《诱惑者》Seducer

Certainly no one would mistake the Seducer， painted in 1953， for an ordinary landscape. A ship floats alone on an ideal sea， surrounded by one of Magritte’s favorite motifs， clouds. One has no indication of time， place， or the weather， no hint of sunlight or rain beyond the blue sky and stereotypical cumulus clouds. The sailing ship—of a kind once built for long ocean voyages—belongs to some unspecified past as remote and idealized as a manipulated dream world.

毫无疑问，没有人会误把勒内·马格利特1953年创作的《诱惑者》当作一幅普通的风景画。画面上，一艘船孤零零漂浮在想象的海面上，周围白云缭绕——云是马格利特最喜欢的主题之一。这幅画看不出时间、地点，也看不出天气好坏，没有阳光也没有雨，只有蓝天和常见的积云。那艘帆船属于某种曾为远洋航行而造的船，存在于某段不确定的过去——如此遥不可及、如此理想化，如同被操控的梦幻世界。

Magritte probably had little personal experience of the sea anyway. He grew up almost dead center in Belgium， in a small town southwest of Brussels， where the plains of Waterloo start to give way to the hilly terrain of Mons. He returned from Paris to Brussels in 1930， pretty much for good. One could call him the perfect bourgeois， a role he loved to play in his art， although indications of an actual city appear as rarely in his art as anything else concrete.

不过，马格利特本人可能没有什么海上航行的经历。他从小到大几乎都在比利时的中心地带生活，他的家乡是布鲁塞尔西南的一个小镇，那里是滑铁卢的大片平原和蒙斯的丘陵地形的分界线，平原渐渐被丘陵取代。1930年，他从巴黎返回布鲁塞尔，几乎再未离开。他堪称完美的布尔乔亚——他喜欢在自己的作品中扮演这个角色，尽管他的画极少呈现真实的城市和其他任何具象的东西。

Even back in the time of sailing ships， Belgium never rivaled its neighbors as a naval power. If Magritte ever felt the call of the sea， it had to mean a call within.

即使在帆船时代，比利时也从未能与邻国匹敌而成为海军强国。如果马格利特曾经感受到大海的召唤，那一定是来自他内心。

Most obviously unlike a seascape， Magritte has done something odd indeed to the ship： he has replaced its shape with an extension of the water. Surrealism celebrated just such illogical， uncanny juxtapositions. One can think of the ship’s transformation as a cut-and-paste job， and Surrealism has its roots， like pretty much all modern art， in Cubist collage.

之所以说这幅画不像海景图，最明显的一点就是，马格利特对这艘船做了非常怪异的处理：他用海水为帆船塑形，将船描绘成水的延伸。超现实主义推崇的就是这种不合常理的离奇并置。可以把对船形的变换看作一种剪切粘贴的活儿，而超现实主义和几乎所有现代艺术一样，都起源于立体主义拼贴画。

If that leaves only a dream， the painting’s title， the Seducer， also suggests uncensored fantasy， and Magritte himself spoke of painting not just real objects， as in a still life， but “real desires.” Whoever is carrying out a seduction， no one is restraining his transgression. In French， seduction has connotations of pleasure and magic， and some critics have termed his art “magic realism”. However， the seducer does not clearly appear. The pleasure seeker could be riding on the ship， painting it， or looking at it in the museum now. So could the one seduced—perhaps Magritte himself seduced by his own art.

如果那只是一个梦，那么这幅画的标题《诱惑者》还暗示天马行空的幻想。马格利特本人曾表示，绘画不只是呈现静物画中那种真实的物体，还要呈现“真实的欲望”。无论是谁施展诱惑，没有人会抑制他的侵犯之举。在法语中，诱惑有快乐和魔法的含义，而有些评论家就把马格利特的作品称为“魔幻现实主义”。然而，诱惑者并没有在画中明确露面。寻欢作乐者可能是船上之人，可能是作画之人，还可能是当下正在博物馆看着它的赏画之人。被诱惑者也可能是那些人——也许是马格利特自己被自己的作品诱惑了。