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Audio Stop 6

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We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.”

George Bellows

New York, 1911

East Building, Ground Level — Gallery 106-B

纽约

班洛斯

这幅充满活力的大型画作由乔治·班洛斯于 1911 年 2 月创作完成，表现了新纽约城现代生活的特质。班洛斯刻意地避免表现纽约城中任何一处真实的地方。他选择以几处繁华的商业区为素材，创作出一幅虚构的全景图，以难以想象的拥挤场景，淋漓尽致地表现了纽约城的狂躁氛围。

Read full audio transcript

NARRATOR:

时间是 1911 年，地点在纽约市，当时是现代性的中心。乔治·贝洛斯 (George Bellows) 敢于把它放在这幅动感十足的油画上。

CHARLES BROCK:

这幅画让我喜爱的地方是它的勃勃野心。有非常年轻的艺术家愿意尝试任何事情。

NARRATOR:

查尔斯·布洛克 (Charles Brock)。

CHARLES BROCK:

愿意尝试将整个纽约市放入一幅画中的如此大胆的主题。

NARRATOR:

在这幅画中，贝洛斯展现出这座城市的位于麦迪逊大街与第 23 街之间最繁忙的商业区。

CHARLES BROCK:

后方远处有一辆在高架铁轨上行驶的火车和高楼大厦。您可以看见马车与汽车和往来行人交织的混合交通。这种绘画对当代观赏者来说就像主题本身一样令人困惑。

NARRATOR:

甚至难以知道要看哪里：左侧远处正在上客的有轨电车、店面招牌，还是街道上熙来攘往的无名行人。在一片灰色和绿色中，贝洛斯只用红色点缀出少许细节。评论家认为这幅作品杂乱无章，晦涩难懂。

CHARLES BROCK:

但是他们都被这幅油画及其展现的活力和贝洛斯尝试描绘这座城市所运用的全新手法深深吸引。其中一位作家在批评这幅画后说道：“未来有一天，它无疑会被指出是现在记者留下来的对纽约随意场景的最佳描述。”

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