文明

BBC的纪录片向来有口皆碑，题材广泛、制作精良是它的特色。

从横跨几千年的历史文化，到神秘广阔的宇宙星辰，BBC的纪录片总是一次次地打动我们。

正如《地球脉动》和《人类星球》这样的佳作，几乎每一帧都美到窒息。

最近，BBC又推出了一部高逼格神作。

全片涵盖6个大陆，31个国家，介绍超过500件艺术品。

将人类各个时期，不同大陆的历史文化艺术通通串联起来，看过的人都大呼过瘾。

无论你是文物爱好者还是历史达人，这部纪录片都能让你在养眼之余还非常涨知识。

今天就来聊聊，这部讲述人类艺术创造力的新作——

文明

导演:阿什利·格辛/马修·希尔/蒂姆·尼尔

编剧:西蒙·沙玛/玛丽·比尔德/戴维·奥卢索加

主演:西蒙·沙玛/玛丽·比尔德/戴维·奥卢索加

首播:2018-03-01(英国)

集数:9

单集片长:60分钟

BBC、Nutopia 影视制作公司、美国公共电视网（PBS）共同出品，豆瓣9.2分。

全片共 9 集，每集时长为 1 小时左右。

宗旨就是透过艺术之眼，探索“人类创造的起源”、“观看艺术的方式”以及“全球文明的进程”。

纪录片主讲人，是三位致力于普及艺术知识的公共学者——

哥伦比亚大学艺术史教授Simon Schama，剑桥大学的古典学教授Mary Beard，以及尼日利亚裔英国历史学家David Olusoga 。

虽然今天，人类的艺术成就浩如星海，但这一切都始于数万年前的一个掌印——

我们的一位远古祖先，不知出于什么原因，在洞穴的岩壁上勾勒出掌印。

这是历史上最早的壁画，可以说是人类艺术的第一笔。

这就是人类文明觉醒的起点，超越衣食住行的生存需求，人们有了创造的冲动。

艺术的存在，让我们摆脱日常琐事，感受体会作为人的意义。

文化与社会也因此诞生，创造了伟大的文明。

画画是人本能的表达形式，而壁画则是人类最早期的艺术。

即便间隔数万年，艺术家的手法也不会改变。

像是毕加索，就深受远古洞穴壁画的影响。

而远古人类第一次对美的追求，体现在下面这个小小的人脸雕像上 。

现在看起来虽然工艺粗糙，五官模糊，但要知道它可是2万多年前的产物。

制作者显然被一位美人打动，试图努力雕刻出她的样子。

在墨西哥出土的玛雅文明，也让人看到了其天真淳朴，充满创意的一面。

这些小人塑像，实在是太可爱了。

但还有很多出土文物，在现代人看来相当神秘。

像中国古老文明的代表三星堆青铜人头像、青铜面具。

那巨大的眼睛和耳朵，令人印象深刻。

1986年，三星堆遗址在一处建筑工地被发现。

发掘出的考古坑中包含数百枚象牙、祭祀牲畜的遗骸，以及数目惊人的面具。

三星堆距今已有5000至3000年历史，被称为20世纪人类最伟大的考古发现之一。

甚至还有人推测，三星堆和外星文明有关。

而秦始皇陵兵马俑，更是20世纪最伟大的考古发现。

这些真人大小，气势磅礴的军队，是世界上最大的雕像群。

其工艺和规模即便在今天，也是难以想象的。

中国在公元前200多年，由秦始皇实现了大一统。

而这项工程在秦始皇十几岁的时候，就开始动工了。

我们今天看到的，只是7000具陶俑中的一小部分。

中国古代贵族原本是用活人陪葬，但秦始皇却使用了真人大小的兵马俑。

据说他的陵墓内部也模仿现实世界，其间有日月星辰和山川河流。

秦始皇陵兵马俑，无疑是权力的象征。

而3000年前古埃及的雕像艺术，也同样是权力的象征。

古埃及的雕像往往都十分巨大，就为了使人产生望而生畏的臣服感。

然而尴尬的是，考古学家发现，拉美西斯二世的雕像比其他法老王都多。

原因竟然是他会篡改其他人的雕塑，在上面刻上自己的名字。

而人像雕塑的的技艺，在古希腊时期已经接近完美。

此时的人像越来越栩栩如生，每块肌肉，每个动作都完全复制真实的人。

而这种写实风格，通过丝绸之路影响了佛教的造像艺术。

传入阿富汗之后，又影响了早期的伊斯兰艺术。

世界文化互相影响，融会贯通。

而在绘画领域，纪录片中首先介绍的就是中国古代的山水画卷。

在古代战乱纷争不断的中国，文人创作出追求平静的山水风景画。

中国的水墨山水画，自成一体。

在此之前，绘画是没有以风景为主题的，风景只是一种陪衬。

直到宋朝，才开始出现了专门描绘风景的山水画。

风景画并不是对自然世界的描写，而是一种意境的表达。

让人对自然产生思考，以追求人和自然的和谐境界。

中国水墨山水画具有很深的哲学意味，已经打破了对于自然的模仿。

而日本绘画最具代表性的，当属浮世绘。

最初，是描绘市井生活和娱乐风月场所的木版画。

主题多是歌舞伎或妓女，还有春宫图。

色彩艳丽，具有装饰性。

而梵高深受日本版画影响，他本人就临摹过不少浮世绘作品。

梵高比同时代的印象派画家更奔放，喜欢表现出浓重的色彩。

甚至直接把颜料挤在画布上，用画笔粗犷地涂抹。

人类文明在建筑领域，也留下了很多宏伟的作品。

约旦的佩特拉古墓，就是在山岳表面雕凿而成。

地理位置空前绝后，与山体合二为一。

