美国国家公共电台 NPR Giacometti's Sculptures Bare The Scars Of Our Daily Struggles

 

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Alberto Giacometti made drawings and paintings and sculptures. The sculptures are what he's best-known for, these long, skinny bronze bodies striding through life like shadows. Today New York's Guggenheim Museum opens a big show of his work. And NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg tells us that the show plus a recent movie give Giacometti his moment.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE¹: If you like zaftig, Giacometti is not your man. If you like confidence, he's not there either.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FINAL PORTRAIT")

ARMIE HAMMER: (As James Lord) Have you always been like this?

GEOFFREY RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) Like what?

HAMMER: (As James Lord) So doubtful of your own ability.

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) Of course.

STAMBERG: The film "Final Portrait" shows Giacometti in 1964, agonizing² over a painting he's doing of American writer James Lord.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FINAL PORTRAIT")

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) It gets worse every year.

HAMMER: (As James Lord) But you become more successful every year.

STAMBERG: What's a better breeding ground for doubt than success? - Giacometti mutters.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FINAL PORTRAIT")

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) Don't smile.

HAMMER: (As James Lord) Well, you did.

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) No, I didn't.

HAMMER: (As James Lord) You did.

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) I did not smile.

STAMBERG: Geoffrey Rush plays the prickly Italian-Swiss artist to a shuffling³, smoking, obsessive⁴ fare-thee-well. The film was written and directed by Stanley Tucci, based on James Lord's eyewitness⁵ account of the artist at work. Tucci says Giacometti's agony is universal.

STANLEY TUCCI: There's torment⁶ in every one of us. Giacometti wasn't afraid of displaying it.

STAMBERG: Whenever I feel most hopeful, Giacometti once said, that's when I give up. Catherine Grenier of the Giacometti Foundation in Paris says his small Paris studio was full of unfinished works, pieces produced after the trauma⁷ of World War II, made of clay, plaster, bronze - elongated⁸, super slim, vulnerable-looking men and women, their surfaces knobby, pulled and pushed at, changed obsessively⁹.

CATHERINE GRENIER: It's like if he was struggling with the sculpture. And what he's doing, which is different from the other sculptors¹¹, is that man - the humankind that he is representing is not made of heroes.

STAMBERG: No heroes, no generals on horseback, no Greek gods - ordinary people, wrenched¹² apart and reconstructed by a sculptor¹⁰ waging manic hand-to-hand combat with his vision.

GRENIER: You can see his fingerprints¹³ in the clay. And even in the bronze, you can see, like, scars, as there is a part of violence in his work (ph).

STAMBERG: Sometimes, this struggle led to disaster. The clay figures got so thin, they fell apart.

GRENIER: Very often, he has destroyed his sculpture, not because he wanted to destroy them but only by working and reworking and reworking. can't stop.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "FINAL PORTRAIT")

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) We can't stop. I have to stop.

HAMMER: (As James Lord) It looks really good. What'd you do?

RUSH: (As Alberto Giacometti) I have no idea.

STAMBERG: In "Final Portrait," Giacometti reaches a magnificent point in his portrait of James Lord. And then he paints on top of it over and over until Lord's head seems wrapped in white bandages, as if Giacometti had killed him. The film's writer-director Stanley Tucci shows the struggle going on and on.

TUCCI: We find him, you know, on Day 3, on Day 5, on Day 6, on Day 10, finally Day 18, and this thing is never-ending. He's constantly deconstructing or undoing¹⁴ what he has done again and again and again because he wasn't finding what he wanted. He wasn't finding he was able to achieve what he wanted.

STAMBERG: Like so many creative people, actor-director-writer Tucci finds resonance¹⁵ here with his own work.

TUCCI: You're constantly sort of questioning - why do I do what I do? And then, how do I do what I do? And how do I do it well? And how do I keep continuing to do it well?

STAMBERG: Guggenheim curator Megan Fontanella says that perpetual questioning is part of the human condition.

MEGAN FONTANELLA: I think everyone can identify with this kind of struggle and this ambition that he had to start again and persevere¹⁶.

STAMBERG: Giacometti Foundation director Catherine Grenier finds something heroic in this persistence¹⁷.

