美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Breaking News' Artists Use Mass Media As Their Medium

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: 

The images that often come from breaking news can be dramatic or brutal¹ or upsetting. And that has provided inspiration for art. In Los Angeles, an exhibit at the Getty Center looks at artists' reactions to mass media, what they saw day after day in decades past. NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg reports.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE²: It's a big show - more than 200 photos and videos, 17 artists. They're not photo journalists. They take the actual work of photo journalists and turn it into something else. They use news images of terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, the death of a pope. The war in Vietnam is a major theme for two of the artists horrified³ by that war assaulting them through the mass media of the day. They lifted pictures from magazines, newspapers, TV screens and collaged⁴ or manipulated them to reflect their horror.

The original news images are deeply disturbing. The artists' use of them amplifies⁵ the disturbance⁶. Martha Rosler took a Life magazine picture of a handsome 1960s living room and on the living room stairs pasted a clipping of a devastated⁷ Vietnamese man carrying his blood spattered child. A sobering juxtaposition⁸, the war in our living room.

ARPAD KOVACS: Often these images from Vietnam were appearing in the exact same issue as these interior scenes.

STAMBERG: A reader could easily flip⁹ through the magazine and miss one or the other, but the artist intervenes.

KOVACS: What it does is it makes America confront two different realities.

STAMBERG: Arpad Kovacs curated the Getty show.

This is not very subtle, though, is it? It's really political and quite focused.

KOVACS: It's very political, it's very aggressive. But it's meant to be. You know, a lot of these pictures actually initially¹⁰ circulated in underground magazines. These are pictures that are not on the fence. They really stake a claim and stand for something.

STAMBERG: Martha Rosler was a student of John Baldessari. The 85-year-old artist is an iconic figure in the LA art world with works in major American museums. He too manipulates photographs, adding text and lettering. He once had students in his conceptual art class react to undated, uncaptioned news photos he pinned to a bulletin board. Baldessari pauses at one of them in the Getty show.

Look, there's a man bending down and it looks like he's kissing - I can't tell. Is he kissing the ground or...

JOHN BALDESSARI: Well, you don't know that. You're just making that up.

STAMBERG: Which is exactly Baldessari's point, just what he wanted his students to do.

BALDESSARI: That's the way you're reading it.

STAMBERG: He could simply be bending to smell the ground, the artist says, or the grass.

BALDESSARI: You don't know that.

STAMBERG: But I like that I can wonder about it. And I can make up some story around it. I like that.

BALDESSARI: Sure, sure.

STAMBERG: Meaning is slippery, Baldessari says, although there is clear meaning in the newspaper photographs Donald Blumberg works with. In the Vietnam years, he had a photo show at the State University of New York at Buffalo¹¹. Police occupied the campus during an anti-war student protest. A flying wedge of cops ran by chasing the students.

DONALD BLUMBERG: They were trapped in the stairwell of the campus and beaten with clubs. That was the last draw in thinking I was going to be a decorative¹² fine art photographer doing beautiful photographs for people to look at.

STAMBERG: He started clipping news photographs that captured the disaster in Vietnam. He enlarged and then photographed page one of the New York Daily News, a photo of the massacre¹³ in the town of My Lai with the big headline, "GI Shot Child, Walked Away." Another headline, "Grenade Is Cut From Prisoner's Face" with the X-ray of that face and the lieutenant¹⁴ who dug out the live grenade with his pocket knife. Around each story, Blumberg shows a thick, dark black frame. The black is in memoriam, like the black ribbon worn after a death in the family.

BLUMBERG: I'd like to be as political as I can. And one of the ways of being political is through my photography.

STAMBERG: We are bombarded with photographs. They come at us from everywhere, so many images - more than we can absorb. For Donald Blumberg and other photographers in this Getty exhibition, "Breaking News: Turning The Lens On Mass Media," the magic of still photography is that it stops time, gives viewers the chance to really look and think about what's happening in our world, our lives.

I must say, as a lover of art, I look at art to get away from the news and to get away from realities and tragedies and war and all of that. Here, they're saying, in your face.

KOVACS: I think good art is always about something difficult.

STAMBERG: Again, curator Arpad Kovacs.

KOVACS: Art is more than a pretty picture. Good art is about sort of challenging the status quo and making a statement.

STAMBERG: Through their photographs, these artists are bearing witness for future generations, those who weren't around when the news actually broke. In Culver City, I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.

1 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

4 collaged   

vt.拼贴（collage的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The units are collaged together by a serial tectonic spatially and temporally. 这些构造单元是由构造原因，依一定的时空序列拼贴在一起的。 来自互联网

5 amplifies   

放大，扩大( amplify的第三人称单数 )； 增强； 详述

参考例句：

• Gain is the number of times the amplifier amplifies a signal. 增益就是放大器放大信号的倍数。
• Such panicky behaviour amplifies the impact of the Russian export ban. 这样的恐慌行为放大了俄罗斯小麦出口禁令的影响效应。

6 disturbance   

n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调

参考例句：

• He is suffering an emotional disturbance.他的情绪受到了困扰。
• You can work in here without any disturbance.在这儿你可不受任何干扰地工作。

7 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

8 juxtaposition   

n.毗邻，并置，并列

参考例句：

• The juxtaposition of these two remarks was startling.这两句话连在一起使人听了震惊。
• It is the result of the juxtaposition of contrasting colors.这是并列对比色的结果。

9 flip   

vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的

参考例句：

• I had a quick flip through the book and it looked very interesting.我很快翻阅了一下那本书，看来似乎很有趣。
• Let's flip a coin to see who pays the bill.咱们来抛硬币决定谁付钱。

10 initially   

adv.最初，开始

参考例句：

• The ban was initially opposed by the US.这一禁令首先遭到美国的反对。
• Feathers initially developed from insect scales.羽毛最初由昆虫的翅瓣演化而来。

11 buffalo   

n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛

参考例句：

• Asian buffalo isn't as wild as that of America's. 亚洲水牛比美洲水牛温顺些。
• The boots are made of buffalo hide. 这双靴子是由水牛皮制成的。

12 decorative   

adj.装饰的，可作装饰的

参考例句：

• This ware is suitable for decorative purpose but unsuitable for utility.这种器皿中看不中用。
• The style is ornate and highly decorative.这种风格很华丽，而且装饰效果很好。

13 massacre   

n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀

参考例句：

• There was a terrible massacre of villagers here during the war.在战争中，这里的村民惨遭屠杀。
• If we forget the massacre,the massacre will happen again!忘记了大屠杀，大屠杀就有可能再次发生！

14 lieutenant   

n.陆军中尉，海军上尉；代理官员，副职官员

参考例句：

• He was promoted to be a lieutenant in the army.他被提升为陆军中尉。
• He prevailed on the lieutenant to send in a short note.他说动那个副官，递上了一张简短的便条进去。