济斯瓦夫·贝克辛斯基的悲剧性生活与艺术｜The Tragic Life & Art of Zdzisław Beksiński
The likes of H.R. Giger’s iconic Alien drawings or Guillermo Del Torro’s Pan’s Labrinth come to mind when viewing this artist’s works. An unsettling feeling of sorrow, pain, and malice lingers in the air. Yet they are dream-like and celestial, bringing to mind creatures and visions of a parallel universe. Such are the works of Zdzisław Beksiński, an artist cursed to nightmares through his artistic vision and grievous lifetime.
当观看济斯瓦夫·贝克辛斯基（Zdzisław Beksiński）的作品时，很容易联想到异形之父HR Giger的标志性的插画，或吉尔莫·德尔·托罗（Guillermo Del Torro）的电影《潘神的迷宫》一类的风格。他的作品中充满着悲伤和痛苦这样一些不安的情绪，一种怨念弥漫在其中。但是它们如梦似幻，使人们想到平行宇宙的生物和异象。Zdzisław Beksiński的作品就是这样，如同被诅咒一般通过他的艺术视觉和痛苦的人生来创造一场噩梦。
About the artist
关于艺术家
Zdzisław Beksiński is a Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor, that was one of the pioneers of heavy metal imagery in pop culture. Beksiński used a style that was gothic and sinister consisting of two parts, expressionism and dystopian surrealism, bringing light to contemporary polish art globally. His art is full of dark imagery, however, he firmly believes that they are not all necessary meant to be this way and often misunderstood. Ironically, his life story was full of strife and tragedy starting with a post-World War II childhood leading to the death of his wife by cancer, the suicide of his son, and his tragic death by stabbing in 2005 by a 19-year-old acquaintance in Warsaw.
ZdzisławBeksiński是一名波兰籍画家，摄影师和雕塑家，他是流行文化中重金属图像风格的开拓者之一。Beksiński的风格是哥特式的，险恶不祥的，这构成了他作品中表现主义和反乌托邦式的超现实主义这两个部分，如一束光在全球范围内照亮了波兰现代艺术。他的作品充满了黑暗的意象，但同时他坚信自己的作品并不往往都是这样，其中经常充斥着误解。具有讽刺意味的是，他的人生中充满了纷争和悲剧。伴随第二次世界大战结束，他度过了自己的童年，随后的经历中妻子死于癌症，儿子自杀身亡，而他本人于2005年在华沙被一名19岁的熟人刺伤而不幸死亡。
While he does not have any formal training in art, his studies in architecture would provide the basis for his works. Most if not all of Beksinski’s works were untitled as the artist did not want people to find unintended meanings through his paintings by the influence of the artist.
尽管他没有接受过任何正式的艺术训练，但学习建筑学的经历为他之后的工作打下了基础。Beksinski的大多数作品都没有标题，因为他不希望因为标题带给人们来自艺术家的主观意向，而影响人们对他作品的解读。
“Interpretation is imposed by others. Speaking immodestly, paintings are meant to be admired or contemplated…admired without asking what it means. If I had something to say, I would write it down or say it. I don’t need painting for that.”
“解释是由他人强加的。不客气地说，绘画应当是要被欣赏或思考的……不求甚解地来欣赏和体会。如果我有话要说，我会写下或者说出来。我不需要把它画出来。”
- Zdzisław Beksiński 济斯瓦夫·贝克辛斯基
Working in a bus company after finishing his education, he would experiment with different mediums of art such as photography and sculpture. Beksiński did not care for trends or pleasing critics and would often pursue his own style. His style of photography was provocative and highly stylized, incorporating his architectural influences into his compositions.
在完成学业之后，他在一家公交公司工作，期间他尝试了诸如摄影和雕塑之类的各种艺术媒介。Beksiński不在乎潮流的方向，也不刻意讨好艺术评论家，他只想追求自己的风格。他的摄影风格高度风格化，具有争议性。他将建筑学对他的影响融入了他的构图中。
Beksinski drew a line with the photographic style of the times, “pure photography”, which was meant to be crisp and capturing subjects in their natural state at the full tonal range, such as the works by Ansel Adams. Beksinski instead, decided to go against all norms by staging his subjects and placing them into abstract forms. His career in photography would not be long-lived. Eventually, he would immerse himself in painting as he felt the limitations of photography did not suit his creative and expressive needs as an artist.
