美国国家公共电台 NPR Matisse And Diebenkorn 'Meet' At Last, At The Baltimore Museum Of Art

Matisse And Diebenkorn 'Meet' At Last, At The Baltimore Museum Of Art

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A conversation between two major artists, Henri Matisse of France and Richard Diebenkorn of America, is taking place on the walls of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Now, these artists never met, but Matisse influenced Diebenkorn's work across decades and across continents. NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg saw the evidence of that influence on the painters and their descendants.

SUSAN STAMBERG, BYLINE²: The museum invited Matisse's great-granddaughter and Diebenkorn's daughter to see the exhibition before it opened to the public.

SOPHIE MATISSE: Hello.

GRETCHEN DIEBENKORN GRANT: Hi.

MATISSE: How nice to meet you.

GRANT: It's such a pleasure to meet you.

STAMBERG: Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant, age 71, has a lovely smile. Sophie Matisse, age 51 - chic³ and fit - was born in Boston. She is a painter.

MATISSE: Have you seen the show yet?

GRANT: No. I'm salivating, I guess you could say, yeah.

MATISSE: Right, sure, right.

GRANT: My whole life, we all looked at Mattise all the time.

MATISSE: Oh, really? Yeah.

GRANT: And to see them together...

MATISSE: That's funny, me too.

STAMBERG: Me too, says Sophie.

GRANT: (Laughter) Yes, I'll bet.

(LAUGHTER)

STAMBERG: Curator Katy Rothkopf began thinking about getting Matisse and Diebenkorn - the painters, not the descendants - together some 15 years ago. She was poking⁴ through the Baltimore Museum's storage room when inspiration struck.

KATY ROTHKOPF: We had this spectacularly beautiful Diebenkorn drawing of a woman seated in a chair and realized it had incredible resonance⁵ with a Matisse drawing we also had of a reclining model with a flowered robe. They were made 40 years apart and were done by men living in different places with different lifestyles. But yet, here they were really needing to have a conversation.

STAMBERG: She says Diebenkorn was in his 20s when he discovered Matisse. He got hooked.

ROTHKOPF: He really sought out every opportunity to see as many paintings in exhibitions, in permanent collection installations, in a few lucky cases in private collections. And it was something that he was interested in throughout his entire career.

STAMBERG: Wherever he was - Portland, Ore., where he was born, San Francisco, Santa Monica - Diebenkorn collected books on Matisse, stuffed sketched⁶ books with clippings, postcard reproductions, notes. He loved the master's women, his adventures with abstraction, his shifting style depending on where he lived, and, of course, Matisse's joyful⁷ colors. Diebenkorn's colors shimmer⁸, delicate veils of blues⁹ and greens and grays. Teaching in Urbana, Ill. in 1952, he said he saw nothing but haystacks. He was starved for colors.

ROTHKOPF: So he decided¹⁰ to black out the windows of his studio and made these beautiful abstractions really from his imagination.

STAMBERG: Gretchen Diebenkorn says there was one year, though, when her father capped his coloured tubes. She points to a black, white and gray painting of a dining table set with dishes.

GRANT: My mother always used Indian bedspreads for table cloths. And that is a lamb chop bone on the plate there. And my father's favorite dinner was lamb chops.

STAMBERG: With spinach¹¹ and baked potatoes. Diebenkorn made the piece in 1964.

GRANT: And this is the year that my grandfather died. And in that year, he did only black and white drawings.

STAMBERG: So that was his mourning period essentially¹²?

GRANT: Yes, I think so. I think so.

STAMBERG: It's only black and white, but they're not somber¹³ at all. They're..

GRANT: No, they're not depressing. They're not mournful, really. They're just - this is where he was, I guess.

STAMBERG: The black-and-white works are in various museum collections. When Gretchen spots one, she doesn't have to look at the date. She knows it was made in 1964. Sophie Matisse has no stories about her great-grandfather Henri. Sophie was born 11 years after he died. And her grandfather, Pierre - Henri's youngest child - kept pretty mum.

MATISSE: Well, just to be perfectly¹⁴ honest, he didn't really talk a lot about his father and didn't even answer questions so much about his father. I never forget one time my brother, who was nobly trying to make conversation at the dinner table because we were kind of coached, you know, well, ask him about a story about his dad or whatever just try to make conversation.

So my brother said, oh, so tell us some great stories about your dad and what it was like and. Pierre never moved a muscle. He was just there at the table, stiff as a statue, and just suggested that he go read a book about it. So (laughter) I closed this down and we didn't really talk about family stories after that.

STAMBERG: It's not that the relationship was thorny¹⁵.

MATISSE: I think that he had been asked too many times, you know. I think their relationship was solid, actually, and very good, and very deep, and very intimate and private. He wasn't a big sharer of feelings or even conversations. What happened between them more or less stayed between them.

STAMBERG: Gretchen Diebenkorn has lots of stories about her beloved father. Like Henri Matisse, he had a real work ethic¹⁶, a dedication¹⁷ to craft. Diebenkorn painted every day, was not to be interrupted.

GRANT: Oh, yeah. Never, never went to the studio except invited occasionally in emergency. I only remember knocking on the studio door once. That was his space.

STAMBERG: He worked all day. The family wouldn't see him again until dinner time.

GRANT: My mother was a wonderful cook, so (laughter).

STAMBERG: Descendants of famous men, a daughter with loving memories of her father, a great-grandchild with a distant but looming¹⁸ connection to a fellow artist.

Has your name ever become a burden to you?

