Apart from its showier signifiers of wealth, a wholesome enthusiasm suffuses the Oslo art scene, perhaps because of its geographic isolation, extreme climate and high cost of living. At the April reopening party of Kunstnernes Hus (Artists' House)-a club across the street from the Royal Palace-more than 100 people waited in line outside the door. Inside, Karl Holmqvist-one of the most famous artists in Sweden-performed onstage. 'Who runs the world? Girrrrls,' he bleated into the microphone. Half the room watched while the other half talked giddily over beers from Dronebrygg, an Oslo-based artist-run microbrewery.
除了巨大的资金支持，奥斯陆的艺术圈弥漫着积极向上的热情，这一景象的产生原因可能在于奥斯陆偏远的地理位置、极端的气候以及高昂的生活开销。今年四月，皇家宫殿(Royal Palace)对面的艺术家中心(Kunsternes Hus)举办重新开放聚会时，有一百多人在门外等场。室内，瑞典最红的艺人之一Karl Holmqvist重新演绎了碧昂斯的《女孩最大》(Run the World(Girls))。一半观众欣赏了表演，另一半则嘻嘻哈哈地聊着天，喝着由艺术家经营的本地小啤酒厂Dronebrygg生产的啤酒。
STATOIL KEEPS REGIONAL headquarters in Fornebu, an office park rising on the outskirts of town that recalls the corporate anomie of Paris's La Défense. In 2007, Statoil merged with the oil and gas division of Norsk Hydro and, in the merger, took over some of that company's art collection. Bjarne Vaaga, an art historian and consultant with the Statoil Art Program, focuses on acquiring works from emerging Norwegian and international artists for the company. 'I think it was very good advice from Edvard Munch: He said, 'Only buy art from living artists,' ' says Vaaga. Indeed, the company seizes every opportunity to showcase its collection: hanging work in its offshore rigs and throughout its office buildings from Houston to Stavanger. A 12,900-square-foot video installation by Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist plays on the underside of the Fornebu office's main entryway. Nearby sits a spherical sculpture by Danish-Icelandic artist Ólafur Elíasson. Once construction is complete, Ekblad and Standard (Oslo) artist Gardar Eide Einarsson will also have works on display around the Fornebu campus.
挪威国家石油公司(STATOIL)的区域总部在Fornebu。公司的大楼在市郊拔地而起，很有法国巴黎拉德芳斯站(La Defense)的感觉。2007年，挪威国家石油公司兼并了挪威海德鲁公司(Norsk Hydro)的石油及天然气部，并在兼并的过程中接管了一部分该公司的艺术藏品。挪威国家石油公司艺术项目的艺术史学家兼顾问Bjarne Vaaga让公司把目光投向挪威新兴艺术家以及国际艺术家。Vaaga说：“我觉得爱德华・蒙克(Edvard Munch)说的很好，‘只从活着的艺术家手中购买艺术品。’”确实，这个公司不放过任何展示自己艺术收藏的机会：不论是离岸 井上，还是其在休斯顿亦或是斯塔万格(Stavanger)的办公室大楼，都挂有艺术品。Forbune办公室的主要通道的地面有一个由瑞士艺术家皮皮鲁提・瑞斯特(Pipilotti Rist)设计的足有12,900平方英尺（约1,198平方米）的视频装置。其附近则有一座由一名丹麦裔冰岛艺术家设计的球状雕塑。一旦公司建筑完工，艾克巴莱德和Standard (Oslo)的艺术家加达・埃德・埃纳尔松(Gardar Eide Einarsson)的作品就会入驻其间。
The corporate interests at play and the bureaucracy surrounding the subsidies call into question the realness of the Norwegian art market: Is it really just a bubble of vainglorious ambition? The cynical view, which people voice out of the corner of their mouths, is that artists' stipends are cheaper for the government than unemployment benefits. But many disagree. Over green tea and carrot soup, Marta Kuzma, the American director of Norway's Office for Contemporary Art (OCA), explains how public financing has breathed genuine creative life into the city. 'I think when people are feeling positive in a community and a community is building, it's very creatively free,' she says. 'A community creates a vibe and an impetus to be with one another.'
