -- you know, something that's very -- and then I did it with wire. The idea was to -- because everybody overlooks white -- like pencil drawings, you know? And they would look at it -- "Ah, it's a pencil drawing." Then you have this double take and see that it's actually something that existed in time. It had a physicality, and you start going deeper and deeper into sort of narrative that goes this way, towards the image. So this is "Monkey with Leica." "Relaxation." "Fiat Lux."
我有次去了趟佛罗伦萨,应该是1994年, 我看到了Ghiberti(意大利文艺复兴早期青铜雕刻家)的“天堂之门”。 他的手法非常有意思。 他把两个不同时代的两种不同媒介放在一起。 首先,他使用一种古老的方式,浮雕, 然后他采用三点透视法进行浮雕,在当时这是全新的技术。 结果简直没治了! 你的眼睛不知道该阅读哪一层次。 最后你就被困在这种表现手法中。 因为我就想做这类的简单翻版, 开始时是单线条绘画的方式。 你知道,就是这类的——然后我开始用电线。 理由是——因为大家都对白色视而不见——就像铅笔画。 这样当他们看见时会说——啊,这是幅铅笔画。 当你弄着弄着突然就发觉这个的确是像某个东西啊。 这样它就具有了一个实体, 然后你就开始继续深入到某种诠释中, 继续下去就成为一幅图画。比如这个“拿着莱卡相机的猴子”。 “悠闲” “FIAT灯”(Cate Hogdahl和 Nelson Ruiz-Acal 设计)
And the same way the history of representation evolved from line drawings to shaded drawings. And I wanted to deal with other subjects. I started taking that into the realm of landscape, which is something that's almost a picture of nothing. I made these pictures called "Pictures of Thread," and I named them after the amount of yards that I used to represent each picture. These always end up being a photograph at the end, or more like an etching in this case. So this is a lighthouse. This is "6,500 Yards," after Corot. "9,000 Yards," after Gerhard Richter. And I don't know how many yards, after John Constable.
正如艺术表现的历史 是从画线条发展到画阴影。 我还想尝试其他主题。 我开始把这种方法应用到风景画中, 结果简直就是什么也不是。 我把这些画叫做“线画”, 这些画的名字就是我用来完成每幅画的线的长度。 最终完成的总是好像一张照片, 这张更像是版画。 这是一座灯塔。 这是“6500码”,源自Corot(19世纪法国风景画家),“9000码”,源自Gerhard Richter(当代德国画家) 这个我不知道用了多少码线,源自John Constable(19世纪英国风景画家)。
Departing from the lines, I decided to tackle the idea of points, like which is more similar to the type of representation that we find in photographs themselves. I had met a group of children in the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts, and I did work and play with them. I got some photographs from them. Upon my arrival in New York, I decided -- they were children of sugar plantation workers. And by manipulating sugar over a black paper, I made portraits of them. These are -- (Applause) -- Thank you. This is "Valentina, the Fastest." It was just the name of the child, with the little thing you get to know of somebody that you meet very briefly. "Valicia." "Jacynthe."
玩够了线头以后我决定尝试使用点点, 有点类似摄影艺术中的表现手法。 我在加勒比海的圣基斯岛(Saint Kitts)上遇到一群孩子, 我和他们边工作边玩。 拍了一些他们的相片。 当我回到纽约,我决定 因为他们是糖料种植工人的孩子。 所以我在一张黑纸上堆放砂糖,制作了他们的肖像。 这些(观众掌声) 谢谢。这是“飞毛腿Valentina”。 这就是这孩子的名字, 还有跟他们短暂相聚时所了解到的一些小细节。 “Valicia”。 “Jacynthe”。
But another layer of representation was still introduced. Because I was doing this while I was making these pictures, I realized that I could add still another thing I was trying to make a subject -- something that would interfere with the themes, so chocolate is very good, because it has -- it brings to mind ideas that go from scatology to romance. And so I decided to make these pictures, and they were very large, so you had to walk away from it to be able to see them. So they're called "Pictures of Chocolate." Freud probably could explain chocolate better than I. He was the first subject. And Jackson Pollock also.
