The Most Important Person 最重要的角色

By V. M. Hillyer ——V. M. 希利尔

V. M. 希利尔（1875—1931），美国著名的儿童教育家、科普作家，创建了卡尔弗特教育体系。他为孩子们编写了一套趣味盎然的历史、地理、艺术读物，即《写给孩子看的世界历史》《写给孩子看的世界地理》《写给孩子看的艺术史》。本文选自《写给孩子看的艺术史》。

AND now Im going to have to blindfold you. I wont ask you to look at some pictures blindfolded. You can enjoy music that way， but hardly pictures. But lets suppose you really are blindfolded. Im going to guide you， blindfolded as you are， out to a field this morning. Im going to stand you so you are facing a haystack and then Im going to take the handkerchief off your eyes and let you look at the haystack for five minutes. Then Ill blindfold you again and lead you back. Its a queer kind of a game， isnt it？ Something like blind mans buff.

Lets play it once more. The first time when you looked at the haystack it was ten oclock in the morning. This time Ill let you look at the same haystack for five minutes about five oclock in the afternoon. And this time the haystack will look quite different from the way it looked at ten. Its the same shape， but the colors and light and shadows are all so different that the five oclock haystack makes a picture to your eye very different from the ten oclock haystack. Every little while during the day the haystack changes in color and brightness. Thats why I let you look at it for only five minutes at a time—so the light would not change and give your eye another picture.

现在，我要把你的眼睛蒙起来。我当然不会让你蒙着眼睛看绘画作品了——让你蒙着眼睛听音乐还行，欣赏图画肯定是没有办法做到的。假设你的眼睛真的被蒙上了，什么都看不见，然后我上午领你到田野去一趟。我会让你站在一个草堆前面，然后取下蒙住你眼睛的布。你对着这个草堆的时间嘛，我让你看五分钟吧。接着我再蒙上你的眼睛，我会把你带回你来的地方。是在玩捉迷藏游戏吗？你一定会觉得这个游戏很奇怪，对不对？

我们再玩一次这个游戏。你第一次看那堆干草是上午十点整，这次，我让你在下午五点的时候再看五分钟。你要是细心就会发现，下午看到的这个草堆和上午看到的这个草堆有着很大的不同。尽管它们的形状一样，但是颜色、亮度、影子都完全不一样了。所以，这个游戏要告诉你的就是，即使是同一堆干草，它在上午十点和下午五点呈现出来的画面是完全不同的。事实上，草堆的颜色和亮度每隔一小会儿都会发生变化。这就是为什么我只给了你五分钟，每次只让你看不太长的时间，这样草堆就不会有太大变化，不会让你一次就看到不同的画面。

Now， Im sure you can see that if an artist painted a picture of the haystack for every hour of the day he would have many pictures of the same haystack， but each picture would be different from all the others.

现在你一定明白了，如果一个画家每小时都给同一堆干草画幅画，因为干草堆在一天中不同时间里的背景、颜色完全不同，所以画出来的画看上去也不会是同样的。

一些近代的法国画家正是这样迅速作画的。这批画家完成了自己的创作之后举办了一个画展，把作品都挂在墙上让大家欣赏。来参观的人发现这些画家的绘画风格与以往的画家不同，他们的作品与前人相比風格迥异，这些画画的就是画家们眼睛快速瞥过草堆时，观察看到的颜色和光线效果。由于快速观察事物产生出的是印象，所以很快，这些画家就被人们称为“印象派画家”。

早期的画家从来都没有想过这种画画的方式，只要是同一匹马他们都会画成一种颜色，同一堆干草也会画成一种颜色，也不管这匹马或者这堆干草在各种不同的光线下看起来是不是那种颜色的。一匹黑色的马或者一堆黄色的草堆并不一直是黑色或者黄色的，事实上，不论是马还是草堆，它们看起来的颜色都取决于它们周围的光线。有可能一匹黑马是蓝色的，因为在某些地方的光线照射下看起来就是这样。因为人们都知道世界上没有蓝色的马，所以不论马匹在特定的光线照射下看起来有多么蓝，你也不会注意到。

That is just what some French artists did so many years ago. Then they gave an exhibition of their work. They hung their paintings on the walls of a room so that people could come and see them. The people who came found these paintings were very different from any they had ever seen before. The pictures were like your quick view of the haystack. They showed the colors and light that the artists had seen in quick views of the things they were painting. These views were called impressions. And so the painters soon got the name of Impressionists.

Earlier painters never thought of doing such a thing. They painted a horse one color and a haystack another， no matter whether the light always made them look that color or not. Really a black horse or a yellow haystack is not always black or yellow. The color depends on the light. The light shining on a black horse may make him look blue in places. But you know so well that a horse isnt blue that you dont notice how blue he really may look in certain lights！

blindfold /'bla?ndf??ld/ v. （用布等）蒙住……的眼睛

blind mans buff  捉迷藏

The children are playing blind mans buff.

view /vju?/ n. 一睹;一覽

Painters always used to paint shadows brown or gray or black. But if you look carefully at a real shadow it is often not brown or gray or black at all. Its just as apt to be green or blue or purple or some other color.

