一般而言，我不会根据看到的作品照片来评论某个展览的。有一次，有人请我为威尼斯绘画大师保罗·韦罗内塞的展览写个评论，这个展览当时准备在华盛顿国家美术馆举办。但是，那本杂志希望在展览开幕时能刊登一篇评论，这就意味着我必须评论那些还没有到达美国的绘画作品。编辑说他们可以给我每件作品的幻灯片，这样我就可以以此来写。我写好这篇评论之后几个月，我去参加了展览的开幕。当我一走进去，我就意识到如果我是根据原作，而不是按照片复制品来写的话，我会写得完全不一样。我会写到颜色的光泽，而照片则无法让我有任何的感觉。韦罗内塞当时沉迷于生活的奢华之中，享受着佳人的怡人之乐。我的评论则颇多差异。几年之后，我读到约翰·罗斯金给他父亲的一份信，信中写到意大利都灵市立美术馆的一幅韦罗内塞绘画是如何彻底改变了他对上帝和宇宙的看法。

　　但是，我对姬子的绘画的全部了解来自于我在我的笔记本电脑屏幕上所看到的。姬子的某些作品有些是用中国传统水墨山水风格画的，但是它们和我在纽约大都市博物馆收藏的作品中看到的那些安详、禅悟的卷轴画不同，这些画里都有一些微小人物站在河边，甚至站在瀑布前，或置身在松柏深处的空地中，周围有白云，也许是朦胧迷雾。纯属偶然，我开始写这篇文章时正是去年的四川大地震一周年纪念日。我在想，那些建设了被毁掉的村庄的人们在看到他们脚下的那片大地的美丽绘画后，是否释然心安。就让我们把家建设在这片安静的山水中，周边群峰耸峙，河水在郁郁葱葱的溪谷中流淌！人们想知道他们是否曾想到这些山水，曾被大地的震颤笼罩着，大地裂开，如同巨蛇的大嘴一样，吞噬了儿童，就像抖落了树上的苹果一般，使他们陷入黑暗之中。

　　姬子作品的千山万壑沸腾着、震颤着，若湍流急水。人们感受到巨龙正处在焦灼的睡眠中。当它们苏醒之时，必纵身跃起，它们之上的大地将分崩离析，地壳深渊将张开大口。艺术背叛了那些建设村庄的人，他们把自然当作平静、舒适，当作可以吟诗的风景，或当作道之善的哲学探究。在姬子的绘画里，好像是变幻多端的云咆哮着鞭打着簇簇草丛。簇簇之草丛咬定根基，嵌入深邃的岩石土壤中。山川流水、海浪大地绵密相连，皆无分别。整个世界都破解着我们对和平与诗歌的梦想。

　　我开始打开窗口，一次一个，找到了文本的附件。它很慢，对于我，有些漫长的过程，但是当附件是图片时，总是有惊奇藏在背后。我不曾料到山水转向苍拙的感性会是“抽象”。我的感觉是，这些作品像那些山水画一样，具有同样的野性感，差不多是原始感。在某种程度上，我感觉它们展示了自然所隐藏的神秘，如果我们深挖到地球里，将会有我们发现的东西，如洞穴和地壳裂口。或者如果我们撬开石洞，我们会看到神秘，发现一个小世界，和山川风景一样并不是荒蛮之地。

　　随着我打开一个又一个窗口，我开始想到一篇著名的诗歌，是19世纪幻想诗人柯勒律治写的。一定有中文翻译。它的题目是《忽必烈汗》，副标题是“梦中奇景；片断记”。柯勒律治把这次做梦看成是吸食了鸦片的后果。它之所以是片断，是因为他被一名来访者的敲门声给叫醒了。他从梦中醒来。这是开头的几行诗：

　　忽必烈汗建立“上都”，

　　下令修起了富丽堂皇的逍遥宫，

　　那里有一条神秘的河流阿尔浮，

　　流经深不可测的岩洞，

　　注入不见太阳的海中。

　　这首诗接着描绘了大花园，“树林像山丘一样古老，环抱着阳光灿烂的草地”。但是紧接着，好像我们正踏在地下的巨大河水上，河水流经洞穴，从那里，岩石穿空飞起——“巨大的片断一跃而起”。

　　姬子的山水让我想起柯勒律治描写沸腾的河水时那种荒原景象、宏阔的石头宫殿、散落的石头，纷纷地落入海洋中。

　　我必须想知道的是我对梦幻与片断、岩石与河水的印象，是否有道理，如果我可以看到这些作品原作的话，或者这仅仅是由于电子传输而产生的幻觉？这些绘画作品的实际笔触是否实际上传递了一个完全不同的世界？

　　2009年5月21日于纽约

　　（丹托是美国著名艺术哲学家和艺术批评家，其着作《艺术的终结之后》与《美的滥用》影响巨大。）

The Seething World of Jizi's Paintings

- As viewed on a Macintosh Computer in a Manhattan Apartment on Riverside Drive.

