Name: 梵谷最醜的曠世鉅作！ (Van Gogh's Ugliest Masterpiece)
Uploaded: 2026-02-09T17:06:09.000Z
Duration: 7 min 24 s

The painting is one of the ugliest I've done.

這幅畫是我畫過最醜的作品之一。

This is what Vincent van Gogh told his brother in a letter referencing this painting called Night Cafe.

這是文生梵谷寫給他弟弟的信中，提到這幅名為「夜間咖啡館」的畫時說的。

And at first glance, you can see what he meant.

一開始看，你就能明白他的意思了。

This is a jarring image, even for Van Gogh, especially when you compare it to his other famous scene of a cafe in Arles Cafe Terrace at night.

這是一幅令人不安的畫面，即使對梵谷來說也是如此，尤其當你把它和他另一幅著名的亞爾咖啡館場景「夜晚的露天咖啡座」相比時。

Here, Van Gogh captures that romantic scent of European cafes on summer evenings where friends gather to talk and laugh.

在這裡，梵谷捕捉到了歐洲咖啡館在夏夜裡那浪漫的氣息，朋友們在那裡聚會哈拉、歡笑。

The blue starry sky complements the pool of orange and yellow gaslight under the terrace, which spills out over the cobblestones, tinged with violet and pink.

藍色的星空襯託著露臺下那片橙黃色的煤氣燈光，燈光灑落在鵝卵石上，染上了紫羅蘭和粉紅色。

Compared to that, Night Cafe is a painting of anxiety.

相較之下，「夜間咖啡館」是一幅充滿焦慮的畫。

If the exterior is the dream of French nightlife, the interior is the nightmare.

如果說外觀是法國夜生活的夢境，那麼內部就是一場惡夢。

If the exterior is a place to talk and laugh, the interior depicts the cafe as a place where you can ruin yourself, go mad, commit crimes, as Vincent wrote in another letter to his brother.

如果說外觀是哈拉歡笑的地方，那麼內部則描繪了咖啡館是一個會讓你毀了自己、發瘋、犯罪的地方，就像文生在另一封給他弟弟的信中寫的。

From these letters we understand that the ugly, queasy quality of this painting was intentional, in the same way that he used color to capture his emotional response to natural beauty.

從這些信中，我們瞭解到這幅畫醜陋、令人不安的特質是刻意為之，就像他用色彩捕捉對自然美景的情感反應一樣。

Here Van Gogh uses color to convey the uneasiness of a low class barroom after midnight.

在這裡，梵谷運用色彩傳達午夜後低俗酒吧的 अशांति (不安)。

那麼，梵谷是如何達到這個效果的呢？

And how can a quote unquote ugly painting also be a masterpiece?

又為什麼一幅所謂的「醜陋」畫作也能成為傑作？

To answer these questions, maybe the first place we should look is back in those letters.

為了回答這些問題，或許我們該先從那些信件裡找找線索。

In reference to Nightcafe, Van Gogh writes, here I've tried to express the terrible human passions with the red and the green everywhere.

關於「夜間咖啡館」，梵谷寫道：「在這裡，我試圖用到處的紅與綠來表達可怕的人類激情。」

It's a battle and an antithesis of the most different greens and reds.

這是一場戰鬥，是各種最不同的綠與紅之間的對比。

Van Gogh was an avid student of color, specifically Charles Blank's analysis of Michel Chevreul's color theory and Eugene Delacroix's paintings.

梵谷是色彩的熱衷學習者，特別是查爾斯·布蘭克對米歇爾·歐仁·雪弗勒色彩理論的分析，以及歐仁·德拉克洛瓦的畫作。

Here Van Gogh learned of the concept of simultaneous contrast, which says that when complementary colors are juxtaposed, they reinforce each other.

在這裡，梵谷學到了同時對比的概念，也就是當互補色並置時，它們會相互增強。

He also learned of optical mixing, which favored placing solid colors next to each other on the canvas instead of actually mixing the pigments together in order to get more vibrant colors and color relationships.