Of course bright light and color on an object out of doors was always hard to paint， because paints are not nearly so bright as light. But if you remember what I told you about the painter Constable， you will see how these Impressionist artists made their colors look bright and like sunlight. They put the colors on in little dots and dashes. Putting colors on in dots and dashes of separate colors does really make them look brighter. They almost seem to shimmer like real sunlight. But it also makes the pictures look quite different from the older kind of painting.

For this reason the people who saw the French exhibition of the Impressionists werent very much pleased. These people had been used to one kind of painting， and the change was so great that they couldnt like the new kind nearly as well at first.

But after a while the Impressionists came to be understood better. People saw that they were trying out a new way of painting and that what they were doing might be very worthwhile.

One of the Impressionists named Claude Monet used to go out with a carriage full of canvases and spend all day painting the same scene. He used a different canvas each time the light changed the color and appearance of the thing he was painting.

以前的画家总是用褐色、灰色或者黑色展示影子的效果。但是，如果你真正仔细地观察过影子，你就会发现它可能根本就不是这些颜色之一。绿色、蓝色、紫色或者其他什么颜色，影子都有可能会呈现。

当然，室外光线明亮的色彩和亮度人们是很难画出来的，因为颜料的颜色永远也没有太阳光那么明亮。但是改进的方法也不是没有，你还记得我之前介绍过的康斯太布尔吧？如果你记得，你就會知道这些印象派画家是如何使得画面的颜色明亮逼真起来的了。对，他们的方法就是画不同颜色的很小的点和短线，这样看起来就会显得更亮，而且看上去会微微闪烁，就像真的阳光一样。当然，这种方法也使得印象派画家的画与传统画家的作品很不一样。

不过呢，也正是因为这个原因，刚开始参观法国印象派画家画展的人们都不太喜欢，他们已经习惯了传统画家的画法，对印象派画家这样太过创新的画刚开始接受起来很不适应，就觉得不好看。

过了一段时间之后，人们慢慢对印象派画家有了更多的了解。大家发现这些印象派画家尝试的是一种新的画法，与以往不同，而且他们的尝试也许是很有价值的。

克劳德·莫奈这位印象派画家，经常坐着马车出去画画，不过同一个场景就能画上一整天。每当周围的光线使得物体的颜色、阴影的形状发生变化时，他就用一块新的帆布来画。

For instance， Monet painted fifteen pictures of the same haystacks and in each one had a different color and light effect. He painted twenty pictures of the front of a French cathedral as it was seen at different times of day， and each picture was different. They make an interesting series， but when you see one of these pictures by itself you are apt to be a little disappointed because the forms， or the shapes， in the painting are not so important as you think they should be. Monet was interested in the light and color， not especially in the form or shape.

Another Impressionist had a name much like Monet. His name was Manet. In fact， Manet was the painter who really started the Impressionists. Manet didnt break his pictures up into so many little glittering spots as Monet did. Indeed， it was only in the last ten years of his life that Manet used that kind of painting very much. Some one asked Manet once who the chief person was in one of his Impressionist pictures.

“The most important person in any picture，” Manet answered， “is the light.” And that was what the Impressionists tried to show in their paintings.

Here is one of Manets pictures called “The Fifer”. Probably you will like it better than Monets “The Poplars” because people are generally more interesting than things， even if light is “the most important person” in a painting.

比如，同一个草堆莫奈就画过十五幅画，这十五幅画的每一幅都呈现出了不同的色彩和光影效果。莫奈还画了二十幅法国大教堂正面的图，表现出大教堂在日光下不同时间的样子，每幅画都各不相同。这些画连在一起看还是挺有感觉的，不过如果只看其中单独的一张，你可能会有点失望，因为画中物体的形状和样子看起来好像并不像你想象的那样。因为莫奈对光线和颜色特别在意，所以对物体的形状就不是很感兴趣了。

另外还有一位和莫奈名字差不多的印象派画家，叫马奈。其实马奈才真正是印象主义画派的创始人。一开始马奈的画和莫奈不一样，他的作品中并没有把颜色画成许多明亮的小点，大量出现莫奈的这种画法是在马奈生命的最后十年才开始的。有人曾经问马奈：“你的印象派画作里，主角到底是谁？”

“任何一幅画中最重要的角色，”马奈回答说，“都是光线。”这也正是印象派画家在画中希望展现出来的。

这里有一张《吹短笛的男孩》，是马奈的画作。相比莫奈的《白杨树》，你很可能更喜欢这张画。因为即使印象派大师都认为光线是画作中最重要的“角色”，但是人们还是对画中的人物更感兴趣。

apt /?pt/ adj. 易于……;有……倾向

She is apt to be forgetful.

shimmer /'??m?（r）/ v. 发出微弱的闪光;闪烁

chief /t?i?f/ adj. 最重要的;首要的;主要的

Duty， not pleasure， is the chief aim of living.