还有一层表现手法要介绍给大家。 因为我做这些图片时我经常舔手指, 我发现我还可以加入点别的东西 我想做一类主题—— 就是不同题目之间可以相互干扰, 所以巧克力就很不错,因为 它既能带来从粪便到浪漫的各种联想。 所以我决定做这样的画, 它们很大,因此你必须离远一些才能看明白。 它们叫做巧克力画。 弗洛伊德对巧克力的解释可能比我更好。他成为第一个主题。 还有Jackson Pollock 。(20世纪美国抽象表现主义画家)
Pictures of crowds are particularly interesting, because, you know, you go to that -- you try to figure out the threshold with something you can define very easily, like a face, goes into becoming just a texture. "Paparazzi." I used the dust at the Whitney Museum to render some pieces of their collection. And I picked minimalist pieces because they're about specificity. And you render this with the most non-specific material, which is dust itself. Like, you know, you have the skin particles of every single museum visitor. They do a DNA scan of this, they will come up with a great mailing list. This is Richard Serra.
有关人群的图画非常有趣, 因为,你知道,你要 你试着把它和你最容易辨认的东西联系起来, 比如人脸,这样就呈现出人脸的肌理。 “狗仔队”。 我在惠特尼博物馆用尘土来表现他们的一些藏品。 我选的都是极简主义的作品,因为它们都强调特异性。 而你使用最不特异的材料来重现它们 也就是尘土。 比如,你知道,你有每一个来参观的访客的皮屑, 他们做一个DNA扫描,就能得到一个很长的地址清单。 这是Richard Serra(美国极简主义艺术家)
I bought a computer, and [they] told me it had millions of colors in it. You know an artist's first response to this is, who counted it? You know? And I realized that I never worked with color, because I had a hard time controlling the idea of single colors. But once they're applied to numeric structure, then you can feel more comfortable. So the first time I worked with colors was by making these mosaics of Pantone swatches. They end up being very large pictures, and I photographed with a very large camera -- an 8x10 camera. So you can see the surface of every single swatch -- like in this picture of Chuck Close. And you have to walk very far to be able to see it. Also, the reference to Gerhard Richter's use of color charts -- and the idea also entering another realm of representation that's very common to us today, which is the bit map. I ended up narrowing the subject to Monet's "Haystacks."
我买了一台计算机,据说它里头有上百万色彩。 你知道一个艺术家的第一反应就是,有人数过吗? 然后我发现我以前从来没使用过色彩, 因为我很难搞定单一色彩这个概念。 而基本上是采用符号结构, 然后才会觉得比较舒服。 所以我第一次用色彩创造就是用彩通(Pantone,美国彩色系统供应商,全球色彩标准权威)的色卡制作的马赛克图片。 结果做出来的图都非常巨大, 我用一部非常大的照相机才能拍全—— 一部8X10的照相机。 这样你才能看清每一张色卡的表面—— 像这幅“Chuck Close”。(美国照相写实主义代表人) 你必须走到非常远的地方才能看明白。 还有用颜色方块重现Gerhard Richter 的作品—— 而这也涉及到今天我们很常见的另一种表现艺术的领域, 就是点阵图。 我最后瞄准的主题是莫奈的干草垛。
This is something I used to do as a joke -- you know, make -- the same like -- Robert Smithson's "Spiral Jetty" -- and then leaving traces, as if it was done on a tabletop. I tried to prove that he didn't do that thing in the Salt Lake. But then, just doing the models, I was trying to explore the relationship between the model and the original. And I felt that I would have to actually go there and make some earthworks myself. I opt for very simple line drawings -- kind of stupid looking.
这是我曾经开的一个玩笑—— 做一个Robert Smithson(美国艺术家)的“螺旋堤”—— 然后留下些痕迹,搞得好像这是在一张桌子上。 我试图证明他其实不是在(犹他州)大盐湖上做的。 但是,当我在做这些模型时,我试图探索 模型和原作品之间的关系。 然后我觉得我必须真的跑去亲自作一些实地的工作。 我选择非常简单的单线条画——看上去有点愚蠢。
And at the same time, I was doing these very large constructions, being 150 meters away. Now I would do very small ones, which would be like -- but under the same light, and I would show them together, so the viewer would have to really figure it out what one he was looking. I wasn't interested in the very large things, or in the small things. I was more interested in the things in between, you know, because you can leave an enormous range for ambiguity there. This is like you see -- the size of a person over there. This is a pipe. A hanger.