他也學到了光學混合，這種方法主張將純色塊並排放在畫布上，而不是實際混合顏料，以獲得更鮮豔的色彩和色彩關係。

The basic insight is that every color on a painting and in the real world is influenced by the colors around it.

基本的洞察是，畫作中以及現實世界裡的每種顏色，都會受到周圍顏色的影響。

The Impressionists and the Post Impressionists use this relativity to push the effects of color further than ever before, and

印象派和後印象派畫家運用這種相對性，將色彩效果推向前所未有的境界，

maybe none more powerfully than Van Gogh.

而梵谷或許是其中最強烈的一位。

So when he talks about a battle or an antithesis between green greens and reds in Nightcafe, this is what he means.

所以當他在《夜間咖啡館》中談論綠色與紅色之間的戰鬥或對比時，這就是他的意思。

Green and red are complementary colors and exert a force on each other, just like blue and orange.

綠色和紅色是互補色，它們會互相影響，就像藍色和橘色一樣。

But whereas blue and Orange have a pleasing quality.

但藍色和橘色有種令人愉悅的特質，

There's something punishing about green and red, a fact that was noted by another popular color theorist at the time, Ogden Rude.

綠色和紅色卻帶有一種懲罰感，當時另一位受歡迎的色彩理論家奧格登·魯德也注意到了這一點。

Just a few months prior, he experimented with a similar color palette in his Portrait of a Zouave Soldier, commenting to his brother, it's a coarse combination of disparate tones that isn't easy to handle.

就在幾個月前，他在《祖阿夫阿兵哥肖像》中嘗試了類似的調色盤，並對他的兄弟評論說，這是一種粗糙的、不協調的色調組合，不容易駕馭。

The problem wasn't just the harshness of red green contrast, but the lack of balance too.

問題不僅在於紅綠對比的刺眼，還在於缺乏平衡。

Three months after Night Cafe, after Van Gogh's famous breakdown in which he cut off his ear, he found a way to use red and green in a self portrait that makes the contrast feel stable, even calm.

在《夜間咖啡館》之後三個月，也就是梵谷割耳的著名崩潰事件之後，他在一幅自畫像中找到了一種運用紅綠色的方法，讓這種對比感覺穩定，甚至平靜。

He does this by balancing two complementary pairs on either side of a horizontal line that cuts across at the eyes.

他透過在橫跨眼睛的水準線上，兩側各放置一對互補色來達成平衡。

So if red green feels unintentionally unbalanced in the Zouave portrait and intentionally balanced in the self portrait, what would it look like if Van Gogh used these colors to make a painting that was intentionally unbalanced?

所以，如果說紅綠在《祖阿夫阿兵哥肖像》中感覺不協調，在自畫像中卻是協調的，那麼當梵谷運用這些顏色來創作一幅故意不協調的畫作時，會是什麼樣子呢？

This is what I think he achieved in Night Cafe.

我認為這就是他在《夜間咖啡館》中達到的效果。

The wall of this interior space is a thick, oppressive ribbon, the color of blood.

這個室內空間的牆壁是一條厚重、壓抑的緞帶，顏色像血一樣紅。

That red clashes with the green of the ceiling, creating a tension that trembles in the eye.

那紅色與天花板的綠色產生衝突，在視覺上製造出一種顫動的張力。

There's no compositional balance between these colors.

這些顏色之間沒有構圖上的平衡。

The red overpowers the green, and both colors are jammed into the upper third of the canv.

紅色壓過了綠色，兩種顏色都被擠壓在上半部畫面。

The remaining space is dominated by a sulfur yellow that gets into everything.

剩下的空間則被硫磺黃所主導，這種黃色無所不在。

It suffuses the green of the pool table and the bar offering further clashes with a red wall.

它滲入了撞球桌的綠色和吧檯，與紅色的牆壁產生了進一步的衝突。

It pervades the blue of the countertops and the white of the bar owner's clothes.

