马克渥林格 - 《皇家爱斯科赛马会》

马克渥林格 - 《皇家爱斯科赛马会》

Mark Wallinger

Royal Ascot

1994

Video installation on 4 monitors with 4 flight cases, 3 minutes 41 seconds

Dimensions variable

马克.渥林格

皇家爱斯科赛马会，1994

录像装置和飞行装置各4台

3分41秒 （循环）

以一张面无表情的脸为特征，马克•渥林格出现在一系列视频节目的监视器上。监视器放在带轮子的航空箱顶端，皇家马车队由每个航空箱隔开，悠闲地巡游在在星期二、星期三、星期四和星期五（分别地）举行的皇家赛马会的赛马场上，这些大喜日子已经制度化地无聊地印在日历上。与此同时，电影胶片让精心编排的舞蹈作品曝光：女王冰冷的微笑和刻板的卷发、微倾的头以及带着手套的挥手、爱丁堡公爵举起大礼帽、开始演奏国歌。对于媒体报道所关注的礼帽盛装游行而非运动本身的这一活动而言，是再合适不过了。这里我们有服装以及混合着粉红、橘黄和石灰颜色的女王阔边女帽特写镜头；几乎分辨不出每一天的区别，就像英国广播公司的四个纪录片合并成一场混乱的胡言乱语。

这种肖像上的重复，都以亮绿色草皮为背景，出现在安迪•沃霍尔（Andy Warhol）新近的《执政女王》连续剧中（1985）1伊丽莎白二世的丝网印刷品上——四人一组的邮票肖像带着好莱坞化妆术和泡泡糖颜色的不自然混合。在《皇家雅士阁赛马会》中，沃林格灵活地控制着赛马场的审美和快乐，魁梧的身体骑马进入体制惯性的争论中——一种继续下去会带来新的刺激的争论（到1994年，英国女王和查尔斯王子有义务纳税，而且白金汉宫对公众开放）。伊恩•亨特（Ian Hunt）通过不同的媒体在渥林格的议程之内把《皇家雅士阁赛马会》定位成“无罪的抗议”，作为“一种秘密的抗议和对一个不能理解或不可容忍的而不是一次演讲的场景分析”2。如果说沃霍尔的肖像系列暗示着君主政体在其臣民眼中是一种权利让渡，那么，在我们对渥林格电影胶片不遗余力的赞誉中，魅力还有荒谬以及镜头串连带来的疲劳合并成为一件更加微妙的事情：给情感维度附加上赛马场这一概念的价值（与阶级和血统紧密联系），马这种四足动物也成为渥林格的一种个人激情。1993年，在他的经销商安东尼•雷诺兹的组织下，他合伙购买了一匹赛马。他把这匹马命名为“真正的艺术品”。尽管这匹马只跑了一场比赛就受了伤，但为他赢得了特纳奖提名，并把杜尚派（Duchampian）的现成的想法扩展到与情感相联系的事情。

在完成他的文学硕士学位的过程中，渥林格继续停留在戈德史密斯任教（1986-91年），他在年轻一代中的核心地位，在萨奇（Saatchi）里程碑式的“年轻英国艺术家Ⅱ”展览（1993）中可见一斑。渥林格敢于捅政治的痒处；为了应付这场遭遇战，颇具传统和深受大众欢迎的体育被证明是个包容的舞台。“当艺术家们似乎认为向科隆的富人呼吁比向更多普通观众呼吁更加重要时，这是对80年代正在发生的事情的一种反应。”3 环视同一阶段的摄影，马克•渥林格、海耶斯大院31号、坎伯维尔新路、坎伯维尔、伦敦、英格兰、大不列颠、欧洲、世界、太阳系、银河星系、整个宇宙(Mark Wallinger,31 Hayes Court,Camberwell New Road,Camberwell,London,England,Great Britain,Europe,The World,The Solar System,The Galaxy,The Universe(1994))4。艺术家和他的兄弟站在一群来自温布利的足球迷中间，高举联合王国国旗，上面书写的“渥林格”穿过国旗中间。他们冒着打架的危险，把探矿杖浸到由足球流氓、粉丝和唯我论者组成的穿过国民同一性辩论的人流之中。临近辩论会的地方，四台《皇家雅士阁赛马会》的摄像监视器用省略号凸显着权威性。DF