而同时我画的非常大, 来回足有150米。 然后我要做一些非常小的,像这样—— 但是在同样的灯光下,我要把它们放在一起展出, 因此观看者不得不好好琢磨一下他看的是哪一个。 我的兴趣并不是在巨大或细小的事物上。 我更感兴趣的是介乎二者之间, 你知道,因为你可以在这中间留下很大的模糊性。 就像这个——这个大概是一个真人的大小。 这是个烟斗。 衣架。
And this is another thing that I did -- you know working -- everybody loves to watch somebody draw, but not many people have a chance to watch somebody draw in -- a lot of people at the same time, to evidence a single drawing. And I love this work, because I did these cartoonish clouds over Manhattan for a period of two months. And it was quite wonderful, because I had an interest -- an early interest -- in theater, that's justified on this thing. In theater, you have the character and the actor in the same place, trying to negotiate each other in front of an audience. And in this, you'd have like a -- something that looks like a cloud, and it is a cloud at the same time. So they're like perfect actors.
这是我做的另一个作品——正在做的, 人人都爱看别人画画, 但是不是很多人有机会看见有人能吸引—— 很多人在同一时间见证一副图画的创作。 我很喜欢这个活儿, 因为我在曼哈顿上空连续两个月画这些卡通云彩。 这简直妙极了,因为我以前曾经对舞台很感兴趣, 正好趁此机会表现出来。 在舞台上,角色和演员处在同一个位置上, 试图在观众面前相互迁就。 而在这里,你看到的是—— 某个好像云彩的东西,而它本身又的确是云。 因此他们就像完美的演员。
My interest in acting, especially bad acting, goes a long way. Actually, I once paid like 60 dollars to see a very great actor to do a version of "King Lear," and I felt really robbed, because by the time the actor started being King Lear, he stopped being the great actor that I had paid money to see. On the other hand, you know, I paid like three dollars, I think -- and I went to a warehouse in Queens to see a version of "Othello" by an amateur group. And it was quite fascinating, because you know the guy -- his name was Joey Grimaldi -- he impersonated the Moorish general -- you know, for the first three minutes he was really that general, and then he went back into plumber, he worked as a plumber, so -- plumber, general, plumber, general -- so for three dollars, I saw two tragedies for the price of one.
我对表演的兴趣,尤其是糟糕的表演,延续了很长时间。 事实上,我有次花了60美元, 去看一位很了不起的演员演出的“李尔王”, 结果我觉得自己被抢了,因为当那个演员开始表演李尔王时, 他就不再是那个我花钱想看到的伟大的演员了。 而另外一方面,我花了3美元,我记得是3美元—— 去了皇后区的一个仓库, 去看一帮业余演员演出的奥赛罗。 结果非常有意思,因为要知道那个家伙—— 他叫Joey Grimaldi —— 他扮演那位摩尔族将军 ——结果在最开始的3分钟里,他真的就是那位将军, 然后他又变回水管工,他的工作就是水管工,所以—— 水管工,将军,水管工,将军—— 所以花3块钱我用一个悲剧的价钱看了两个悲剧。
See, I think it's not really about impression, making people fall for a really perfect illusion, as much as it is to make -- I usually work at the lowest threshold of visual illusion. Because it's not about fooling somebody, it's actually giving somebody a measure of their own belief: how much you want to be fooled. That's why we pay to go to magic shows and things like that. Well, I think that's it. My time is nearly up. Thank you very much.
我认为并非是印象 使得人们进入一个完美的错觉, 正如这里所做的——我通常都用最粗浅的视觉错觉手法。 因为这并不是要欺骗别人, 而是要给出他们自己所能相信的: 你愿意在多大程度上被欺骗。 这就是为什么我们花钱去看魔术之类的表演。 好了,我想也差不多了。 我的时间到了。 非常感谢。