它瀰漫在檯面的藍色和吧檯老闆衣服的白色上。

That white should be a place for the eye to rest.

那塊白色本來應該是讓眼睛休息的地方。

But Van Gogh stubbornly refuses us that feeling.

但梵谷卻頑固地剝奪了我們這種感受。

He refuses us and the lonely patrons shadows as well, except the single sinister shadow of the pool table that commands the center of the space.

他也剝奪了我們和那些孤單顧客的陰影，除了撞球桌那道盤據空間中央、陰森的單獨陰影。

Now it's not only col that communicates unease in this painting.

現在，在這幅畫裡，不只是顏色在傳達不安。

The patrons sit hunched over in their arms.

顧客們彎著腰、抱著手臂坐在那裡。

Several of the chairs are pushed away from the tables at odd angles.

好幾張椅子以奇怪的角度被推離了桌子。

The perspective, too, has a warped quality.

The lines of depth don't meet the same horizon, and

深度線條沒有匯聚到同一個地平線，

they're slightly curved, which gives you the sense of being yanked into the painting.

它們稍微彎曲，讓你感覺被拉進畫裡。

Once you're in there, the pool table and the floorboards rush you to the back door, which either leads to a back room or outside.

一旦你進去了，撞球桌和地板的線條會把你帶到後門，那扇門通往後房間或外面。

不管是哪種，裡面都只有硫磺。

在夜間咖啡館裡沒有地方可以逃。

Not for the people inside the painting, not for the people outside it.

無論是畫裡的人，還是畫外的人。

Two months after painting this, in late October, Van Gogh's friend Paul Gauguin would come to stay with him in Arles, relieving the loneliness that he was so clearly feeling.

在畫這幅畫的兩個月後，也就是十月下旬，梵谷的朋友保羅·高更來到了亞爾和他同住，緩解了他明顯感受到的孤獨。

Van Gogh dreamed of starting an artist collective in Arles, but

梵谷夢想在亞爾創立一個藝術家集體，但

increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to leave him and move on.

他越來越害怕高更會離開他，另謀出路。

That fear of abandonment, a return to the desperate loneliness that we can feel in Nightcafe, developed into a crisis by December.

那種被拋棄的恐懼，回到夜間咖啡館裡那種絕望的孤獨感，到了十二月演變成了一場危機。

And a few days before New Year's, he severed his left ear.

在新年前幾天，他割下了自己的左耳。

You know, Vincent Van Gogh was a painter of deep and acute feeling.

你知道，梵谷是一位情感深刻又敏銳的畫家。

That feeling was inseparable from the way he perceived the world.

那種情感與他感知世界的方式密不可分。

我們的感官會受到情緒的影響。

Van Gogh understood that to record what he saw without this aspect would have been dishonest, inhuman.

梵谷明白，如果沒有這個面向，就記錄他所見，那將是不誠實、不人道的。

And so he used the magic of color to show us a truer world.

是以，他運用色彩的魔力，向我們展現一個更真實的世界。

This is why his work still vibrates, literally with life, over a hundred years later.

這就是為什麼他的作品，至今仍充滿生命力，振動著，超過百年。

This is why an ugly painting tapping into the ugliness in every psyche, can be a masterpiece.

這就是為什麼一幅醜陋的畫作，觸及每個人內心深處的醜陋，也能成為傑作。

Van Gogh is my absolute favorite painter.

Ever since I went to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I've just always been blown away by his work.

自從我去了阿姆斯特丹的梵谷博物館後，我就一直對他的作品讚嘆不已。

所以這次製作起來真是太開心了。

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本集節目由 Squarespace 贊助播出。

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如果你想架設網站，而且希望過程非常簡單，Squarespace 有許多美麗、獲獎的設計師模板可供選擇，讓這個過程變得超簡單。

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它提供 24 小時的客戶服務，無需升級，無需安裝，也永遠不需要更新。

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你可以在 squarespace.com 開始免費試用，如果你使用優惠代碼 Nerdwriter，首次購買可享 10% 折扣。