Books and Arts; The Istanbul Biennial;Vintage is the new vanguard;
文艺；书评；伊斯坦布尔的艺术双年展；怀旧也是一种潮流；
Most art biennials are incoherent and exhausting. Istanbul's is an exception;
艺术双年展大多支离破碎江郎才尽。唯有伊斯坦布尔的双年展是个例外；

Virtually every day of the year sees another art biennial opening somewhere in the world. The role of these exhibitions is to showcase contemporary art, attract affluent tourists and stimulate local culture. Most biennials are a sprawling mess—and the worst look like commercial art fairs studded with brand-name trophies. However, those that succeed in making sense of some aspect of global culture can be both enlightening and memorable. This year's Istanbul Biennial, which opened on September 17th and runs for almost two months, is a case in point. Poignant, relevant and intellectually engaging, it has managed to create a coherent exhibition out of works by 130 artists from 41 countries—a rare achievement.

实际上，在一年中的每一天，在世界上的某个地方，都有一场艺术双年展会举办。这些展览的作用是展出当代艺术，吸引大量游客，并促进当地文化发展。大多数双年展不过是一团糟——最糟糕的看起来就像商业性质的艺术集会，到处充斥着品牌的战利品。不过，那些成功诠释了全球文化中某个方面的双年展倒是十分具有启发性，值得纪念。今年，于9月17日开幕，为期将近两个月的伊斯坦布尔艺术双年展就是这样一个双年展。动人，切题，十分具有知性吸引力，通过展出来自41个国家的130个艺术家的作品，它成功的创造出一场融会贯通的展览——取得了罕见的成功。

The Istanbul Biennial is held in two huge former warehouses on the banks of the Bosporus. Untamed, the buildings would force viewers into a monotonous marathon of spectatorship. But the biennial's curators, Adriano Pedrosa (a Brazilian) and Jens Hoffmann (a Costa Rican), enlisted the help of a master of exhibition design, a Japanese architect called Ryue Nishizawa, who has introduced new energy into the space by creating rooms of different sizes and marking off “exterior” spaces with corrugated-steel walls.

伊斯坦布尔双年展在博斯普鲁斯海峡岸边的两座巨大的老旧库房里举行。如果不加修饰的话，这种建筑很容易让观众陷入一种单调冗长的观赏过程之中。但是展馆馆长阿德里亚诺佩德罗萨（巴西人）和吉斯霍夫曼（哥斯达黎加人）得到了一个展馆设计大师的帮助，他是一位名叫西沢立卫的日本建筑师，他建造了几个大小不同的房间，并用波纹钢板墙将外部空间区分开来，通过以上方式为整个空间注入了活力。

As curators, Mr Pedrosa and Mr Hoffmann have also adopted an effective premise. Rather than using a theory or theme as a unifying rubric, the biennial has a muse—Félix González-Torres, an artist who died in 1996 and who was selected posthumously to be the official American representative at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

做为馆长，佩德罗萨和霍夫曼也采用了令人印象深刻的方式开幕。并没有用千遍一律的红字标注展览主题，这次的双年展自己的缪斯——菲利克斯冈萨雷斯托雷斯，这位艺术家1996就英年早逝，死后在2007年的维纳斯双年展上被选为正式的美国代表。

Born in Cuba and educated in Puerto Rico, González-Torres made minimalist conceptual works that were aesthetically innovative and politically sophisticated. Like its muse, the Istanbul Biennial is thoughtful rather than aggressive or sensationalist. “Activists spoon-feed messages but artists create works with layered meanings,” explains Mr Pedrosa.

冈萨雷斯托雷斯出生于古巴，求学于波多黎各，他创造的抽象主义作品兼具美学的创新性和政治的复杂性。就像它的缪斯一样，伊斯坦布尔双年展的风格是沉思的，而不是咄咄逼人或是多愁善感的。“政治活动家向人们强制性的灌输信息，然而艺术家创造意义层次分明的作品”，佩德罗萨如是解释道。

The biennial also has an intelligent structure. There are five group shows around the main themes that inspired González-Torres's work—love, death, abstraction, contested histories and territories. Each group show occupies a large grey room and acts as a hub for a cluster of solo shows featuring 50 artists, all in smaller white rooms. The elegant solution to the spaces stands in contrast to the names of the group shows, which repeat “Untitled” in an awkward manner. Nevertheless, it is moving to walk through the room called “ ‘Untitled' (Ross)” named after the artist's longtime lover, Ross Laycock, who died in 1991 of Aids-related causes, like González-Torres himself.