1.政府艺术收藏（Government Art Collection ）

2.伊恩•亨特，“抗议无罪”，见马克•渥林格：信条，展览类别（伦敦，泰特美术馆，2000年），22。

3.罗斯艾丁引述渥林格的话，“人物概评：马克•渥林格——种族、阶级和性别”，《独立》（2001年6月2日），5。

4.安东尼•雷诺兹博物馆，伦敦。

Mark Wallinger

Characteristically deadpan, Mark Wallinger presents a series of video monitors on top of wheeled flight cases, each isolating the royal carriage’s leisurely progress down the racecourse on the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday (respectively) of Royal Ascot, red-letter days in the calendar of institutional frivolities. Simultaneous footage exposes precise choreography: the Queen’s frozen smile and rigid curls, the tilt of her head, her gloved wave, the Duke of Edinburgh raising his top hat, the national anthem striking up. Appropriately for an event whose media coverage focuses on the parade of hats and dresses rather than the sport, here we have a close-up on clothes, on the Queen’s dolly mixture of pinks, tangerines, limes; the difference from day to day is barely discernible, just as the four BBC commentaries merge in a confused blather.

This repetition of imagery, all backed by bright green turf, brings into play Andy Warhol’s late screenprints of Elizabeth II from his ‘Reigning Queens’ series (1985) , a quartet of the postage stamp icon in camp conjugations of Hollywood make-up and bubblegum colours. In Royal Ascot Wallinger harnesses the aesthetic and pleasures of the racecourse, a strapping mount for entering into the debate about constitutional inertia – a debate that had garnered new piquancy (by 1994 the Queen and Prince Charles were liable for tax, and Buckingham Palace had opened to the public). Ian Hunt locates Royal Ascot within Wallinger’s agenda of ‘innocent protest’ across different media, as ‘a private protest and analysis of a situation which appears baffling or intolerable rather than a piece of speech-making’. If Warhol’s portrait series implies that monarchy is an assignment in the eyes of its subjects, in our effortless recognition of Wallinger’s footage, the charms as well as the absurdity and fatigue of continuity add up to something rather more subtle. Adding an emotional dimension to the conceptual value of the racecourse (bound up in class and pedigree), the quadruped was also a personal passion of Wallinger’s. In 1993, he bought a racehorse with a consortium organised by his dealer, Anthony Reynolds. He named it A Real Work of Art. Although it ran just one race before injury, it won him a Turner Prize nomination and extended the Duchampian idea of the readymade into something with feeling.

On completing his MA, Wallinger stayed on at Goldsmiths to teach (1986–91), and his central position among the rising generation there saw him included in Saatchi’s landmark show ‘Young British Artists II’ (1993). Wallinger dared to handle the touchy underarms of politics; for this encounter, sport, its traditions and mass appeal, proved to be an accommodating arena. ‘It was a reaction to what was happening in the eighties when artists seemed to think it was more important to appeal to rich people in Cologne than to a more general audience.’ Glance at the photograph from the same period, Mark Wallinger, 31 Hayes Court, Camberwell New Road, Camberwell, London, England, Great Britain, Europe, The World, The Solar System, The Galaxy, The Universe (1994). The artist and his brother stand amid a crowd of football fans emerging from Wembley, and hold aloft a Union Jack with ‘Wallinger’ written across the middle. They risk a fight by dipping a divining rod into the currents of hooliganism, fandom and solipsism that flowed through debates about national identity. And adjoining that debate, the quadruple monitors of Royal Ascot undercut the definitive with ellipsis.

D.F.

Government Art Collection.

Ian Hunt, ‘Protesting Innocence’, in Mark Wallinger: Credo, exh. cat. (London: Tate, 2000), 22.

Wallinger quoted by Rose Aidin, ‘Profile: Mark Wallinger – Race, class and sex’, The Independent (2 June 2001), 5.

Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.