鲜为人知的是，不仅埃及有金字塔，玛雅文明也有金字塔。

玛雅文明的统治者向人民保证会祈求雨神每年降雨，而金字塔是给雨神祭祀的祭台。

不过，当旱灾来临后，玛雅文明就衰落消亡了。

建筑奇迹一直在被人类刷新。

由米开朗基罗设计的圣彼得大教堂，作为世界上最大的教堂，占地23,000平方米，可容纳超过六万人，是当时世界上最高的建筑。

米开朗基罗也因为设计出世界上最伟大的圆顶建筑，被同代人尊称为“圣者“。

宗教，往往催生伟大的艺术作品。

西班牙塞维利亚的玛格丽娜圣母像，就是一件十分动人的作品。

雕像为大理石制作，眼泪由玻璃制作。

但手却是木制的，也因此人们认为木头比大理石更有温度。

这部纪录片包含的信息量实在太大，由于文章篇幅有限，只能介绍一小部分。

在此，我十分推荐各位亲自去感受下这趟“全球文化之旅”。

这些保存至今的文物让我们现代人看到了古人的智慧和艺术造诣，不得不说是一种幸运。

然而，还有有大量的文物在战火中被破坏损毁。

巴米扬大佛，就曾被塔利班份子的炮火损毁殆尽。

短短几个小时之间，伊斯兰国就将人类文明的杰作毁于一旦。

2005年当他们夺下巴尔米拉这座古老的贸易之城之后，巴尔米拉数世纪以来那些关于希腊人、罗马人、波斯人、阿拉伯人以及犹太人的遗产，在短短几小时之内化为断壁残垣。

讽刺的是，一些艺术品恰恰因为早期被劫掠，而逃脱了被毁的厄运。

在日内瓦艺术与历史博物馆，有几件巴尔米拉的工艺品被保存了下来。

我们可以花许多时间争论，文明是什么亦或不是什么。

但当它的对立面出现时，在种种暴虐、残忍、偏执和毁灭欲中，我们立刻就会明白何为文明。

从人类残破的肢体，文明的顷刻陨落，我们会真切知晓文明到底为何物。

所有文明最终都对无法实现的目标汲汲以求，那就是征服时间。

为此，它们致力于更大、更高、更壮观，以为这样就能通往不朽。

然而事与愿违，即便是人口最稠密的城市，其市集、寺庙、宫殿和坟墓也终归会被废弃。

然后，不眠不休铁面无私的大自然母亲开始接管此地，用沙尘掩埋，以植被覆盖。

自此，文明便会淡出公众视线、彻底消亡。

每一个失落或繁荣的文明，都是文化的里程碑。

它们时而颠覆着现代人的认知，又不时吸引我们向前看。

文化所传达出的跨越时空的相似性，让我们理解过去，也指引未来。

文明是一个很宏大的词汇，但文明真正的力量，却来自那些简单的小东西。

像是壶，印刷品，挂毯以及雕刻品，或者源自那些恢宏的建筑和精美的画作。

它不是出自国家意志，或者某个富裕阶层的要求。

它更多的来自于那些天赋异禀的艺术家们，为全人类创造艺术的内心渴求。

这些经由自由心灵、敏锐洞察力、无与伦比的创造力所创作出来的最美好的东西，注定将被永久地保存下去。

用来对抗这个，同样被我们创造出来的充满暴力、战争、迁徙、破坏、死亡的，满目疮痍的世界。

在这部纪录片里，我们会看到这些人类创造的奇迹如何开拓我们的眼界，激发我们的思考，以及带给我们感动。

有句话说：艺术即历史，它记录了帝国的兴衰、世界的演变、以及全球范围的新思想、新世界的贸易路线。

虽然人生苦短，但艺术却让我们得以目睹那些相对不朽的事物。

艺术是文明的基石，是对人性的一种表达方式。

*本文作者：RAMA

正如西蒙·沙玛在最后一集《人性的火花》所说，文明是一个很宏大的词汇，但文明真正的力量却来自那些简单的小东西——壶，印刷品，挂毯以及雕刻品，或者源自那些恢宏的建筑和精美的画作。它不是出自国家意志，或者某个富裕阶层的要求，它更多的来自于那些天赋异禀的艺术家们为全人类创造艺术的内心渴求。这些经由自由心灵，敏锐洞察力，无与伦比的创造力所创作出来的最美好的东西，注定将被永久地保存下去。对抗这个同样被我们创造出来的充满暴力，战争，迁徙，破坏，死亡的满目疮痍的世界。

“伟大的艺术自其诞生的那一刻起就把分割我们的时空堡垒给打破了。它给我们带来了暂停，它让我们以无数种意想不到的方式来重新构想这个世界。这就是为什么即使处在这个充斥着电子图片和闪烁屏幕的狂躁的现代，我们仍能在艺术中发现其他地方发现不了的，即以某种方式将我们与永恒而深刻的东西连接起来的喜悦之情。这也是为什么会有数百万人涌入画廊或博物馆去参观艺术品的原因所在。”

这个纪录片更像是西方艺术史的叙述，从希腊罗马的雕塑到中世纪的教堂再到受资本主义发展而产生的文艺复兴启蒙运动时期的绘画再到当代的现代主义作品，以“文明”为名，记录了西方艺术史的萌生发展和变迁。纪录片中虽然有提及东方的艺术作品，但都是挑出符合西方标准的作品进行阐述的，不能说不对，只是西方的艺术体系和东方的艺术体系从一开始就不太相干，怎么能用同一标准来判断和分析。纪录片很精彩，但是叫《文明》却有些许不是很贴切，《西方的文明》或许更合适一些，或者更直接的说《西方艺术史》。纪录片用绘画、雕塑、宗教、工业化不同主题，串联起来了不同国家不同历史时期的艺术作品，虽然的确有联系，但是也要意识到这个串联的深层含义，指的是以西方文明为标准的串联，我国的艺术作品鲜少出现，因为我们和西方是完全不同的发展逻辑。

