關於 new european painting ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

---想到我們啜著咖啡竟喝下了那樣複雜的過往，難怪這杯滋味無窮。---

亞力山大書店咖啡廳 Alexander Book Cafe

有別於巴洛克繁複雕飾的紐約咖啡廳（請參考前兩次發文），亞力山大書店咖啡廳感覺較為方正，天花板中央的壁畫也令人容易聚焦。根據小管的解讀壁畫中王座上的女子應當是受匈牙利人民愛戴的伊莉莎白皇后（Sisi) 在布達佩斯加冕畫像。

Much different from onerously decorated New York Cafe in baroque style （please see my previous post), Alexandr Book Cafe contains a more square look. The focus is on the center piece painting. My interpretation of the theme of the painting is about the scene of the beloved Habsburg queen Sisi's coronation in Budapest.

在這喝咖啡感覺比紐約咖啡廳更寬闊，因為挑高的空間裡沒有柱子。文藝復興的裝飾也較符合店名的書香氣息。雖然限時一小時的享用時間，但我們也確實將近兩小時才離開。

Having coffee here, you feel roomier with a high ceiling and no columns. The renaissance decor matches better with the bookshop underneath. Although we were given one hour to enjoy our visit, it had been almost 2 hours by the time we were ready to leave.

想到全世界前十大最美的咖啡廳有兩家就在布達佩斯，不禁令我想追究這裡精緻的咖啡文化從何而來？我試著摸索脈絡從數個導覽中找尋答案。結論主要是和奧圖曼帝國來襲以及共黨垮台兩個事件相關。

When I think about two of the world most beautiful cafes being located in Budapest, it makes me wonder how this refined coffee culture came around. I tried to figure things out from a few walking tours I took during this trip. I conclude that two particular events are the major causes---the invasion of Ottoman Empire and the collapse of communist authority.

奧圖曼帝國於15、16世紀橫掃歐陸。土耳其人帶來了影響全世界的綠色豆子---咖啡豆。也許咖啡的提神作用就是奧圖曼帝國驍勇善戰的秘訣之一吧？

The Ottoman Empire swept across the European continent in the 15th and 16th centuries. One of the unexpected influences of the Turkish troops is the little green beans which is also known as coffee beans. Perhaps, those caffeinated green beans are the secret to the troops' prowess in various battles.

其二是匈牙利的共黨並不像毛澤東提倡的文化大革命那樣將一切過去給摧毀殆盡。當1990年共黨垮台，資本主義者大批搶食這個百廢待舉的市場。首當其衝的就是被外資買下的眾多過往輝煌的房地產。華麗的資本主義與四面八方湧入的遊客一拍即合。結果造就了一幢幢美侖美奐的咖啡廳。

Furthermore, Hungarian communist party did not advocate a destructive movement like Mao's cultural revolution to China. When the communist party stepped down in 1990, a large number of capitalists flanked in to the Hungarian market. The number one target was the frantically purchased local real estate market. The flamboyant capitalism hit it off perfectly with tourist coming from all over the world. The result is various astonishing coffee shops.

想到我們啜著咖啡竟喝下了那樣複雜的過往，難怪這杯滋味無窮。

After I realized that the coffee we sipped contained that much of complexity, no wonder it was full of rich tastes.

以物易物計劃 這想法 太酷了
台灣 從來沒有 出現過 這是第一次！

2014特別企劃 BARTER - 以物易物計畫

" 以自己認為是同等價值的物品來做交換，這就是以物易物的精神 "
" 交換成功的物品最後會與交換品一同展出 "

一個嶄新具實驗性的計畫 :

1. 只接受交換，不接受買賣。
2.一個具有單純的物物關係，與呈現價值的對比的展覽呈現。

主觀價值是存在於個人心中的，貨幣只是一個易懂的衡量方式。
藉由交換的結果來反應出每個人價值認定的趣味差異。

歡迎您來一起參與!!!