GRENIER: He made something positive of this idea of failing, of difficulties, of starting again every day and starting anew every day.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

STAMBERG: Alberto Giacometti is considered one of the giants of 20th-century art. His creative struggles give humanity a slender chance and hope.

I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.

1 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。

2 agonizing   

adj.痛苦难忍的；使人苦恼的v.使极度痛苦；折磨(agonize的ing形式)

参考例句：

• I spent days agonizing over whether to take the job or not. 我用了好些天苦苦思考是否接受这个工作。
• his father's agonizing death 他父亲极度痛苦的死

3 shuffling   

adj. 慢慢移动的, 滑移的 动词shuffle的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• Don't go shuffling along as if you were dead. 别像个死人似地拖着脚走。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹
• Some one was shuffling by on the sidewalk. 外面的人行道上有人拖着脚走过。 来自英汉文学 - 嘉莉妹妹

4 obsessive   

adj. 着迷的, 强迫性的, 分神的

参考例句：

• Some people are obsessive about cleanliness.有些人有洁癖。
• He's becoming more and more obsessive about punctuality.他对守时要求越来越过分了。

5 eyewitness   

n.目击者，见证人

参考例句：

• The police questioned several eyewitness to the murder.警察询问了谋杀案的几位目击者。
• He was the only eyewitness of the robbery.他是那起抢劫案的唯一目击者。

6 torment   

n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠

参考例句：

• He has never suffered the torment of rejection.他从未经受过遭人拒绝的痛苦。
• Now nothing aggravates me more than when people torment each other.没有什么东西比人们的互相折磨更使我愤怒。

7 trauma   

n.外伤，精神创伤

参考例句：

• Counselling is helping him work through this trauma.心理辅导正帮助他面对痛苦。
• The phobia may have its root in a childhood trauma.恐惧症可能源于童年时期的创伤。

8 elongated   

v.延长，加长( elongate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Modigliani's women have strangely elongated faces. 莫迪里阿尼画中的妇女都长着奇长无比的脸。
• A piece of rubber can be elongated by streching. 一块橡皮可以拉长。 来自《用法词典》

9 obsessively   

ad.着迷般地，过分地

参考例句：

• Peter was obsessively jealous and his behaviour was driving his wife away. 彼得过分嫉妒的举止令他的妻子想离他而去。
• He's rude to his friends and obsessively jealous. 他对他的朋友很无礼而且嫉妒心重。

10 sculptor   

n.雕刻家，雕刻家

参考例句：

• A sculptor forms her material.雕塑家把材料塑造成雕塑品。
• The sculptor rounded the clay into a sphere.那位雕塑家把黏土做成了一个球状。

11 sculptors   

雕刻家，雕塑家( sculptor的名词复数 )； [天]玉夫座

参考例句：

• He is one of Britain's best-known sculptors. 他是英国最有名的雕塑家之一。
• Painters and sculptors are indexed separately. 画家和雕刻家被分开，分别做了索引。

12 wrenched   

v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛

参考例句：

• The bag was wrenched from her grasp. 那只包从她紧握的手里被夺了出来。
• He wrenched the book from her hands. 他从她的手中把书拧抢了过来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

13 fingerprints   

n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Everyone's fingerprints are unique. 每个人的指纹都是独一无二的。
• They wore gloves so as not to leave any fingerprints behind (them). 他们戴着手套，以免留下指纹。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 undoing   

n.毁灭的原因，祸根；破坏，毁灭

参考例句：

• That one mistake was his undoing. 他一失足即成千古恨。
• This hard attitude may have led to his undoing. 可能就是这种强硬的态度导致了他的垮台。

15 resonance   

n.洪亮；共鸣；共振

参考例句：

• Playing the piano sets up resonance in those glass ornaments.一弹钢琴那些玻璃饰物就会产生共振。
• The areas under the two resonance envelopes are unequal.两个共振峰下面的面积是不相等的。

16 persevere   

v.坚持，坚忍，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• They are determined to persevere in the fight.他们决心坚持战斗。
• It is strength of character enabled him to persevere.他那坚强的性格使他能够坚持不懈。

17 persistence   

n.坚持，持续，存留

参考例句：

• The persistence of a cough in his daughter puzzled him.他女儿持续的咳嗽把他难住了。
• He achieved success through dogged persistence.他靠着坚持不懈取得了成功。