西方文明的源头在哪里呢？在希腊的雕塑中，那些展现着人体美丽的雕塑，其表象之下蕴含的是希腊人对美的规律的把握，所以时至今日，即使是残缺的雕塑也能让我们感受到一种美感；在中世纪的教堂之中，那高耸入天的教堂，衬托着人的渺小，上帝的伟大。宗教文化是孕育西方文明的温床，无论是希伯来渊源带来的关于造物主创世的思考，还是文艺复兴时期人们把神性重新回归到人性，都是艺术家对人和神的关系的解释。希腊罗马雕塑中体现的人体的美丽，影响至今，他们作为西方艺术的滥觞，是文艺复兴时代艺术家们不断回溯的对象，通过这种回溯让他们从中世纪的枷锁中挣脱出来，重新回归了人性。埃及的艺术，一度被认为是西方艺术的源头之一，金字塔和木乃伊的神秘性好像和希腊神话的某些内容不谋而合，这是站在西方文明的基础上观看的，是西方对埃及艺术的解释，埃及艺术中的测量和希腊艺术中的测量其实本质并不相同。埃及的尺度为了体现法老的权威性，而希腊的尺度为了体现人的能力。

随着东西方文化交流的增加，在艺术作品层面也有了互相的借鉴，日本的浮世绘在西方世界对艺术家们创作带来了深刻影响。社会的搬迁，资本主义的发展，他们的思想也反映到了艺术作品中，工业化带来艺术作品的变迁，艺术家们追求一片心灵的净土，摄影技术的诞生也让艺术的展现方式更丰富起来。最后一集的spark，展现的是现代艺术对传统艺术的改革和批判继承，艺术不再是对现实的如实写照，而变成了抽象的概念，这是不是就是丹托所描述的《艺术的终结》。

就纪录片而言，非常精彩，无论是讲稿还是内容逻辑我都很喜欢，以世界艺术为底色，用西方艺术史为脉络将不同大陆的艺术串讲了一遍。从希伯来渊源中的创世纪开始，到以希腊罗马为代表的雕塑艺术，到中世纪的基督教主导的艺术，到新航路带来的艺术的交流，再到现代艺术的兴起，层层递进，通过作品和讲解，带人走进了西方的文明。只是这个文明，是西方主导的文明，是用西方标准解释的世界文明，软性渗透的逻辑概念，让所有观众都不知不觉的接受了以他们文化为主导的世界艺术解释方式。希望有一天我国也能拍出类似的纪录片吧。

解说写的实在太漂亮，决定挑一些喜欢的誊下来。

时隔一年半，我终于把剩下的三集看完了。一集一集写。

E06 Radiance

26’20’’ Goya

The Black Paintings seem to me to be an endgame for Goya, not just in his own life and career in his 70s, but also his feeling about an endgame for art, the art that aspired through beauty to ennoble the spirit of civilization.

Shock at his own monstrousness, Francisco de Goya,1820-1823

//www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/saturn/18110a75-b0e7-430c-bc73-2a4d55893bd6

One of the most terrifying of all these paintings, perhaps the most famous one, shows Saturn devouring one of his children. That’s what it’s come to. The huge tradition of classical mythology reduced to a mad, antic, capering monster, chewing on the stump of a small body, but look at that body. Not a child at all. It’s the body miniaturized of a female nude. Two millennia of looking at the nude, of seeing it as a symbol of art’s perfection is reduced to this horrifying image of sadistic cruelty.

Fight with Cudgels, or Fight to Death with Clubs, Francisco de Goya, 1820-1823

//www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/duel-with-cudgels-or-fight-to-the-death-with-clubs/2f2f2e12-ed09-45dd-805d-f38162c5beaf

In one of the paintings, he puts the lights back on. We’re able to see something, but what is it we’re seeing? The light is given to us to reveal another kind of horror. These two huge peasant-like figures beating the living daylights out of each other. Blood is streaming down the head of one of them, even as they sink deeper and deeper into a kind of sandy quagmire. This is what Spain has become. Endless, relentless, mutual slaughter.

Now, all these monsters and horrors and demons and dragons of course had appeared all over European art before, but where had they appeared? They’d appeared in images of the Last Judgment and the Apocalypse, and they were always balanced by a sense of the optimism of salvation. But Goya has come to the conclusion that God is absent without leave and there is one painting, which in a sense is least likely to have the horrifying pessimistic eloquence, but it does.

The Drowning Dog, Francisco de Goya, 1820-1823

//www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/art-work/the-drowning-dog/4ea6a3d1-00ee-49ee-b423-ab1c6969bca6

There are no figures, there’s just a dog, a mutt. But for this dog, the master is gone, dead, slaughtered, missing. He’s no longer going to be fed. He’s simply faced with drowning inside this formless brown vacuum. It’s all come down to this, then. A dog without a master. Spain without its god. Humanity absolutely without civilization.

E01 Second Moment of Creation

4’53’’

We can spend a lot of time debating what civilization is or isn’t, but when it’s opposite shows up, in all its brutality and cruelty and intolerance and lust for destruction, we know what civilization is; we know it from the shock of its imminent loss as a mutilation on the body of our humanity.

16’58’’

With this exquisite, intensively carved female head, we have for the first time, something immensely and movingly momentous. We have the revelation of the human face. It’s a tiny thing, it can just go in the palm of your hand and it could have only been made by an extraordinary array of dexterous skills.

39’36’’

Ultimately, all civilizations want exactly what they can’t have: the conquest of time. So they build bigger, higher and grander as if they could build their way out of mortality, and it never works.

There always comes a moment where the most populous of cities with their markets and temples and palaces and funeral tombs are simply abandoned. And that most indefatigable leveller of all, mother nature, closes in, covering the place with desert sand, or strangling it with vegetation. And then, civilization dies the death of deaths, invisibility.

E02 How do we look?

25'41"

The one thing you really get here is that size matters. These vast monumental figures, perhaps four or five times life size and with that nice hint that they’d been even bigger if they bothered to stand up for you, simply dominate. They take over your field of vision. It’s an assertion of the power of the pharaoh through his huge, superhuman, enthroned body.

33’31”

If early Athenian pottery reflects how man and women were expected to live within the social context of the city, its statues attempt to embody the interior life within.