MATISSE: Yes, it has. But at the same time, it's been obviously a tremendous honor.

GRANT: I was happy that my name changed to Grant.

STAMBERG: Mrs. Gretchen Diebenkorn Grant, one-time actress and singer.

GRANT: First of all, it was always the longest name on a program when I was acting¹⁹ or singing, which is always difficult. It just - I got tired of being reviewed parens the daughter of the artist. You don't want to be an adjunct somehow.

STAMBERG: The two women move happily through the artworks of their ancestors gathered at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Matisse's voluptuous²⁰ harem women near a luscious²¹ Diebenkorn abstract landscape. Matisse's "Still Life With Blue Tablecloth²²" near a Diebenkorn still life swirled²³ with Matisse-y (ph) blues and curves. It is a knockout show.

You know, I was thinking it's too bad that the two never met. But they really did, didn't they?

ROTHKOPF: They did. And I, you know, I sort of think that this exhibition will give them the opportunity to have a conversation on our walls for the next three months.

STAMBERG: After Baltimore, the show goes to San Francisco.

I'm Susan Stamberg, NPR News.

1 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 chic   

n./adj.别致(的)，时髦(的)，讲究的

参考例句：

• She bought a chic little hat.她买了一顶别致的小帽子。
• The chic restaurant is patronized by many celebrities.这家时髦的饭店常有名人光顾。

4 poking   

n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢

参考例句：

• He was poking at the rubbish with his stick. 他正用手杖拨动垃圾。
• He spent his weekends poking around dusty old bookshops. 他周末都泡在布满尘埃的旧书店里。

5 resonance   

n.洪亮；共鸣；共振

参考例句：

• Playing the piano sets up resonance in those glass ornaments.一弹钢琴那些玻璃饰物就会产生共振。
• The areas under the two resonance envelopes are unequal.两个共振峰下面的面积是不相等的。

6 sketched   

v.草拟（sketch的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• The historical article sketched the major events of the decade. 这篇有关历史的文章概述了这十年中的重大事件。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He sketched the situation in a few vivid words. 他用几句生动的语言简述了局势。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

7 joyful   

adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的

参考例句：

• She was joyful of her good result of the scientific experiments.她为自己的科学实验取得好成果而高兴。
• They were singing and dancing to celebrate this joyful occasion.他们唱着、跳着庆祝这令人欢乐的时刻。

8 shimmer   

v./n.发微光，发闪光；微光

参考例句：

• The room was dark,but there was a shimmer of moonlight at the window.屋子里很黑，但靠近窗户的地方有点微光。
• Nor is there anything more virginal than the shimmer of young foliage.没有什么比新叶的微光更纯洁无瑕了。

9 blues   

n.抑郁，沮丧；布鲁斯音乐

参考例句：

• She was in the back of a smoky bar singing the blues.她在烟雾弥漫的酒吧深处唱着布鲁斯歌曲。
• He was in the blues on account of his failure in business.他因事业失败而意志消沉。

10 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

11 spinach   

n.菠菜

参考例句：

• Eating spinach is supposed to make you strong.据说吃菠菜能使人强壮。
• You should eat such vegetables as carrot,celery and spinach.你应该吃胡萝卜、芹菜和菠菜这类的蔬菜。

12 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

13 somber   

adj.昏暗的，阴天的，阴森的，忧郁的

参考例句：

• He had a somber expression on his face.他面容忧郁。
• His coat was a somber brown.他的衣服是暗棕色的。

14 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

15 thorny   

adj.多刺的，棘手的

参考例句：

• The young captain is pondering over a thorny problem.年轻的上尉正在思考一个棘手的问题。
• The boys argued over the thorny points in the lesson.孩子们辩论功课中的难点。

16 ethic   

n.道德标准，行为准则

参考例句：

• They instilled the work ethic into their children.他们在孩子们的心中注入了职业道德的理念。
• The connotation of education ethic is rooted in human nature's mobility.教育伦理的内涵根源于人本性的变动性。

17 dedication   

n.奉献，献身，致力，题献，献辞

参考例句：

• We admire her courage,compassion and dedication.我们钦佩她的勇气、爱心和奉献精神。
• Her dedication to her work was admirable.她对工作的奉献精神可钦可佩。

18 looming   

n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近

参考例句：

• The foothills were looming ahead through the haze. 丘陵地带透过薄雾朦胧地出现在眼前。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Then they looked up. Looming above them was Mount Proteome. 接着他们往上看，在其上隐约看到的是蛋白质组山。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 回顾与展望

19 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

20 voluptuous   

adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的

参考例句：

• The nobility led voluptuous lives.贵族阶层过着骄奢淫逸的生活。
• The dancer's movements were slow and voluptuous.舞女的动作缓慢而富挑逗性。

21 luscious   

adj.美味的；芬芳的；肉感的，引与性欲的

参考例句：

• The watermelon was very luscious.Everyone wanted another slice.西瓜很可口，每个人都想再来一片。
• What I like most about Gabby is her luscious lips!我最喜欢的是盖比那性感饱满的双唇！

22 tablecloth   

n.桌布，台布

参考例句：

• He sat there ruminating and picking at the tablecloth.他坐在那儿沉思，轻轻地抚弄着桌布。
• She smoothed down a wrinkled tablecloth.她把起皱的桌布熨平了。

23 swirled   

v.旋转，打旋( swirl的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The waves swirled and eddied around the rocks. 波浪翻滚着在岩石周围打旋。
• The water swirled down the drain. 水打着旋流进了下水道。