10/9 (四)將公布/展出25件可供交換的部落藝術作品，
並於小巴廊FB粉絲專頁公告 -
www.facebook.com/44GALLERY

以下為此計畫的說明:
在歐洲殖民者到來之前, 黑人發展了區域性貿易和交通。在黑非洲的地區貿易中，「物物交換」是主要形式。黑人進行物物交換時，特別講究誠實、守信，在言語不通的部落和民族之間的「啞巴交易」也是如此。

一些漂亮的貝殼和珠子做為等價物，流行於許多部落。十九世紀晚期，丁廉在東非見到: 「市裡交易，不尚銀錢，以蛤殼代。凡購辦貨物, 均屬於此。鄉人傭工於人，每日工值僅二殼或三殼。每三殼易一雞，六殼易一日糧，二殼易包穀數十枚。」在西非豪薩城邦時期，商人的通貨主要是布匹、食鹽。奴隸也被當成通貨使用。東非城邦基爾瓦則有了銅和銀製成的錢幣，上面鑄有國王哈桑的頭像。盛產銅的衣索比亞和剛果陸續出現了銅十字型貨幣。商品流通的過程中，為了知道物品的重量，在某些地方還誕生了度量衡。如盛產黃金的阿散蒂就出現了用來稱金沙的秤鉈、砝碼和陶瓷圓盤。

由此緣由,小巴廊希望用最原始的部落精神，以物品交換物品的方式，拿心目中認為同等值的品項，來體驗非洲部落交易!小巴廊會精選25件部落藝術作品作為交換的品項,並展示於小巴廊內與公布於小巴廊臉書。www.facebook.com/44GALLERY

< 參與辦法、日期 >
PART 1.
10/9(四)
小巴廊公布/展出25件可供交換的部落藝術作品，並於FB粉絲專頁公告。
10/31(五) 19:00截止
23天的期間內，參與者選擇其心中價值相當的物品，例如:畫作、古美術、雕塑、任何您認為等值的物品...等(不限物品的形式)，
自行拍照後寄到小巴廊信箱:44artgallery@gmail.com。
(請註明: 1.參與者的聯絡資料。2.物品的簡述與尺寸。3.想換得的部落藝術作品。)
若超過一件需備註，如: A物品換幾號部落藝術作品，B物品換幾號部落藝術作品。

※對於參與者資料我們不予公佈。

PART 2.
交換成功的物品會立刻通知交換者。
11/3(一) - 11/4(二)
交換成功的參與者須將物品送至小巴廊，逾期視同放棄。
11/10(一) - 11/29(六)
BARTER -「以物易物交換計劃特展」。
( ※ 展覽會有作品呈現不會有標註作者或作品資料 / 希望用單純的物物關係，呈現價值的對比。)

2014 Special Feature - BARTER PROJECT
"You considered themselves to be equal value items to exchange, it is the spirit of barter."

A new project with experimental:

1. Only accept the exchange, do not accept the sale.
2. A relationship with a simple objects and the value of contrast.

Subjective value exists in individual mind, money is just a straightforward way to measure.
By the results of exchanging reflects the different values between each individuals.

Welcome to join us!!!

10/9(Thur.) 44 gallery will display 25-piece tribal artworks, and post on Facebook.
www.facebook.com/44GALLERY

The project description:
Before the arrival of European colonists, blacks developed a regional trade and transport. In Black Africa region , " barter " is the main trading form . Honest and trust are emphasized. The "dumb trade " between tribes and other nations is the same idea.

Regarding the beautiful shells and beads as equivalents is popular in many tribes .
The late nineteenth century , Ding Lian has found a trading form in East Africa : the goods are being traded without money but shells. Any kind of business deal belongs to this form. Workers earn two or three shells a day. Three shells equal to a chicken, six shells equal to one-day food. Two shells equal to ten corns. In West Africa, business man traded with clothes, salt even the slaves while in East Africa, the city Kilwa had copper and silver coins casted with the head of King Hasan. Ethiopia and Congo abound with copper ,as a result of it, they came out the cross-shaped copper currency. In order to know the weight of the goods, some places came out the measurement. Such as the gold-rich Ashanti kingdom appeared the ceramic discs, counterpoise and sliding weight of a steelyard for weighing gold sand.

Therefore, 44 gallery wants to use the most primitive spirit of tribe, it is a way of exchange by which goods are directly exchanged for other goods , and you considered themselves to be equal value items to exchange to experience the African tribes trading.
we will choose 25-piece tribal artworks as the exchanged items. These items will be displayed in 44 Gallery and posted on Facebook: www.facebook.com/44GALLERY

HOW TO JOIN:
PART 1.
10/9(Thur.)
44 gallery will display 25-piece tribal artworks, and post on Facebook.
10/31(Fri.) 19:00 end.
In 23 days, people can take pictures for the equivalent items, ex. painting、 art antique、statue (any style is okay) and email the photo to 44 Gallery: 44artgallery@gmail.com (Please indicate: 1.your contact information.2.the brief introduction、size of your tem.3.which tribal artwork do you like.)