企业的收购以及官方的补贴让人们不禁质疑挪威艺术市场的真实程度：这种野心是否太虚荣？人们冷嘲热讽，说政府觉得给艺术家补贴比发放失业补助金更便宜。但也有许多人并不同意。挪威当代艺术局(Office for Contemporary Art, 简称OCA)的美国主任玛塔・库兹玛(Marta Kuzma)就着绿茶和胡萝卜汤，解释了公共财政支持如何将艺术创意之风吹入了城市生活中，“我觉得只要人们觉得在一个团体里感觉良好，这个团体又在成长，创作就会更自由。而一个团体也会培养出自己的气场和动力，跟其它团体共同成长。”
Before joining OCA eight years ago, Kuzma held a long line of top-tier curatorial posts stretching from Washington, D.C. to Kiev, including curator and agent for the last Documenta art fair in Kassel, Germany. At OCA, her job is to cultivate a unique, internationally heard voice for Norway. The Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Foreign Affairs pooled money to start OCA in 2001, as what Kuzma calls an 'object of curiosity.' One of the organization's aims is to give artists and curators from around the world an incentive to stay longer than 24 hours in Oslo-to make the capital more than just a quaint stopover on the international circuit. In that regard, Norway has catching up to do with the likes of Switzerland, Germany and Austria, Kuzma says. But when austerity means the slashing of cultural funding across Europe, Norway is well positioned to join those countries better known historically for promoting the arts.
八年前库兹玛还未加入OCA的时候，她在不同地方担任过顶级艺术管理职位：从华盛顿特区到基辅(Kiev)，包括去年的卡塞尔文献展(Documenta Art Fair in Kassel)，都留下了她的足迹。在OCA，她的职责是培养挪威的独特性，并将其推广到全世界。挪威文化部与外交部(Ministry of Foreign Affairs)筹集了资金，于2001年成立了OCA，它被库兹玛戏称为“好奇心的产物”。这一组织的目标之一便是给来自全世界的艺术家和馆长一个留在奥斯陆的理由，让这座首都不仅仅是国际航线的中转站。库兹玛说，在这一点上，挪威已迎头赶上了瑞士、德国以及奥地利。但是，当经济下滑导致整个欧洲艺术基金严重缩水时，挪威已充分准备好与那些在艺术上有很高造诣的国家结为联盟。
For his part, Furnesvik has found it easiest to promote Norwegian artists as a gallerist and businessman working in the private sector. Not unlike the shipping companies that enjoy easy access to the North Sea, Norway is a base of operations for Furnesvik, not a market. He says 75 percent of the work sold at Standard (Oslo) leaves the country. 'The local market has never been the reason the gallery started,' he says. With few exceptions, Standard (Oslo) has launched the careers of the most internationally sought-after living Norwegian artists-Fredrik Vaerslev, Matias Faldbakken and Einarsson-and boosted the international profile of the American artists it represents, like Tauba Auerbach, Alex Hubbard and Josh Smith. According to Furnesvik, for certain artists, like Faldbakken, there's more global demand for the work than the gallery could possibly supply. Last spring, days before Furnesvik's 40th birthday, Standard (Oslo) expanded into a 8,400-square-foot white-cube space.
Furnesvik发现推广挪威艺术家最简单的方法就是把他们打造成艺廊经营者以及私有领域的商人。挪威与那些可以用便捷方式到达北海的航运公司并无不同，对Furnesvik来说，挪威更像是操作基地，而非市场。他说，Standard (Oslo)售出作品的75%都已经被带出挪威，“当地市场从来就不是艺廊开张的原因。”但是也有例外。Standard (Oslo)成功地帮助了一些挪威最当红的国际艺术家开启事业大门，如Fredrik Vaerslev，Matias Faldbakken以及埃纳尔松，也提升了其代表的美国艺术家的国际形象，如托巴・奥尔巴赫(Tauba Auerbach)，亚历克斯・哈伯德(Alex Hubbard)以及乔希・史密斯(Josh Smith)。据Furnesvik所说，对一些类似Faldbakken的艺术家来说，他们作品的国际需求，艺廊还远不能满足。去年春天，就在Furnesvik 40岁生日的几天前，Standard (Oslo)扩展出了了一个有8,400平方英尺（约780平方米）的白色立方型空间。
While artists, gallerists and even the government have begun to voice their artistic ambitions internationally, a serious class of Norwegian art collector has yet to emerge. It's one reason why a gallery of Standard (Oslo)'s caliber has to conduct so much business abroad. Given the country's middle-class ethos of equality, collecting contemporary art isn't an obvious exercise for the young moneyed class. (The oft-quoted Law of Jante, an informal Scandinavian social code coined by the author Aksel Sandemose in 1933, discourages citizens from rising above his or her social station.) 'If you go to New York, the financial industry is the biggest thing,' says Furnesvik. 'Within that, if you are to be considered an educated person, you have to aspire to collect art. It's somehow expected of you, on the same level as wearing a tie. There is none of that in Norway. It's a culture of equality.'