The beginning of the fifth century BCE saw an amazing transformation in Greek sculpture. Rigid figures with the fixed gaze of phrasikleia give way to daring new experiments in the human form. One of the first of these is known as the Kritios boy, and he would transform how we see the sculpted human body.

The Kritios boy show us that you can signal anteriority through the person’s movement, through their stance. But particularly, if you lose the archaic smile, and you have an expression which isn’t necessarily blank, that immediately invites you, the spectator, to psychologise it. So with that one step, the statue acquires not just a body that is an organism rather than a mechanism, but also what we would probably call, a soul.

41’57’’

“This was quite simply the most sublime statue of antiquity to have escaped destruction. An eternal springtide, clothes the alluring virility of his mature years with a pleasing youth and plays with soft tenderness upon the lofty structure of his limbs."

49’46’’

We still have a lot of really unexamined assumptions about what constitutes a beautiful or desirable body. We have a lot of unexamined assumptions about what constitutes an attractive, or aesthetically appealing way to look. And you have only to open up the pages of a women’s magazine, as people are commonly pointing out, to see how incredibly narrow the space is in a certain kind of western aesthetic consciousness, for what a woman can look like. Similar kinds of things can be applied to men as well.

Reinforced by commercial interests, the cult of youth and beauty begun by the ancient Greeks, is perhaps more powerful than ever today.

E03 Picturing Paradise

6’34’’

李成《晴峦萧寺图》

http://collection.sina.com.cn/zgsh/20121116/152092655.shtml

What makes Li Cheng’s painting a masterpiece, is that it literally rises above royal propaganda.

As our eye ascends through the painting, so our whole approach to it also ascends to a higher order of question. And Li Cheng has changed the wash of the ink. It’s lighter, finer, more ethereal. It suggests deep distance. But depths of our own response as well as physical depths. What is nature? What lies beyond surface appearance? What truly moves the universe? And how above all, does the dialogue between flowing water and the adamant face of that eroded rock, bring us harmony?

18’56’’

But renaissance humanism took a different attitude to the serpent of temptation.

This is Villa Barbaro. … A place where renaissance ideals of culture and sophistication could meet the earthy pleasures of the country. A building of harmony, grace and pleasure, where it would be forever summer.

Leonardo Da Vinci wrote something fascinating. He says, “one of the values of painting is it can show you the beauty of nature and perhaps your lover in nature, in the middle of winter.” When you’re stuck inside, you’re stuck indoors, but you can remember what the meadows and what lovely picnics were like last summer by looking at a painting of it.

If you extend that into a kind of a theory of landscape art, you might say that the first way that people express the desire to escape into landscape is by actually creating escapist worlds.

30’41”

Hunters in the Snow, Pieter Bruegel 1565

//www.wikiart.org/en/pieter-bruegel-the-elder/hunters-in-the-snow-1565

Bruegel painted these compendious, visually inexhaustible masterpieces after the longest, bleakest, coldest Flemish winter anyone could remember. Let’s just think for a minute the way in which Bruegel makes us look at these pictures. On the one hand, they are an invitation into a wealth of detail, wherever our eye travels, it picks out these lovely minutiae of work and play. The skaters gliding across the ice. Our eye travels from one kind of landscape, a village huddled on the hill, to a completely different one. A frozen mountain or a storm tossed estuary out to the broad open sea. But there are moments as well when the pure compositional muscle that Bruegel can command makes everything come together in one great universal vision. It makes us stop. It makes us have a moment of contemplation. And then If we’re very, very lucky, like these wonderful paintings, it all seems to add up. A whole of the human condition and our special little place within it.

40’30”

There were a few kind of particular characteristics that marked out the American approach to the landscape. One of those was a sense of inferiority and competition with Europe that Americans in the 18thcentury and the early 19thcentury, were the poor country cousins. And they were on the outermost fringe of an European world in which they had been taught that Rome is the centre of all art, that the best landscapes, the tallest mountains are to be found in Switzerland. And here are Americans, on the threshold really of their own great continent, which they are beginning increasingly to move west across, trying to say, “wait, you know what, we have really high mountains also. And we have really big animals that we can celebrate in the same terms you guys are using but with our characters instead.” And I think that was out of inferiority in a funny sense, that a kind of American pride in the American landscape was born.

43’21”

More and more (Ansel) Adam’s photographs became preachy. But those vision sermons were radiant, mystical, ecstatic. They were passionate statements about how humanity could be redeemed through the encounter with nature.

But throughout, he remains steadfast that his job in life is to give visual form to that silken cord, tying together the fate of man with the fate of the earth.

E04 The Eye of Faith

43’49’’

What all of these movements within religions have in common is that they come along saying we have a purer form of faith than the one that is currently being practiced, and if your fundamental goal is purity, then one of the central things you might try to do would be to eliminate opulent aesthetic or potentially sinful representations of things to act as intermediaries, because then maybe you’re just worshipping the object, you’re not actually worshipping the divine. So it makes sense that protestants in the Reformation went into the monasteries and stripped everything out saying “it’s time to get rid of these images.”

51’35’’

We passionately want to rediscover the spiritual in art, we passionately want to discover that kind of power and purpose that religious art has. Whether it’s reinventing Christian art in cathedrals or whether it’s reinventing Islamic art, it’s about wanting to resacralise art, wanting to rediscover that wonderful, almost magical, charismatic purpose that religious art has.

For much of history, art has been religious art. For some, the creative impulse has been the very expression of divinity. For others, a challenge to God’s authority. For those that believe, religious art has always been transformative; yet for everyone, art retains a primal, spiritual feeling, a way to express the mysterious and it speaks to our earliest human drive to touch and define a world beyond our own.

E05 The Triumph of Art

50’49’’

Out there the western hurly burly is getting ready to make terrible mischief to smash its way into the domed heavenly vault, to stick its bloody great brutal boots right into the paradise garden. It’ll make an empire based on machines, money and muskets. Then slowly but surely, the Moghul Empire will disappear entirely inside its courtly refinement, becoming inextricably just a cultural ornament.