*The participant information is confidential.

PART 2
Once items barter successfully, we will notify its owner immediately.
11/3(Mon.)-11/4(Tues.)
People who barter successfully have to deliver the item to 44 Gallery.
If you over the dead line, we will consider you give up.
11/10(Mon.)-11/29(Sat.)
Barter/ Tribal Artwork Exchange Special Exhibition.
( ※ The works of the exhibition would not have marked the author or the information / Want to use a simple barter relations, showing the value of contrast. )

Nobody’s Fool　　( January 2011 )

Yoshitomo Nara

Do people look to my childhood for sources of my imagery? Back then, the snow-covered fields of the north were about as far away as you could get from the rapid economic growth happening elsewhere. Both my parents worked and my brothers were much older, so the only one home to greet me when I got back from elementary school was a stray cat we’d taken in. Even so, this was the center of my world. In my lonely room, I would twist the radio dial to the American military base station and out blasted rock and roll music. One of history’s first man-made satellites revolved around me up in the night sky. There I was, in touch with the stars and radio waves.

It doesn’t take much imagination to envision how a lonely childhood in such surroundings might give rise to the sensibility in my work. In fact, I also used to believe in this connection. I would close my eyes and conjure childhood scenes, letting my imagination amplify them like the music coming from my speakers.

But now, past the age of fifty and more cool-headed, I’ve begun to wonder how big a role childhood plays in making us who we are as adults. Looking through reproductions of the countless works I’ve made between my late twenties and now, I get the feeling that childhood experiences were merely a catalyst. My art derives less from the self-centered instincts of childhood than from the day-to-day sensory experiences of an adult who has left this realm behind. And, ultimately, taking the big steps pales in importance to the daily need to keep on walking.

While I was in high school, before I had anything to do with art, I worked part-time in a rock café. There I became friends with a graduate student of mathematics who one day started telling me, in layman’s terms, about his major in topology. His explanation made the subject seem less like a branch of mathematics than some fascinating organic philosophy. My understanding is that topology offers you a way to discover the underlying sameness of countless, seemingly disparate, forms. Conversely, it explains why many people, when confronted with apparently identical things, will accept a fake as the genuine article. I later went on to study art, live in Germany, and travel around the world, and the broader perspective I’ve gained has shown me that topology has long been a subtext of my thinking. The more we add complexity, the more we obscure what is truly valuable. Perhaps the reason I began, in the mid-90s, trying to make paintings as simple as possible stems from that introduction to topology gained in my youth.

As a kid listening to U.S. armed-forces radio, I had no idea what the lyrics meant, but I loved the melody and rhythm of the music. In junior high school, my friends and I were already discussing rock and roll like credible music critics, and by the time I started high school, I was hanging out in rock coffee shops and going to live shows. We may have been a small group of social outcasts, but the older kids, who smoked cigarettes and drank, talked to us all night long about movies they’d seen or books they’d read. If the nighttime student quarter had been the school, I’m sure I would have been a straight-A student.

In the 80s, I left my hometown to attend art school, where I was anything but an honors student. There, a model student was one who brought a researcher’s focus to the work at hand. Your bookshelves were stacked with catalogues and reference materials. When you weren’t working away in your studio, you were meeting with like-minded classmates to discuss art past and present, including your own. You were hoping to set new trends in motion. Wholly lacking any grand ambition, I fell well short of this model, with most of my paintings done to satisfy class assignments. I was, however, filling every one of my notebooks, sketchbooks, and scraps of wrapping paper with crazy, graffiti-like drawings.

Looking back on my younger days—Where did where all that sparkling energy go? I used the money from part-time jobs to buy record albums instead of art supplies and catalogues. I went to movies and concerts, hung out with my girlfriend, did funky drawings on paper, and made midnight raids on friends whose boarding-room lights still happened to be on. I spent the passions of my student days outside the school studio. This is not to say I wasn’t envious of the kids who earned the teachers’ praise or who debuted their talents in early exhibitions. Maybe envy is the wrong word. I guess I had the feeling that we were living in separate worlds. Like puffs of cigarette smoke or the rock songs from my speaker, my adolescent energies all vanished in the sky.

