曾梵志爲什麼能一直這麼貴(下)

By his third year of art school, he had completed 45 works. None of them fit the official style, but a teacher, Pi Daojian, encouraged him to mount a solo show.

到了美院的第三年，他已經完成了45件作品。它們都不符合官方風格，但一位名叫皮道堅的老師鼓勵他舉行個展。

He had depicted the down and out. (Three of them appear in his current show.) One figure in a red shirt sits in a twisted pose, asleep, a jagged red line down the side of his face. Another painting shows four sleepy shoeshine men waiting for work.

他描繪失意落魄的人（其中三幅作品出現在目前的這個展覽中）。一個穿紅色襯衫的人以扭曲的姿勢坐着睡着了，他臉頰的一側有一條鋸齒狀的紅線。還有一幅畫上，四個昏昏欲睡的擦鞋匠正在等活幹。

“He painted what he saw,” Mr. Pi said during a recent reunion with Mr. Zeng in Wuhan and a meal that featured black tofu, frog legs and chopped duck necks. “He found his own way to express emotion.”

“他畫下他所看到的，”皮道堅最近在武漢與曾梵志重聚時說，他們一起吃了一頓飯，點了臭豆腐、田雞和切成段的鴨脖子。“他發現了自己的表達情感的方式。”

Local propaganda officials pounced. “I was called to the exhibition place,” Mr. Zeng said. “I was panicked.” They grilled him.

當地宣傳官員沒有放過他。“他們叫把我叫到那個展覽的地方，”曾梵志說。“那時候我很害怕。”官員們質問他。

“‘What is the meaning of your paintings? Are you trying to make a political statement? Is this blood on his face?’ they asked,” he recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, it’s blood, but it doesn’t mean anything.’ They asked why are these people looking so sullen.”

“‘你畫這個是什麼意思，你是要表達什麼政治立場嗎？他臉上這個是血嗎？’他們問，”他回憶說。“我說，‘是，這是血，但是它不代表什麼特別意思啊。’他們還問我爲什麼這些人看起來那麼陰沉。”

The exhibition was closed to the public; only art students were allowed.

於是展覽不再對外開放；只有藝術學生被允許參觀。

Undeterred, he painted an even more raw series of works that showed the anguish of patients at the hands of callous doctors at a public hospital in his neighborhood. Then he zeroed in on the nearby butcher’s shop and its huge slabs of frozen meat. One canvas, smothered in the red and pink of raw meat, showed the butcher and his family taking an afternoon nap atop a thinly covered carcass.

曾梵志沒有被嚇倒，而是創作了一個更加真實的系列，展現自己家附近一座公立醫院中，患者在鐵石心腸的醫生手中忍受痛苦。然後他把目光對準附近的肉聯廠，以及裏面那些巨大的冷凍肉塊。一幅畫上，紅色與粉紅色的生肉厚厚地堆着，屠宰工人和家人在只有薄薄一層遮蓋的屍體上睡午覺。

The boldness of the paintings impressed an influential art critic, Li Xianting. Emboldened by his support, Mr. Zeng left for Beijing.

他的大膽風格打動了有影響力的評論家慄憲庭。在他的支持鼓勵之下，曾梵志移居北京。

There, he shunned the dirt-floor artists’ colony on the city outskirts, and shrewdly chose a tiny, leaky apartment in the upscale embassy district.

在那裏，他避開了城郊髒兮兮的藝術家聚居地，精明地在高檔的使館區選擇了一個破破爛爛的小公寓。

By then, the government was encouraging people to get rich. But there was an undercurrent of unease born from the government-ordered Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He began painting what became a signature theme: portraits of men and women, sometimes in groups, sometimes alone, all wearing masks. They were almost always grinning with exaggerated smiles, but underneath lay feelings of angst.