虽然艺术家、艺廊经营者乃至政府都已经向世界宣告了他们的艺术野心，但是挪威并没有出现真正的艺术收藏阶层。这是Standard (Oslo)的艺术品大量外销的原因之一。挪威的中产阶级尊崇平等的理念，所以新贵一族收藏当代艺术作品就显得有些不合时宜（广为流传的詹代法则(Law of Jante)虽不算正式，但也认为公民不应该有超出其社会层次的行为。这一斯堪的纳维亚社会法则由阿克塞尔・桑德莫斯(Aksel Sandemose)于1933年提出）。Furnesvik说，“如果你去纽约，最强的是金融行业。同样的道理，如果你想让别人觉得你受过良好教育，你必须得收藏艺术品。这是社会对你的期待，就像出席正式场合要戴领带一样。在挪威没有这些要求，这里的文化就是平等。”
Perhaps it's no surprise that Petter Snare, a rare Norwegian collector, worked in the art world for a time with Furnesvik. Snare acquired his first works in the '90s as a law student in Bergen and later helped launch Standard (Oslo) in 2005 before selling his share two years later and returning to his legal career. In his free time, he runs an art book publisher, Teknisk Industri. Each book he publishes is almost completely financed by the government, according to Snare. He also sits on the board of many public and private art institutions across the country, including the Bergen Kunsthall and the Bildende Kunstneres Hjelpefond, an artists' relief fund dating back to the '40s supported by a 5-percent fee levied on all visual artwork publicly sold in the country.
也许彼得・斯奈尔(Petter Snare)这一挪威少有的收藏家曾同Furnesvik一同合作过一段时间并不奇怪。斯奈尔在上世纪90年代得到了他第一件藏品。彼时他还是卑尔根的一名法律学生。2005年，他帮助成立了Standard (Oslo)，两年后，他卖出了自己的股份，重回法律行业。在闲暇时间，他经营一家名叫TekniskIndustri的艺术书籍出版社。他说，他出版的每本书几乎都是政府出资。他同时也是挪威各地公共或私人艺术机构的董事会成员，这些机构包括Bergen Kunsthall以及Bildende Kunstneres Hjelpefond；后者是一项成立于40年代的艺术家救助基金，国内所有公开销售的视觉艺术作品的百分之五收入会用于该基金。
'Contemporary art as a social marker, at least in Norway, is something new,' Snare says over a glass of beer in the chandeliered lobby of downtown's Hotel Bristol. 'Norwegians are mainly trying to be less flashy. It might be an urban myth, but there are all these stories about shipping people in Norway having huge amounts of money and driving themselves to the airport in a Nissan and being picked up by a Rolls-Royce at London Heathrow.'
斯奈尔在市中心装有华丽吊灯的布里斯托酒店(Hotel Bristol)大厅，一边喝着啤酒一边说道：“把当代艺术当作社会标志，至少在挪威，是一件很新鲜的事。挪威人一般不愿意张扬。可能这是个都市传奇，但是有些故事讲的就是挪威一些搞航运的人积累了大量的财富，开着尼桑轿车(Nissan)去机场，然后在伦敦西斯罗机场(Heathrow)被接机的人护送上劳斯莱斯(Rolls-Royce)。”
If the narrative about somewhat provincial Norwegians going out into the world has, in the last two decades, found its way out of an awkward adolescence, the reverse migration is just beginning. The American gallerist Esperanza Rosales moved to Oslo from Brussels in the fall of 2011 to do something unheard of: launch a commercial gallery as an outsider. She first visited Oslo to attend an event hosted by OCA. During her stay, she met Stian Eide Kluge and Steffen Håndlykken, two Norwegian artists launching a gallery of their own called 1857 in Grønland, an immigrant neighborhood near the train station. The space they chose was a battered log cabin, the erstwhile operating headquarters for the Bandidos Motorcycle Club. The cabin was full of trash, and snow fell through the crumbling roof. 'Something about that kind of spirit,' say Rosales, 'this particular initiative they have to take something that was falling apart and fix it up, really stuck in my mind.'
