Awed & baffled
2020/11/19 04:12:42 網誌分類: 生活
The lyrics of the old song Vincent, which is about the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, are captivating. An interesting fact about van Gogh is that his paintings did not become famous until after his suicide in 1890 at the age of 37 after a life of mental illness and poverty. He cut off part of his left ear with a razor in 1888 in France after tensions between him and his close friend who was also a painter. Last week, I received a miniature sculpture of an ear shaped like a swimming pool from the New World group. The outside is white, the inside is blue to represent water.
I was baffled, then realized it was a tiny replica of van Gogh's Ear, a nine-metre high sculpture by Danish-Norwegian artists Elmgreen and Dragset at the K11 Musea in Tsim Sha Tsui. The K11 Musea, inspired by New World chief executive Adrian Cheng Chi-kong, who admires art, is a harbour-front complex with a mix of art, culture, retail and dining. It is celebrating its first-year anniversary with the unusual van Gogh's Ear sculpture, which will be displayed until next March. It's worth seeing. Another interesting fact about van Gogh is disagreement over how to pronounce his name. The Dutch pronunciation is difficult. Most people use the American pronunciation, which you can hear on the online version of this column.
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一些著名畫家的畫作使我心生敬畏（awe），另一些畫作則使我感到困惑（baffle）。達文西的《蒙娜麗莎》便令我肅然起敬（awed），那是一幅簡單但使人着迷的（captivating）畫作。上年還沒有新冠肺炎疫情的時候我在巴黎，去了看世上最知名的畫作《蒙娜麗莎》。那是我第二次看它了。我就站在那兒欣賞。Awe在這裏解作對某事肅然起敬或驚歎。若你是“baffled”by something，意即某事令你困惑不解。一些畫作難倒了（baffle）我，因為我理解不到它們的意思。Captivating是用來形容某事非常迷人或有趣，可令人入迷。
有一首舊歌《Vincent》的歌詞也令人着迷（captivating），說的是知名荷蘭畫家文森‧梵高的故事。一個關於梵高的有趣事實，就是他的畫作在生前並不出名，直到一八九○年，他活過精神病患與貧窮的一生，以三十七歲之齡自殺之後，他才聞名於世。一八八八年，當他和另一位也是畫家的好友關係變得緊張之後，他在法國用剃鬚刀割去了左耳的一部份。上星期，我收到新世界集團送來的一個迷你雕塑，是個像游泳池的耳朵，外面是白色的，裏面則是代表水的藍色。
我初時感到很困惑（baffled），然後便明白到那是《梵高的耳朵》的細小藝術複製品，原作是由挪威與丹麥的藝術家Elmgreen和Dragset創作的九米高雕塑，就放在尖沙咀的K11 Musea。K11 Musea是個海旁綜合購物中心，結合藝術、文化、零售與餐飲，是由欣賞藝術的新世界行政總裁鄭志剛所創。為慶祝它落成一周年，就有了這不凡的《梵高的耳朵》雕塑，將會展出至下年三月，值得一看。另一個有關梵高的有趣事實是，對於他的名字該怎樣讀，一直存有分歧，荷蘭語的發音很困難，大部份人都會用美式發音，就是你在這專欄網上版聽到的版本。中譯：七刻
Michael Chugani 褚簡寧
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