After centuries of extraordinary flowering, the eastern Renaissance was transformed by the twin forces of empire and colonialism. The delicate blooms and glowing jewels survived in what Europeans wore on their bodies and how they decorate their homes. While painters were mislabeled as miniaturists, as they were forced at least for a time, to rely on the patronage of their new British rulers. Western art critics increasingly called the artistic beauty of the east decorative, to distinguish it from pictures they put in frames where Europeans consider real art. But it was in the east, that the ancient meaning of ars, craft was preserved in all its splendor and still is. Because here, unlike in the west, the Renaissance wasn’t about the rebirth of classical knowledge. Unlike Europe, the east had never lost touch with its ancient heritage. A rich heritage which it continues to celebrate and share with the world to this day.

E06 First Contact

28’07’’

《冰山屏风》圆山应举Cracked Ice, Maruyama Okyo

//theartsdesk.com/tv/civilisations-first-contact-bbc-two-review-david-olusoga-goes-gold

What’s regarded as his greatest work, cracked ice, combined everything Okyo knew from both eastern and western traditions.

It’s so subtle, so minimal, a work of art that almost feels like it isn’t there. And everything about it feels ephemeral and frail. It’s painted on paper not canvas as in the west, and great expanses of it are just white blank areas that seem almost untouched by the artist. And yet all of that belies the fact that this is one of the most sophisticated works of cultural synthesis that I know. It shows a sheet of ice, presumably on a lake, and these broken jagged cracks in the ice disappeared into the mist. The effect is three-dimensional space. Now, that is European vanishing point perspective. And yet, this is one of Okyo’s masterworks, just could not be more Japanese, because it’s a philosophical contemplation of two concepts, fundamental to Buddism, imperfection and impermanence. Imperfection because these lines are uncontrolled and irregular; Impermanence because of course the ice will melt. And those two are just as fundamental to Japanese art, as the classical Greek roman ideas of beauty and perfection are to European art.

So this is Okyo incorporating European ideas into his art, but in ways that are in keeping with Japanese philosophy and Japanese tastes.

32’11’’

In this frenzy of trade and wealth, Dutch art also became the object of conspicuous consumption. A modern commercial art market was born, supplying landscapes, still lifes, portraits and scenes from Dutch life to the aspirational new merchant class. What they wanted in their art was not the pomp of monarchy, or the flamboyance of the catholic church, but a new type of realism, one that reflect their protestant desire to portray the world as it truly was, often with warts and all moral lessons.

With art from renaissance, it’s about beauty. Dutch art, it’s not about that, it’s about reality. So you do paint rotten fruits, and you do paint fat ladies that just woke up in their bed. And you do look at dirty dogs in the street. Because it’s about nature in every sense, and not just in the sense that you want it to be, but in the sense it is.

33’22’’

One of the star artists of this golden age of Dutch painting was Vermeer. Jan Vermeer is not an artist known for his epic landscapes. Most of his paintings are famously intimate, set within a neat, ordered, almost claustrophobic world of the Dutch home.

What Jan Vermeer specialized in was the art of everyday life and his world was an interior world. What he captured on canvas were simple fleeting moments. A woman reading a letter is bathed in a delicate light that pours from a side window. But that only serves to emphasize the fact that we are in an enclosed room and the rest of the world is hidden from sight, that it’s somewhere out there. But if you look a little more closely at the details, what you realise is that Vermeer’s seemingly interior domestic space is infused with the globalism of the Dutch golden age.

From the innovative pottery of his hometown of Delft, which mimicked Chinese porcelain, to prized rugs from the orient, and a geographer wearing a fashionable Japanese robe, Vermeer captures a world built on encounters with distant civilizations and peoples.

50’05’’

Hundreds of public buildings built in the British neoclassical tradition would follow. They represented not only a separation of cultures that had before freely intermingled, they also marked the passing of the age of discovery. The world had entered an age of high empire, in which to justify their exploitations and conquests, European powers would willfully overlook the achievements of other civilisations. It was a story that would be repeated around the globe and we are only just emerging from its cultural legacy today.

In a wonderful twist, Richard Wellesley’s government house is used by the government of Bengal. It has been taken back by Indians for their own government. And so we have to unthink some of the inevitability that we tend to ascribe to encounters that ultimately led to European dominance. If you look at the history of European encounters with the non-European world, you find a huge range of ways that they took shape.

And although there is a history that has to be told, a story that is one of imperialism, but a story that is also one of globalization, one of increasing interconnection across different parts of the world that has yielded the world in which we live today.

Our modern world of digital communication has massively broaden the scope of our encounters, both with foreign cultures and civilisations and within the different cultural groupings of our own. And by connecting new audience with traditional artistic practices, the global art market continues to transform new encounters into new kinds of art. From the reemergence of the long overlooked sacred art, like that of North American first nations, the indigenous people of Australia and the carvings of the African Makonde people, to new artists such as Ghanaian born sculptor El Anatsui, who sews together bottle tops into large scale assemblages that comment on consumption, waste and the environment. Today, in our increasingly globalized civilization, the sheer variety of our encounters both foreign and at home continues to be a major source of inspiration, shaping both our art and our world.

文物述说着历史，文化歌颂着文明。

人类的欲望可以简单分成存续和发展两大类，这两大类之间还有社会性的欲望，性欲和食欲这两个基本的欲望关乎人的存续，而关乎发展的是求知欲和创造欲。其中创造欲便是人在基本生命（物质）需求满足后的创造新奇事物或欣赏美好事物的欲望，任何形式的艺术（包括科技产品）都是在闲暇中通过符号消费而满足创造欲这种精神的需求。艺术是记录历史的瞬间，当艺术品转变为文物时，瞬间便成为了永恒，文物使历史成为了可能，或者说证实了历史诉说的真实。娱乐品或是艺术品的泛滥，使人们更多采取欣赏而非创造来满足自我的创造欲，从而减少了创造的实践。伟大的创造者能从纷繁复杂的造物中汲取创新的灵感，所有伟人都是“站在巨人的肩膀上”，他们的伟大创新离不开无数人的伟大实践，他们的成就凝聚着人类的文化，无数璀璨文化共同形成人类光辉闪耀的文明。

謝謝大家的支持

Ep. 1 Second Moment Creation

西班牙：Cuevas de Altamira 阿爾塔米拉山洞（壁畫）-- Picasso 的猛牛作品的靈感來源。

德：Archäologische Staatssammlung 慕尼黑考古博物館。

法：Musee d´Archeologie Nationale (St. Germain-em- Laye).