Arthur C. Danto

2009

　　As a general rule, I do not review an exhibition based on photographs of the works on view. I was once asked to write about a show of the great Venetian masters, Paulo Veronese, which was to be installed in our National Gallery in Washington. But the magazine wanted the review to appear when the show was up, which would mean that I would have to review paintings that were not even in the country yet. The editor said that they could give me transparencies of everything, and I could work from those. Months after I wrote the review, I went to the opening of the show. I realized the moment I entered that I would have written very differently, had I done so on the basis of the paintings rather than their photographic reproductions. I would have written about the glory of the paint, of which the photographs could have given me no idea. Veronese was obsessed with the gorgeousness of life, beginning with the flesh and skin and hair of beautiful women. My review was quite different. Years later, I read a letter by John Ruskin to his father, in which he describes how a painting by Veronese in the Municipal Museum in Turin changed his entire view of God and the universe.

　　But all I know of the paintings of Jizi are what I have seen on the screen of my laptop. Some of Jizi's paintings are somewhat in the traditional style of Chinese ink landscape, but they do not look like the quiet meditative scrolls I have seen in the Metropolitan Museum's collections, where small figures are depicted standing by rivers and even by waterfalls, in clearings in dark forests of pine trees, with clouds and perhaps patches of mist. By sheer coincidence, I started to write this on the anniversary of the great earthquake in Sichuan Province last year. I wondered if those who built those devastated villages were reassured by those beautiful paintings of the beneficence of the ground under their feet. Let's build our homes here in this quiet landscape, amid soaring peaks and waters falling through groves of evergreens! One wonders if they ever thought of the landscapes they were surrounded by as capable of shaking, opening up like the jaws of giant serpents, swallowing children they shook like apples out of trees, causing them to tumble into darkness.

　　Jizi's hills seeth and tremble like troubled waters. One feels that mighty dragons lie in troubled sleep. When they do wake up, and stand on their heavy legs, the ground above them will split, and chasms will open up. Art betrayed the people who built those villages, seeing nature as calm and reassuring, scenes to write poems in, or philosophical disquisitions on the goodness of the Tao. In Jizi's paintings it is as if the winds lash the grasses as they howl. The grasses hold onto their place by roots that run deep into the rocky soil. There is no ultimate difference between grounds and water, sea and soil. The whole world is hostile to our dreams of peace and poetry.

　　I began to open up, one at a time, the little windows in which attachments to a text are found. It is a slow, and for me, a somewhat tedious process, but, when the attachments are images, there is often a surprise behind them. I had not anticipated the shift from landscapes to what a crude sensibility would call "abstractions." My sense is that these have the same feeling of wildness and almost savagery that the landscapes have. In a way, I felt that these show what lies underground, what, if we were to dig deeply into the earth, we would discover, like caves and chasms. Or what we might see if we were to crack open a geode, and discover a little world, no less savage than the landscapes insinuate.

　　I began to think, as I opened window after window, of a famous poem by a nineteenth century visionary poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It must exist in a Chinese translation. Its title is Kubla Khan, and its subtitle is: A Vision in a Dream; a Fragment. Coleridge had this dream as the result of smoking opium. It is a fragment, because he was awakened by a visitor, knocking at the door. It tore him from his dream. Here are the first few lines:

　　In Xanadu

　　Did Kubla Khan

　　A stately pleasure dome decree,

　　Where Alph the sacred river ran,

　　In Caverns measureless to Man,

　　Down to a sunless sea,

　　The poem then describes the great gardens, "with forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spot of greenery. But then, as if we were tracking the great underground river, running through caves, where rocks fly through the air - "Huge fragments vaulted."

　　Jizi's landscapes remind me of the wildness of Coleridge's description of seething water, vast rocky domes, fragments of dislocated stone, dancing and crashing into the underground sea.

　　I have to wonder whether this impression of dreams and fragments, rocks and waters, would survive, were I to see these works, or is this just an illusion due to electronic transmission, and the actual touch and brush of the paintings  actually a convey a whole different world?

　　（Arthur C. Danto is famous American philosopher and critic of art, Emeritus Professor of Columbia University, his books After the End of Art and The Abuse of Beauty, etc. are acclaimed highly worldwide.）