双年展的空间安排也十分讨喜。有五组展出冈萨雷斯托雷斯的作品主题——爱，死亡，抽象，历史纷争以及领土纷争。每一组展出都占据了一间灰色的大屋子，这些展出也是50个风格各异的艺术家的独展中心，所有的独展在一间小一点的白屋子里进行。和空间的完美分布形成对比的是展出的名字，这些展出都是清一色用一种尴尬的方式强调着“无题”这个名字。不过，你还是情不自禁的想去逛一逛这件名叫“无名（罗斯）”的房间，“无名（罗斯）”以冈萨雷斯托雷斯的最爱，罗斯雷科克命名，像冈萨雷斯一样，他也于1991年死于艾滋病。

Another of the group shows, “ ‘Untitled' (Passport # II)”, displays 20 works about maps and national identity. Hank Willis Thomas's “A Place to Call Home” depicts North America and Africa as big black continents joined by an isthmus. Jorge Macchi's “Seascape” covers all the landmasses below the equator with cut-outs of the northern seas. Displayed as a commentary to Mr Macchi's drowned hemisphere is a video by Kutlug Ataman, one of Turkey's most critically acclaimed artists, which depicts bands of choppy sunlit water.

另一组展出名叫“无题（护照#II）”，展出了20幅关于地图和国籍的作品。汉克威利斯托马斯的作品“一个名叫家的地方”将北美洲和非洲刻画成了两个由地峡连接起来的黑色大洲。乔治马奇的《海景画》将北边的海洋剪掉，描绘了赤道以南的所有陆地形态。卡特拉格奥特曼制作了一个视频，算是对马奇将整个半球浸在水里的做法的评论，卡特拉格是土耳其最后非议的一位艺术家，他在视频里刻画了一排排波光里里的海浪。

In a series of vitrines in the same room, Baha Boukhari, a Ramallah-based cartoonist, shows the passports issued to his father under the British mandate in Palestine. Many of the artworks incorporate objects and documents found in historical archives. Contemporary art in 2011 has a distinctly vintage feel.

在同一间房子里还摆放着一系列的玻璃橱窗，拉马拉籍卡托画家巴哈布克汗展示了英国在巴勒斯坦发行给父亲的护照。许多艺术作品都把就档案里找到的物品和文件组合在一起。2011年的当代艺术别有一番怀旧风味。

The curators are right not to let themselves be overly distracted by the latest thing; work made yesterday is not always the art that is most relevant to the present. They have chosen to include a range of historical artworks by women who they believe deserve greater recognition. For example, they have installed photo collages from Martha Rosler's “Bringing the War Home” series (pictured above), which were made during the Vietnam war between 1967 and 1972, but which still resonate because of America's continuing presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

这两个馆长十分明智，没有过分受到潮流的影响；但是过去创造的作品并不总是和现在密切相关。于是他们选择了一系列由女艺术家创作的老作品，因为他们认为女性艺术家更应该受到公众认同。比如他们安插了一系列由玛莎罗丝拍摄的名为“把战争带回家”照片（见上图），这些照片摄于1967年到1972年越战时期，因为美国发动了伊拉克战争和阿富汗战争，所以它们在今天仍然能引起广泛共鸣

The Istanbul Biennial also gives solo shows to a number of exciting emerging artists. Many visitors were impressed with “Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File”, a video by Wael Shawky, an Egyptian artist, in which marionettes act out the story of the crusades from an Arab point of view. Also much discussed were “Tin Soldiers” by Ala Younis, a Jordanian, and “Historical Record Archive” by Dani Gal, an Israeli artist.

伊斯坦布尔双年展还给许多令人振奋的艺术新星举办了独展。由希腊艺术家威尔夏科拍摄的视频——“卡巴来改革：恐怖展览档案”给许多参观者留下了深刻的印象，在这段视频里，他从阿拉伯视角，用各种木偶演绎了改革的故事。约旦艺术家阿拉又斯的“小锡兵”和以色列艺术家丹尼盖尔的“历史档案记录”也掀起了一场热议。

It is interesting to view these works against the background of the recent political upheavals in the Middle East and to see the unexpected interaction between Arab artists and those from South America. Both areas are on the periphery of European modernity and the biennial's artists have found much common ground over urban decay, disenfranchisement and the arbitrariness of national borders. Mr Pedrosa and Mr Hoffmann have played to their strengths, choosing more artists from South America than any other continent. It is a testament to the Turkish philanthropists who underwrite the biennial, particularly the Koc and Eczacibasi families, that the curators came under no pressure to include more local artists. Indeed, the stylish internationalism of the Istanbul Biennial feels entirely natural.

在近期中东政治动荡的大背景下审视这些作品是件很有意思的事情，还能乎意料的看到来自阿拉伯和南美的艺术家之间的互动。这两个地方都深受欧洲现代性影响，来参加双年展的艺术家们在城市堕落，民权丧失以及国界犯罪猖獗等方面找到了共同话题。佩德罗萨和霍夫曼凭借一定便利请到了许多南美艺术家，要多于来自其他大洲的艺术家。这次双年展也见证了赞助方土耳其的慈善精神，尤其是科克和伊扎斯巴斯两大家族，两位馆长以及许多当地的艺术家都来自这两大家族。毋庸置疑的是，伊斯坦布尔双年展的国际风格毫不做作，给人感觉十分自然。