希臘：Akrotiri （部分古城遺址）Santorini；Crete（壁畫）。

中國：三星堆。

約旦（今）：Al-Kahazneh 卡茲尼神殿 Petra.

墨西哥：瑪雅文化 象形文字 墨西哥考古博物館。

洪都拉斯：瑪雅邦 Copan Ruinas.

Ep. 2 How do we look？

埃及：Colossi of Memnon 門農像 1300BC； Luxor Temple Thebes- Ramesses

希臘：Athens 700BC 追求人體形象，不怎麼關心風景。通過塑像傳達文明理念。日常雅典瓷器； Phrasikleia 女塑像，尋找她裙子上的紀梵希標誌 550BC； 棺蓋 Artemidorus （Mummy）拒絕死亡？

Naxos 大理石採石場 半人半山雕像

中國：陝西兵馬俑 The Terracotta Army 1974挖掘 大躍進？

英國：Syon House 收藏品 - Apollo Belvedere （複製品）

墨西哥：Tabasco - Olmec奧爾梅克文明 巨石頭像

Ep. 3 Picturing Paradise

中國（儒家山水畫）：木心 （有木心的畫好激動，他自成一派的轉印法作畫--木心美術館 烏鎮）宋 李成 晴巒蕭寺圖 ； 北宋 喬仲常 後赤壁賦（Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art）； 元 王蒙 青卞隱居圖（上海博物館藏）。

伊斯蘭國家：伊斯蘭花園； 花園地毯（The Metropolotan museum of art）。

基督教世界：

意大利： Duomo di Orvieto 教堂浮雕--Lorenzo Maitani；Ambrogio Lorenzetti（ ffetti del Buon Governo in città e in campagna-- Siena：Palazzo Pubblico 錫耶納市政廳）；維吉爾 -- The Georgics 《 農事詩 》 ；Villa Barbaro（ Veneto 避世主義）。

德國：Albrecht Altdorfer -- Laubwald mit dem Heiligen Goerg -- Landscape with a Woodcutter (Kupferstichkabinett Berlin) -- Danube landscape with castel worth（The National Gallery in London ）。。。各種巴伐利亞風景畫

荷蘭： Pieter Bruegel de Oude -- The Hunters in the Snow 雪中獵人+ The Retern of the Herd 放牧歸來+A Gloomy Day.....（Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien）； Esaias van de Velde -- Cattle Ferry（ Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam 終於有一個去過的）； Pieter de Molijn -- Landscape with a cottage（The Metropolitan Museum of Art ）； Salomon van Ruysdael -- Landscape with Cornfields （Stockholm Hallwylska museet ）； Jacob van Ruisdael -- A Landscape with a Ruined （The national gallery London）

戰爭影響的藝術風格：

美國：Frederic Edwin Church -- Twilight in the Wilderness （Cleveland Museum of Art Ohio）； Thomas Moran+ Winslow Homer；Albert Bierstadt -- Looking Down Yosemite Valley （ Birmingham Museum of Art ；Yosemite National Park 約瑟米帝國家公園-- Ansel Adams 攝影作品1927）This is our land.

愛護地球，世界和平。

Ep. 4 The eye of faith

柬埔寨：吳哥窟Angkor Wat 高棉王國。

印度：Maharashtra- Ajanta Caves 阿旃陀石窟 2至7世紀的壁畫；德里鐵柱（Quw-watul Islam Mosque）。

意大利：Revenna （Basikica di san Vitale）耶穌三種時期的畫像 浮華的危機？；威尼斯 Scuola Grande di san Rocco ´´藏寶室´´-- 受難 （Tintoretto畫）。

西班牙：Seville （Basilica de la Macarena）聖母像-- 盲目崇拜？

土耳其；伊斯坦布爾（Sancak Mosque 21世紀現代主義）；Blue Mosque 伊斯蘭國家書法；Kennicott Bible （複製品藏於Oxford）。

英國：Ely Cathedral 遭破壞的建築。。。

希臘：Parthenon .

何謂文明，就是比信仰多一點點。

Ep. 5 The Triumph if art

○ No beginning no end

土耳其：Istanbul Hagia Sofia 圣索菲亞 （Turk Mimar Sinan）

意(梵蒂岡)：Rom St.Peter -- Michelangelo（Bromante），Sistine Chapel -- The Last Judgement 最後的審判。 藝術（Ars）：動手能力。技術工程，構造能力，非凡天賦。Il Divino。Caravaggio（David and Goliath -- Galleria Borghese Rom； Madonna di Loreto -- Basilica di Sant Eustachio in Campo Marzio）；Artemisia Gentileschi 16世紀女畫家 -- Self Portrait（ London Kensington Palace ）

Florence： Benvenuto Cellini 金匠（Leda and the Swan -- Museo Nazionale del Bargello；Saliera -- Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien ）；Donatello （Judith and Holofernes *複製品 -- Piazza Della Signoria）。

巴基斯坦：Lahore Fort

西班牙：Velázquez（Las Meninas宮娥--Museo del Prado Madrid）。

荷蘭：集體畫像：N.Pickenoy -- Civic guardsmen from the company of captain Jacob Backer (Amsterdam Museum); 倫勃朗 -- 夜巡！-- Rijksmuseum Amsterdam 控制了混亂，透視法，活力與秩序；模仿細密畫。

印度： Itimad-ud-Daula Moti Bagh, Agra 太美了！！！！

藝術是一場輪迴-

Ep. 6 First contact

非洲：Benin Bronzes（British Museum, London-- 葡萄牙士兵）起源尼日利亞土著傳統藝術 Benin City; Queen mother Idia 尼日利亞首位女王象牙頭像，象征優雅與權力 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)。

