| 摘要: | 1881年，竇嘉的《十四歲的小舞者》首度在獨立印象派聯展中亮相，她身著彩色蠟體覆蓋的馬甲、蓬蓬裙及舞鞋等現成物，踩踏芭蕾第四腳位，迥異於當時主流的芭蕾舞繪畫或雕塑捎來浪漫甜美氛圍的超凡身影；竇嘉的小舞者卻引起許多啟用負面修辭的藝術評論。本文最初的問題意識即來自：《小舞者》何以驚懼或驚豔十九世紀末的法國觀眾。
為了解惑，本文廣採與她直接或間接相關的文獻，從竇嘉雕塑時常觸及的議題，包括「雕塑史脈絡」、「性／別議題」、「身體局部的閱讀」、「藝評分析」四部份出發，觀察既有研究框架可能存在的限制性，重新思索《小舞者》的整具身體理應不局限於藝術領域挑釁學院的雕塑典範，不固定於單一的性／別立場立論，不從身體斷片的閱讀出發。轉而綜合地探查《小舞者》對時下諸多「身體」閱讀模式有所回應的野心；全面性地聚焦單件作品，更具體地觀察竇嘉再現的性／別政治體現在《小舞者》身上所產生的效果。同時亦關注與《小舞者》身體互為主體的觀者，如何跳脫「再現」的層次，啟用彼時的身體閱讀模式展開詮釋，以及所產生的詮釋失靈。
本文的書寫模式乃以竇嘉建構的《小舞者》身體作為本文架構，由外而內地視察《小舞者》身體的各個層次。從外層（隔膜），講到主幹（肌體），最後再論及觀視之眼與焦慮之心（眼與心）。希望能夠先對《小舞者》的身體各處細部檢視，分別理解身體各處可能對應的不同閱讀習慣，體察焦慮的成因。一面呼應當時觀者逐項視診的犀利目光，另一方面更是為了平行於竇嘉製作塑像時裡外有別的層理而設。將身體分層討論之後，再綜合地談到觀者和作者的觀看習慣，以及竇嘉利用並突破慣性的創作手法。
竇嘉曾自言製作一件藝術品「訴求的狡詐不亞於犯下一樁罪。」本文以為，他的確並不刻意去擘劃污衊作品中再現對象的殘忍布局，他感興趣的是精心佈置一個或許沒有罪人與案件，但處處貌似有蛛絲馬跡可尋的事發場景。竇嘉所「織就的外膜」、「敷染的體表」、「捏作的容顏」、「強塑的體態」，這些意義並不穩定，似是而非的符號；可能正是竇嘉狡黠地挪用以帶來焦慮、負面、曖昧效果的媒材。他埋下許多看似專業、科學、精準而因此意謂深長的徵候與訊息，足以觸發解碼行為的誘餌；然而，這些符號，一方面貌似可讀，夾帶著令觀眾焦慮的負面隱喻；另一方面，卻無法通抵確切或實質的所指，僅僅讓觀眾徒勞搜索與揣測。他們越欲解讀，越感到無法確知答案的焦慮。
Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen was first exhibited at the Sixth Independent Exhibition in 1881. It was a wax sculpture, roughly 1 meter in height, dressed in a ready-made tutu, corset, and ribbon. The wax-made skin is polychromatic, with mixed-media internal structure, and is posed with the arms locked together behind the torso, and legs stepped out as in the fourth position of ballet. It elicited an unsettled feeling among critics, who used especially negative rhetoric in their criticism. This paper focuses on this single work and discusses how the unique representational strategies of Degas, and the general trend of body-reading technique during the fin-de-siecle in France, mutually constituted the underlying causes of this disturbance.
This paper broadly consults the related reference materials, considering the issues that existing research of Degas’s sculptures have regularly touched on. Discussing them under four main approaches: history of sculpture, gender issues, a detailed reading of the body, and nineteenth-century art criticism, this paper will try to discover the limits of these frameworks, and reconsider the reality that Little Dancer’s body is neither a sculpture which aims only at challenging the established academic paragons, nor is it made to claim a certain gender position, nor is it intended to be read through any specific body part. Instead, through a holistic reading, this paper will investigate how Little Dancer’s body responds to multiple body-reading techniques. This thesis will begin from the single artwork itself, and observe how it embodies a complicated gender politics that cannot be reduced to a single gender position. At the same time, this paper will discuss how contemporary observers viewed Little Dancer as “somebody” personified, more than a mere representation, and how their body-reading technique failed to unambiguouly decipher the Little Dancer.
Tracing the texture of Little Dancer’s body, this paper will read the artwork from the external layer toward the inner layer. That is, from the outermost skins (the membrane), to the main body (muscular body), and finally toward the vision and the feeling of anxiety (eye and mind). Sequentially examining the work in the manner of the contemporary critics, and parallelizing the actual layers of the sculpture, this paper will carefully examine the different layers and body particulars to understand the causes of anxiety corresponding to different reading habits directed at each layer. After the layer by layer discussion of the body, the paper will discuss the overall body-reading habits of contemporary viewers as well as of the artist himself, and the breaking of these body-reading habits through the means of art.
Degas had once said that, “[an art work] calls for as much cunning as the commission of a crime.” This paper argues that Degas surely arranged a scene with many shaky clues to mislead the audience. However, he had never intentionally and clearly profaned the subjects he represented as criminals. Little Dancer’s “woven membrane,” “applied and dyed skin,” “kneaded face,” and “molded physique,” invited contemporary viewers to decipher these elusive and specious codes. On one hand, these codes led to the interpretation of the symbols/symptoms as maladies and disorders which made the viewers anxious. On the other hand, Degas avoided overt legibility in these codes to create ambiguities that resisted specific inferential thinking, giving rise to yet another new form of anxiety. |
