Lesson 31

The sculptor speaks

Appreciation of sculpture depends upon the ability to respond to form in three dimensions.
对雕塑的欣赏取决于在三个维度上对形式做出回应的能力。
That is perhaps why sculpture has been described as the most difficult of all arts; certainly it is more difficult than the arts which involve appreciation of flat forms, shape in only two dimensions.
那也许就是为什么雕塑被描述为所有艺术中最困难的；当然，它比那些涉及欣赏平面形式、仅两个维度形状的艺术更困难。
Many more people are form-blind than colour-blind.
相比色盲，更多的人是形盲。
The child learning to see, first distinguishes only two-dimensional shape; it cannot judge distances, depths.
这个正在学习观察的孩子，首先仅能区分二维形状；它无法判断距离和深度。
Later, for its personal safety and practical needs, it has to develop partly by means of touch the ability to judge roughly three-dimensonal distances.
后来，为了它的个人安全和实际需求，它必须部分地通过触觉手段发展出判断大致三维距离的能力。
But having satisfied the requirements of practical necessity, most people go no further.
但是，在满足了实际必要的要求之后，大多数人便不再深入了。
Though they may attain considerable accuracy in the perception of flat form, they do not make the further intellectual and emotional effort needed to comprehend form in its full spatial existence.
尽管他们可能在对平面形式的感知中获得相当大的准确性，但他们并没有做出进一步的智力和情感努力去理解其完整空间存在中的形式。
This is what the sculptor must do.
这就是雕塑家必须做的事。
He must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness.
他必须努力不断地去思考并使用其完整空间完整性中的形式。
He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head—he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if he were holding it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand.
他可以说在脑海中获得了这个立体的形状——无论它的大小如何，他思考它时，就像把它完全握在掌心一样。
He mentally visualizes a complex form from all round itself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like; he identifies himself with its centre of gravity, its mass, its weight; he realizes its volume, as the space that the shape displaces in the air.
他在脑海中从各个角度想象一个复杂的形状；他知道当他观察一侧时另一侧是什么样子的；他将自己与它的重心、质量和重量融为一体；他意识到它的体积，即该形状在空气中排开的空间。
And the sensitive observer of sculpture must also learn to feel shape simply as shape, not as description or reminiscence.
并且雕塑的敏感观察者也必须学会去感受形状仅仅作为形状，而不是作为描述或回忆。
He must, for example, perceive an egg as a simple single solid shape, quite apart from its significance as food, or from the literary idea that it will become a bird.
例如，他必须将鸡蛋感知为一个简单的单一固体形状，完全脱离其作为食物的意义，或脱离它将变成一只鸟的文学概念。
And so with solids such as a shell, a nut, a plum, a pear, a tadpole, a mushroom, a mountain peak, a kidney, a carrot, a tree-trunk, a bird, a bud, a lark, a ladybird, a bulrush, a bone.
因此，对于像贝壳、坚果、李子、梨、蝌蚪、蘑菇、山峰、肾脏、胡萝卜、树干、鸟、花蕾、云雀、瓢虫、香蒲、骨头这样的固体。
From these he can go on to appreciate more complex forms or combinations of several forms.
从这些他可以继续去欣赏更复杂的形式或几种形式的组合。