葡萄牙：Lisbon里斯本 -- Torre de Belem受非洲雕塑影響；犀牛-- Albrecht Dürer 使用印刷品；未知作者的King s Fountain描繪16世紀葡萄牙出於全球化的中心時場景（Berardo Collection Museum）。

墨西哥: Aztec 阿茲特克文化 殉葬者活人獻祭 日曆石（ Museo Nacional de Antropología, Ciudad de México）；兩頭蛇 羽蛇神；金子對歐洲人的誘惑Gold Art；天主教入侵aztec文明，根除當地信仰，摧毀神像，建起天主教堂-- 亡靈節day of dead（結合了天主教的萬聖節）死亡的頭骨Calavera 。

西班牙：16世紀歐洲最富有的國家，侵略性的傳播自己的文化；Toledo -- El Greco- View of Toledo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)； 基督獻祭圖（Santa Lglesia Catrdral Primada de Toledo）。

日本：九州kyushu南海岸； Nanban screens 南蠻屏風 （Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon）描繪16世紀從葡萄牙來的商人；Tokugawas 德川家族 感受到了外來文化對自身文化的威脅，開始驅逐基督教--·閉關鎖國· 封建運動--強調自律的佛家傳統，嚴格遵循茶道禮儀，詩歌，書法；荷蘭人在日本的貿易，同時將歐洲的文化帶入日本--荷蘭鏡藝術家 Maruyama Okyo圓山應舉 葵祭 Aoi Matsuri，Bamboo in wind and rain雨竹風竹圖屏風17世紀（圓光寺收藏，京都），冰圖屏風 cracked ice 缺憾與無常（British Museum, London）。

荷蘭：海外貿易樂此不疲，富人藏有世界珍品；The Avenue at Middelharnis -- Meindert Hobbema（National Gallery, London）;Still life with Gilt cup -- W.C.Heda (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)......; Jan Vermeer足不出戶的畫家，側窗內的世界（Delft）；德裔荷蘭人 Maria Sibylla Merian 女生物學家（昆蟲變態繪畫） 1699年抵達蘇里南研究當地生物種類，是好奇心推動了科技革命。

印度：兩位宮廷畫師：Ghulam Ali Khan+Johan Zoffany 英國東印度公司和莫臥兒王朝

Ep. 7 Radiance

法國：亞眠主教堂 （Cathedrale Notre-Dame d Amiens）哥特式+彩色馬賽克窗；沙特爾主教堂；莫奈花園 (Fondation Claude Monet 浮世繪畫作收藏) -- 乾草堆Les Meules, Rouen Cathedral Series（廬恩主教堂；Musée d’Orsay, Paris; J. Paul Getty Museum......）；梵高 -- Père Tanguy 生命力（Musée Rodin, Paris ）The Harvesters (Metropolitan Museum of Art，New York），Nuit étoilée sur le Rhône隆河上的星夜 雙重三位一體（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；Henri Matisse 伊斯蘭藝術的東西結合，全新的藝術領域 -- Jazz 二戰時期，（The Rosary Chapel, Vence 不同文化的相互融合，和諧共存）。

意大利：Giovanni Belini 貝利尼 神聖的對話1505（San Zaccaria --Venezia）與文藝復興樸素的對立面；提香 A man with a Quilted Sleeve 穿棉襖的男子 約1509, Bacchus and Ariadne 酒神與阿利阿德尼 ( National Gallery, London)。

德國：Redidenz Würzburg 巴洛克宮殿（世界最大的天花板壁畫）-- Giambattista Tiepolo 自由。

印度：Hindu Festival of Holi 印度教的盛大節日，春天的歡愉，色彩是因果的象征；Three Aspects of the Absolute -- Bulaki金箔畫，虛無與具象，形而上學（Mehrangarh Museum Trust）。

西班牙：Francisco de Goya 戈雅-- El perro,The San Isidro Meadow, The Great He-Goat......（Museo del Prado, Madrid）恐怖氣氛畫作，拿破崙入侵西班牙的歷史背景，對神聖秩序的徹底失望，從光明走向黑暗。

日本：江戶（今東京）新型都市文化，批量生產的木版畫 -- 浮世繪畫家 Suzuki Harmobu 鈴木 春信；Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川 歌麿 歌女圖；Utagawa Kunisada 歌川 國貞 平等主義的春宮圖；Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北齋 描繪Fuji 自然風景圖，佛教精神，永生的靈符，大自然的靈性（富岳三十六景 對莫奈影響很深的圖集）。

藝術為我們的啟迪之光

Ep. 8 The cult of progress

英國：18世界利用自然的力量生產工作，英格蘭中部最初工業革命開始的地方。一部分人享受著美好的世界，一部人擔心進步帶來的代價。Derbyshire — Joseph Wright of Derby懷特 - Arkwright‘s Cotton Mills （Derby Museum & Art Gallery）, Self Portrait (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), an Experiment on a bird in the Air Pump (National Gallery, London); J.M.W. Turner - Dubley, Worcestershire 工業炙熱的火爐，對舊生活被摧毀的控訴 ( Tate/ Lady Lever Art Gallery).

埃及：Giza-文明發源地，拿破崙進入埃及，對古埃及藝術的迷戀，打著啟蒙運動的名義搞研究：《the Description of Egypt 對埃及的描述》記錄了失落的國度，滿足西方人對這片土地的獵奇。實際上也把歐洲文明強加於埃及，用文字做武器。 西方開始流行東方主義題材，藝術家開始大行創作（杜撰和腦海中的意淫，實際上並沒有見過真正的埃及）描繪阿拉伯家庭的日常生活— Eugène Delacroix - Women of Algiers in their Apartment (Louvre, Paris); Marià Fortuny - The Odalisque (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona); Jean-Léon Gérôme- The Slave Market (Clark Art Institute); Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - The Turkish Bath( Louvre, Paris).