Being outside the city and surrounded by rice fields, my art school had no art scene to speak of—I imagined the art world existing in some unknown dimension, like that of TV or the movies. At the time, art could only be discussed in a Western context, and, therefore, seemed unreal. But just as every country kid dreams of life in the big city, this shaky art-school student had visions of the dazzling, far-off realm of contemporary art. Along with this yearning was an equally strong belief that I didn’t deserve admittance to such a world. A typical provincial underachiever!

I did, however, love to draw every day and the scrawled sketches, never shown to anybody, started piling up. Like journal entries reflecting the events of each day, they sometimes intersected memories from the past. My little everyday world became a trigger for the imagination, and I learned to develop and capture the imagery that arose. I was, however, still a long way off from being able to translate those countless images from paper to canvas.

Visions come to us through daydreams and fantasies. Our emotional reaction towards these images makes them real. Listening to my record collection gave me a similar experience. Before the Internet, the precious little information that did exist was to be found in the two or three music magazines available. Most of my records were imported—no liner notes or lyric sheets in Japanese. No matter how much I liked the music, living in a non-English speaking world sadly meant limited access to the meaning of the lyrics. The music came from a land of societal, religious, and subcultural sensibilities apart from my own, where people moved their bodies to it in a different rhythm. But that didn’t stop me from loving it. I never got tired of poring over every inch of the record jackets on my 12-inch vinyl LPs. I took the sounds and verses into my body. Amidst today’s superabundance of information, choosing music is about how best to single out the right album. For me, it was about making the most use of scant information to sharpen my sensibilities, imagination, and conviction. It might be one verse, melody, guitar riff, rhythmic drum beat or bass line, or record jacket that would inspire me and conjure up fresh imagery. Then, with pencil in hand, I would draw these images on paper, one after the other. Beyond good or bad, the pictures had a will of their own, inhabiting the torn pages with freedom and friendliness.

By the time I graduated from university, my painting began to approach the independence of my drawing. As a means for me to represent a world that was mine and mine alone, the paintings may not have been as nimble as the drawings, but I did them without any preliminary sketching. Prizing feelings that arose as I worked, I just kept painting and over-painting until I gained a certain freedom and the sense, though vague at the time, that I had established a singular way of putting images onto canvas. Yet, I hadn’t reached the point where I could declare that I would paint for the rest of my life.

After receiving my undergraduate degree, I entered the graduate school of my university and got a part-time job teaching at an art yobiko—a prep school for students seeking entrance to an art college. As an instructor, training students how to look at and compose things artistically, meant that I also had to learn how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings. This significant growth experience not only allowed me to take stock of my life at the time, but also provided a refreshing opportunity to connect with teenage hearts and minds.

And idealism! Talking to groups of art students, I naturally found myself describing the ideals of an artist. A painful experience for me—I still had no sense of myself as an artist. The more the students showed their affection for me, the more I felt like a failed artist masquerading as a sensei (teacher). After completing my graduate studies, I kept working as a yobiko instructor. And in telling students about the path to becoming an artist, I began to realize that I was still a student myself, with many things yet to learn. I felt that I needed to become a true art student. I decided to study in Germany. The day I left the city where I had long lived, many of my students appeared on the platform to see me off.

Life as a student in Germany was a happy time. I originally intended to go to London, but for economic reasons chose a tuition-free, and, fortunately, academism-free German school. Personal approaches coexisted with conceptual ones, and students tried out a wide range of modes of expression. Technically speaking, we were all students, but each of us brought a creator’s spirit to the fore. The strong wills and opinions of the local students, though, were well in place before they became artists thanks to the German system of early education. As a reticent foreign student from a far-off land, I must have seemed like a mute child. I decided that I would try to make myself understood not through words, but through having people look at my pictures. When winter came and leaden clouds filled the skies, I found myself slipping back to the winters of my childhood. Forgoing attempts to speak in an unknown language, I redoubled my efforts to express myself through visions of my private world. Thinking rather than talking, then illustrating this thought process in drawings and, finally, realizing it in a painting. Instead of defeating you in an argument, I wanted to invite you inside me. Here I was, in a most unexpected place, rediscovering a value that I thought I had lost—I felt that I had finally gained the ability to learn and think, that I had become a student in the truest sense of the word.