當時，政府正鼓勵人們致富。但是1989年政府在天安門廣場的屠殺帶來了一種不安的潛在情緒。那段時間曾梵志以男人和女人的肖像爲主題進行創作，他們有時成羣結隊，有時孤獨一人，臉上都戴着面具，後來這個主題成了他的標誌。這些人面孔上幾乎總是帶着誇張的微笑，但其下掩飾着焦慮的情緒。

Word spread. By 1993 he had held his first solo show in Hong Kong. In 1998, an art curator in Beijing, Karen Smith, introduced him to Lorenz Helbling, a Swiss citizen, who became the most influential Western dealer in China and has represented Mr. Zeng ever since.

他的名聲不脛而走。1993年，他在香港舉行了第一次個展。1998年，身在北京的藝術策展人凱倫•史密斯(Karen Smith)將他介紹給瑞士人何浦林(Lorenz Helbling)，後者成爲中國最有影響力的西方藝術交易商，從那以後一直爲曾梵志擔任代理。

In one of his first sales, Mr. Helbling sold a Zeng painting of eight young Chinese men and women wearing masks to an American tourist for $16,000. Ten years later, the painting sold at a Hong Kong auction for $9.7 million, making Mr. Zeng the most expensive contemporary Chinese artist, a position he retains unchallenged.

何浦林賣出的第一批作品中有一幅畫，上面是八個戴着面具的中國年輕男女。何浦林將它以1.6萬美元的價格賣給了一位美國遊客。十年後，這幅畫在香港的一次拍賣會上以970萬美元的價格售出，使曾梵志成爲作品售價最昂貴的當代中國藝術家，這個位置至今未曾受到挑戰。

In time, Mr. Helbling arranged the big break: an introduction to Mr. Pinault.

何浦林抓住時機，促成了一次重大突破：他把皮諾介紹給了曾梵志。

“Pinault had been saying he wanted to come and see my works,” Mr. Zeng recalled. “I drove myself, and on the way there was a car accident. I kept Pinault waiting for three hours. People were calling me and yelling: ‘Where are you?’ I nearly screwed the whole thing up.”

“皮諾先生說過他想要來看我作品，”曾梵志回憶。“那天我自己開車，然後路上正好有個車禍，皮諾等了我足足三個小時。別人一直給我打電話問我‘你到哪了’，我差點就搞砸了。”

During the visit, Mr. Pinault bought two canvases and wanted to buy more. “Actually,” Mr. Zeng said, “I told him: ‘I was only going to sell you one. But since I am late I will sell you two.’”

那一次皮諾買了曾梵志的兩幅畫，他還想買更多。“其實，”曾梵志說，“那時候我和他說，‘我本來只打算賣給你一幅畫，但既然我遲到了，我就賣給你兩幅吧。’”

Mr. Zeng’s works have been shown in two historic palazzos in Venice that Mr. Pinault restored as venues for his huge art collection. The fact that Mr. Pinault owns one of his favorite paintings, a portrait of the artist Lucian Freud, and displays it so prominently in his Belgravia home in London in a $100,000 18th-century frame, seems to give Mr. Zeng the most pleasure.

皮諾修復了威尼斯兩座歷史悠久的宮殿，用來容納自己龐大的藝術收藏，曾梵志的作品也曾在那裏展出。皮諾擁有曾梵志本人最喜歡的作品之一——藝術家盧西安•弗洛伊德(Lucian Freud)的肖像，並將它用一個價值10萬美元的18世紀畫框裝起來，醒目地掛在自己倫敦貝爾格萊維亞的家中，這似乎是最讓曾梵志開心的。

“I asked him many times to borrow the Lucian Freud for one of my shows, and he always said no,” Mr. Zeng said. As a gesture of their friendship — they hang out together in Europe, Mr. Zeng said — Mr. Pinault agreed to send it to Beijing for the show.

“我問過他很多次要借這幅弗洛伊德，但是他一直說不行，”曾梵志說。作爲友誼的表示——他說兩人在歐洲時會聚一聚——皮諾才同意把它送到北京參加這次展出。

There was a reason for the reluctance. Mr. Zeng said, “They had to close off the street in London and get a crane to take it out of his front window.”

他猶豫是有原因的。曾梵志說：“他們還要把倫敦的路給封了，然後用一臺吊車從窗戶把畫吊出來。”