Beksinski与时下“纯摄影”的摄影风格划清界线，“纯摄影”意味着简明扼要，在整个色调范围内捕捉自然状态下的被摄对象，例如安塞尔·亚当斯（Ansel Adams）的作品。相反，Beksinski违背所有规范，他安排拍摄主体置于抽象的形式中。他的摄影生涯并没有持续多久，最终，他还是将自己沉浸在绘画中，因为他觉得摄影依旧具有局限性，让他作为艺术家没有办法完全释放出他的创造力和表达需求。
"I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams"
“我希望以一种“为梦摄影”的方式而绘画”
- Zdzisław Beksiński 济斯瓦夫·贝克辛斯基
One of Beksinski’s most notable group of works is his Fantastic series which carries themes of spiritualism, architecture, eroticism, fantasy, and war. While the artist does not care about meaning, it is difficult to ignore the effect that his surrounding experiences have imposed on his paintings. Featuring buildings and demonic figures in a state of decay, revealing fibers of their inner foundations, just like the war-torn buildings from his youth.
Beksinski最著名的作品是他的“幻想系列”，主题关注于通灵，建筑，情色，幻想和战争。尽管艺术家并不意在其含义，但很难忽略他周围环境和他的经历对其绘画的影响。这些建筑物和恶魔一般的人物正处于腐烂状态，暴露出内部基础的纤维，就像他年轻时看到被战争破坏的建筑物一样。
Fascinating parallels to war can also be deduced by paintings with recurring imagery of desecrated landscapes and, skeletons, religious symbolism, and military helmets. The figures in his paintings are disfigured and broken, represented as supernatural beings that apart from appearance think of themselves as humans in behavior. In other instances, decay and the blending of such figures into objects are also recurrent in many of his paintings, as if to signify the objectification of these individuals as the Jewish people were by the Nazis during the war.
与战争相似的迷人类比同样可以从画作中反复出现的萧条景观，骷髅，宗教象征，以及军用头盔中找到踪迹。他的画作中人物是破损，残缺的，代表着一种超自然生物的特征，这些生物除了外表，在行为上将自己视为人类。在他其他作品中，也经常出现这种这种腐朽以及将这些人物混入主体，似乎在暗示这些人物被客体化，就像纳粹在战争中对待犹太人的所做的方式一样。
Beksinski’s cross paintings also allude to interesting concepts regarding religion and martyrdom. The T-shaped crosses are a deviation from the concept of forgiveness and resurrection that is normally represented in Christianity. Traces of time past is felt. The figures are often decomposed and disfigured to the point where they blend into the cross itself. The absence of resurrection, hence leading to an implication that God may have abandoned humans in a world so hopeless and desolate.
Beksinski的十字架绘画也暗示着关于宗教以及殉难的有趣概念。T形的十字架与基督教通常代表着的宽恕和复活概念背道而驰。追溯到一种过去的痕迹。这些人物主体经常被分解和破坏，直至融合到十字架本身。由于“复活”的缺失，暗示着上帝可能在一个绝望和荒凉的世界中抛弃了人类。
Following his rise to fame in the 80s, Beksiński would continue his paintings but focus on developing a style that was his own. He would keep the dark tones and minimalize backgrounds, representing figures in the foreground more clearly with darker tones. By the 90s he would return to photography due to graphic developments using photoshop but would soon revert back to paintings as the technology was not yet suitable for his vision.
在80年代成名之后，Beksiński继续他的绘画工作，但开始专注于开发属于自己的风格。他保留深沉的色调风格，将背景物体最小化，以深色调更清楚地来呈现前景中的人物。到90年代，技术发展使得Photoshop用于图形处理成为可能，他重新捡起相机，开始摄影。但由于这种技术依旧不适合他创作的视觉呈现，于是很快他又重回了绘画的领域。
On February 21st, 2005, Zdzisław Beksiński would finally leave the world and the city of Sanok would soon after, open a museum dedicated to his legacy of works. His life story can be found in the critically acclaimed biography, Ostatnia Rodzina (The Last Family) directed by Jan P. Matuszyński, detailing the 28-year family saga of the Beksinski family.
2005年2月21日，济斯瓦夫·贝克辛斯基（Zdzisław Beksiński ）离开了这个世界。很快，在波兰Sanok市将开设一个致力于纪念他作品的博物馆。有关艺术家的更多信息，请查看由Jan P.Matuszyński执导的备受好评的传记电影《Ostatnia Rodzina (The Last Family)》，这部电影讲述了Beksinski家族28年以来的故事。
Translation 翻译 Rona Xia
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