如果这个讲述淳 的挪威人走进大千世界的故事在过去二十年就已经成为了现实的话，那么新移民进入挪威则是新的潮流。埃斯佩兰萨・罗萨莱斯(Esperanza Rosales)在2011年秋天从布鲁塞尔移居奥斯陆，并且做了一件闻所未闻的事：以外行人的身份开了一家商业艺廊。她与奥斯陆的初次邂逅是来参加OCA举办的活动。在她停留期间，她见到了两个开办自己艺廊的挪威艺术家。这家艺廊名叫1857，位于靠近火车站的移民聚集地。他们选用的空间是一个破旧的木屋，雪花会从摇摇欲坠的屋顶上 下来。罗萨莱斯说：“他们身上的那种精神，那种要把濒临溃败的事物拯救回来的动力，很叫我难忘。”
'Norway, there are things I love about it, but it's very severe,' she says. She's ready with examples of the baffling cost of running a business within the country's economy. 'I once went to the post office to buy an envelope and a five-pack costs 65 U.S. dollars. They have local postage on them already, but still that's a lot.'
她说：“挪威有我爱的地方，但是现在日子也不好过。”挪威经济已受创，做生意成本很高，她给了些例子：“一次我去邮局买信封，一套五个装的信封居然要花65美元（约400人民币）。信封上已贴有当地邮票，可是价格仍然太贵了。”
In Oslo there's an incredible will to make things happen despite the odds-a community survival instinct, part of the bully attitude it takes to survive so far north. After two months, Rosales was able to negotiate free rent on a warren of lower level rooms below the Grønland Menighetshus, a former congregational hall built in 1913. Her program so far has included work by Ekblad and another Norwegian artist Lars Laumann, as well as by young artists from more established art capitals like Berlin and London. 'I realized there was room for another commercial gallery, or perhaps one that could have a very different profile than Standard,' she says. 'A commercial gallery with the spirit of a project space.' According to her agreement, she'll begin paying rent there when the gallery starts turning a profit. In the meantime she's investigating the possibility of claiming more space in a nearby prison.
奥斯陆有种排除万难坚持到最后的精神――这既是一个族群的本能，一定程度上也是在如此靠北的地方生存下来必备的态度。两个月后，罗萨莱斯在一个稍低档些的房子谈判自己的免费房租。这个房屋原来是会议大厅，首建于1913年。她的项目目前包括了艾克布莱德和另一位挪威艺术家拉尔斯・劳曼(Lars Laumann)的作品，以及来自比较成熟的艺术之都如柏林和伦敦的艺术家作品。她说：“我意识到还有空间经营另一个商业艺廊。或许是一个跟Standard大相径庭，并且将商业艺廊和项目空间的精神结合起来的艺廊。”根据协议，当艺廊开始盈利的时候，她就要开始交房租了。同时，她也正在调查是否旁边的监狱能够提供更多空间。
Rosales's gallery, called VI, VII, takes its name from the British colloquialism 'at sixes and sevens.' 'It means that someone is at a point of confusion, maybe making a bad choice or they're showing recklessness,' she says. 'The history of this is a little unclear, but some people think it came out of dice-throwing games-when somebody would bet everything they had on the next throw of the dice, and sometimes lose. I liked that it could be read as total stupidity or total courage.'
罗萨莱斯的艺廊叫作VI, VII。这两个名字来源于俗语“六神无主”和“七上八下”（译者注：原文为sixes and sevens，意为乱七八糟）。她说：“这些短语表达的是人处在混沌的状态，这样人可能会做一些不好的决定，或者做出轻率鲁莽的事。这些短语的词源我不是很清楚，但是一些人觉得可能起源于丢骰子的游戏。有人下了所有的筹码，寄希望于下一次投骰子，但是却输了。我喜欢它们是因为它们代表的就是彻底的愚蠢，或者彻底的勇气。”