美國： 英國畫家 Thomas Cole - View of Schroon Mountain （Cleveland Museum of Art），The Course of Empire 帝國的歷程（Historical Society， NY）；年輕的美國和原住民；Frederic Edwin Church- Niagara Falls； Harriet Cany Peale- Kaaterskin Clove； George Catlin為當地原住民畫像，See-non-ty-a （National Gallery of Art，Washington D.C）。

新西蘭：捷克畫家Gottfried Lindauer為當地毛利人畫像，成為毛利後裔對祖先的紀念；紋身藝術。

法國：銀版攝影法 Louis-Jacques Daguerre拍攝巴黎街道，照片中第一次出現人形； Charles Marville 城市街道建築攝影；Nadar拍攝巴黎名人，攝影改變人的感受。G.E.Haussmann 城市規劃，輻射狀街道網絡型態；印象派 Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Bal du Moulin de la Galette 煎餅磨坊的舞會（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；莫奈 - La Gare Saint-Lazare 聖拉扎爾火車站（Musée d’Orsay, Paris），Un bar aux Folies Bergère女神遊樂廳的吧台 鏡中反射的場景，女神並不快樂，冷漠臉，是商品（Courtauld Institute of Art，London）；法國黃金時代 Berthe Morisot - Summer‘s Day（National Gallery， London）；Gustave Caillebotte - 雨天的巴黎街道 （The Art Institute of Chicago）；Mary Cassatt - In the Loge ‘你在看風景，別人在看妳’（Museum of Fine Arts，Boston）；Edgar Degas 德加 關注被現代社會異化的人們 - L'Absinthe 咖啡館裡 被酒精毀掉的人（Musée d’Orsay, Paris）；世博會 欸菲爾鐵塔； Paul Gaugin高更 痛恨資本主義，尋找解脫，尋找天堂 大溪地- Self Portrait，D'où venons-nous ? Que sommes-nous ? Où allons-nous ? 我們從何處來？我們是誰？我們向何處去？（Museum of Fine Arts, Boston）；

西班牙：20世紀 蠻族工藝品 比加索 面具 - Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 亞維儂少女 青樓大戲 非洲藝術 什麼是野蠻？什麼是文明（The Museum of Modern Art，New York）。

德國：第一次世界大戰 歐洲青年都上戰場，Otto Dix 素描紀錄戰爭的泥濘苦難的面孔，戰士=犧牲品；防毒面具野蠻主義 - War Triptych 三聯畫（Gallery of western Bohemia）藝術家詩人預見了未來的恐懼。

Ep. 9 The Vital Spark

捷克：Theresienstadt，Terezin（納粹集中營，18世紀軍事基地）惡魔的遊戲場景，文化的騙局。Arbeit macht frei 工作使人自由（放在這裡是多麼諷刺的一句話）；Pinkas Synagogue+ Jewish Museum Pragze 集中營中被關的兒童作的畫（ Friedl Dicker-Brandeis包豪斯畢業，在被關起來後一直教孩子們畫畫，直到遇害。偉大！！！！！！），反抗大屠殺的證明，拷問，藝術面對戰爭和恐怖的意義？革命的100年，恐怖的100年。避世之所。

此刻 何為藝術？深刻？持久？裝飾？生命之光？

日本：Chichu Art Museum，Naoshima Island 地中美術館 直島 藝術島（Tadao Ando 安藤忠雄設計；Soichiro Fututake創立）藏有莫奈：Water-lily Pond；現代作品 -- James Turrell：Afrum Pale Blue，Open Field光纖，空間；Walter de Maria：Time/Timeless/No time 禪意。

荷蘭：Piet Mondrian 蒙德里安 -- Lighthouse in Westkapelle， Dune V (Zeeland的 燈塔和沙灘)； 抽象,符號，視覺語言，再教育（清醒，嚴肅，刻意的藝術--Play） -- Pier and Ocean（Composition No.10）（ Kröller-Müller Museum， Otterlo）；Broadway Boogie-Woogie（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）；未完成的-Victory Boogie Woogie+ Composition with Large Red, Yellow, Blue，Grey and Black三原色，純平面，完美的平衡（Gemeentemuseum Den Haag ）冥想過程，四大皆空，治愈世界；William de Kooning -- Abstraction（Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid）個人英雄主義。

美國抽象與POP藝術：Jackson Pollock -- One No. 31 樂隊般的節奏（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）+Blue Poles 11（The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra）; Lee Krasner -- Celebration（Cleveland Museum of Art）；Andy Warhol -- Gold Marilyn Monroe + Campbell's Soup Cans（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）；Jasper Johns -- Three Flags（Whitney Museum of American Art, New York）；Wayne Thiebaud -- Lipsticks（National Gallery of Art, Washington）；Marcell Duchamp -- Foutain （複製品 Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris）；James Rosenquist -- F-111（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）。胡來，衝擊。

現代藝術家

Kara Walker -- Stone Mountian 石頭山雕像+ The Jubilant Martyrs of Obsolescence adn Ruin 剪影（High Museum of Art）+ African/American（The Museum of Modern Art, New York）+ A Subtlety 糖漿做成，黑人奴隸的主題，種族主義 -- 暴力 。怎能袖手旁觀？

德國：Anselm Kiefer 新表現主義 -- 佔領（揭傷疤，召喚記憶）Walhalla炸彈（Regensburg）+ Böse Blumen+ Nigredo 天才和暴徒+ Iron Path+ Arsenal；Caspar D. Friedrich -- Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer（Hamburger Kunsthalle）。

加納： El Anatsui -- Gravity and Grace 瓶蓋壓扁拼接 城市和傳統的拼接。

中國：蔡國強 -- 火藥 轉瞬即逝 烏托邦的夢想 永恆 愉悅和毀滅； 艾 weiwei -- Law of the Journey 生死之間（National Gallery，Prague ）難民議題。

以色列：Michal Rovner 石頭上記錄文明。

勇於突破的藝術家，從世界一端將文明傳遞至另一端。

美 在不停的轉化 不停地被重新定義

永存

不朽