But I still wasn’t your typical honors student. My paintings clearly didn’t look like contemporary art, and nobody would say my images fit in the context of European painting. They did, however, catch the gaze of dealers who, with their antennae out for young artists, saw my paintings as new objects that belonged less to the singular world of art and more to the realm of everyday life. Several were impressed by the freshness of my art, and before I knew it, I was invited to hold exhibitions in established galleries—a big step into a wider world.

The six years that I spent in Germany after completing my studies and before returning to Japan were golden days, both for me and my work. Every day and every night, I worked tirelessly to fix onto canvas all the visions that welled up in my head. My living space/studio was in a dreary, concrete former factory building on the outskirts of Cologne. It was the center of my world. Late at night, my surroundings were enveloped in darkness, but my studio was brightly lit. The songs of folk poets flowed out of my speakers. In that place, standing in front of the canvas sometimes felt like traveling on a solitary voyage in outer space—a lonely little spacecraft floating in the darkness of the void. My spaceship could go anywhere in this fantasy while I was painting, even to the edge of the universe.

Suddenly one day, I was flung outside—my spaceship was to be scrapped. My little vehicle turned back into an old concrete building, one that was slated for destruction because it was falling apart. Having lost the spaceship that had accompanied me on my lonely travels, and lacking the energy to look for a new studio, I immediately decided that I might as well go back to my homeland. It was painful and sad to leave the country where I had lived for twelve years and the handful of people I could call friends. But I had lost my ship. The only place I thought to land was my mother country, where long ago those teenagers had waved me goodbye and, in retrospect, whose letters to me while I was in Germany were a valuable source of fuel.

After my long space flight, I returned to Japan with the strange sense of having made a full orbit around the planet. The new studio was a little warehouse on the outskirts of Tokyo, in an area dotted with rice fields and small factories. When the wind blew, swirls of dust slipped in through the cracks, and water leaked down the walls in heavy rains. In my dilapidated warehouse, only one sheet of corrugated metal separated me from the summer heat and winter cold. Despite the funky environment, I was somehow able to keep in midnight contact with the cosmos—the beings I had drawn and painted in Germany began to mature. The emotional quality of the earlier work gave way to a new sense of composure. I worked at refining the former impulsiveness of the drawings and the monochromatic, almost reverent, backgrounds of the paintings. In my pursuit of fresh imagery, I switched from idle experimentation to a more workmanlike approach towards capturing what I saw beyond the canvas.

Children and animals—what simple motifs! Appearing on neat canvases or in ephemeral drawings, these figures are easy on the viewers’ eyes. Occasionally, they shake off my intentions and leap to the feet of their audience, never to return. Because my motifs are accessible, they are often only understood on a superficial level. Sometimes art that results from a long process of development receives only shallow general acceptance, and those who should be interpreting it fail to do so, either through a lack of knowledge or insufficient powers of expression. Take, for example, the music of a specific era. People who lived during this era will naturally appreciate the music that was then popular. Few of these listeners, however, will know, let alone value, the music produced by minor labels, by introspective musicians working under the radar, because it’s music that’s made in answer to an individual’s desire, not the desires of the times. In this way, people who say that “Nara loves rock,” or “Nara loves punk” should see my album collection. Of four thousand records there are probably fewer than fifty punk albums. I do have a lot of 60s and 70s rock and roll, but most of my music is from little labels that never saw commercial success—traditional roots music by black musicians and white musicians, and contemplative folk. The spirit of any era gives birth to trends and fashions as well as their opposite: countless introspective individual worlds. A simultaneous embrace of both has cultivated my sensibility and way of thinking. My artwork is merely the tip of the iceberg that is my self. But if you analyzed the DNA from this tip, you would probably discover a new way of looking at my art. My viewers become a true audience when they take what I’ve made and make it their own. That’s the moment the works gain their freedom, even from their maker.

After contemplative folk singers taught me about deep empathy, the punk rockers schooled me in explosive expression.

I was born on this star, and I’m still breathing. Since childhood, I’ve been a jumble of things learned and experienced and memories that can’t be forgotten. Their involuntary locomotion is my inspiration. I don’t express in words the contents of my work. I’ll only tell you my history. The countless stories living inside my work would become mere fabrications the moment I put them into words. Instead, I use my pencil to turn them into pictures. Standing before the dark abyss, here’s hoping my spaceship launches safely tonight….