Executed from 2016-2018, Lidless Eye is a masterful and breathtakingly superlative work, suffused with the commanding gestural bravura and powerful psychological intensity that mark the decisive finale of Adrian Ghenie’s celebrated self-portrait as Vincent van Gogh series. From the influential (Charles Darwin, Vincent van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp) through to the notorious (Hitler, Lenin and Stalin), and the popular (Elvis, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy), Ghenie has painted both the famous and infamous. Among these, his self-portraits centered on the effigy of Van Gogh are closest to his heart, forming a crucial structural pillar of his rigorous dialogue with both art history and contemporary global history. Based on one of the very last self-portraits by the Post-Impressionist (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), Lidless Eye is a landmark work that refers not only to Van Gogh but also to an array of artistic sources ranging from the consummate chiaroscuro of Renaissance painting, to the raw psychological intensity of Francis Bacon’s portraiture, to the deft manipulations of the painted surface in Gerhard Richter’s practice that simultaneously create, and shatter, illusory space. In layers that are pastose and wonderfully variegated, this painting embodies a painterly palimpsest of masked and spliced identity and identification, alluding to troubling chapters in the twentieth century and their continuing ramifications. An extraordinary composite of the historical and the personal, into this work Ghenie poured his childhood adulation for Van Gogh as well as his core preoccupations regarding contemporary history’s darkest chapters, manifesting as an emblematic piece within his challenging revival of both history painting and self-portraiture.

As a youth Ghenie was famously captivated by Van Gogh’s iconic Sunflowers and fascinated by the story of a great artist and his affliction with mental illness. His own relationship with the present work’s source dates back to childhood memories of a magazine article entitled ‘The Tragic Life of Vincent van Gogh’. The lack of art books in the Ghenie household meant that this magazine would stay with the artist for years; on the front was an off-color image of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, while the article itself illustrated a black and white image of the 1889 Van Gogh self-portrait in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. In 1998, when visiting this museum for the first time, Ghenie’s encounter with Van Gogh’s self-portrait affected him deeply. Finding himself unexpectedly under the scrutiny of Van Gogh’s penetrating stare, Ghenie’s uneasiness descended into a violent fit of nausea. In his subsequent explorations of one of the most recognizable faces in art history, Ghenie draws from a multitude of historical genres. “You can’t invent a painting from scratch; you are working with an entire tradition…,” the artist noted, “The pictorial language of the 20th century, from Kurt Schwitters’s collages to Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, makes up a range of possibilities that I utilise in order to create a transhistorical figurative painting–a painting of the image as such, of representation” (the artist cited in “Adrian Ghenie in Conversation with Magda Radu,” Adrian Ghenie: Darwin’s Room, Exh. Cat., Romanian Pavilion, Biennale de Venezia, 2015, p. 31).

Born in Romania in 1977, Ghenie grew up under Nicolae Ceausescu’s repressive communist regime and lives and works in Berlin today. The artist’s internationally acclaimed visceral pictorial language and psychologically charged paintings metaphorically explore themes of malevolence, totalitarianism, dictatorship and the very fallibility of human nature. As the artist explains, “We inevitably live in a post-WWII epoch, which means that we constantly have to look back to that watershed moment in order to understand our present condition” (the artist cited in Magda Radu, ‘Adrian Ghenie: Rise & Fall’, op. cit., p. 49). In the present work, Ghenie’s homage to Van Gogh functions as a prism through which to examine the purging of ‘degenerate art’ by the Nazi party, a key cultural policy of National Socialism. A powerful subject in Ghenie’s work, the purging aimed to cleanse Germany from ‘degeneracy’ and resulted in the seizing of thousands of artworks from public institutions and collections across Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. Works by Van Gogh, along with that of Chagall, Kandinsky, Munch and Picasso, amongst others, were seized, thereby placing the Post-Impressionist master within the narrative of 20^th century violence and repression. A selection of ‘degenerate’ paintings were famously shown together in 1937 as part of the Entartete Kunst exhibition in Munich, while the majority were sold, traded, or destroyed. In addition to the 1937 exhibition, Hitler’s final list of ‘Entartete Kunst’ comprised an inventory of more than 16,000 pieces including a Van Gogh self-portrait from the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungenin in Munich.

At its core this painting is thus a dual image: both a representation of history and a reflection of Ghenie’s own sense of self. In his practice, Ghenie seeks to address how the events of the past infiltrate, impact and haunt the present. The artist has said: “I am particularly interested in the state of exceptionality that characterizes everyday life in totalitarian regimes, not just Communism. In such circumstances everything is being distorted” (the artist cited in M. Radu, “Adrian Ghenie: Rise & Fall”, Flash Art, December 2009, p. 50). In the distortion and effacement of his imagery lies perhaps a prevailing theme of humiliation. “I’m not a history painter,” Ghenie writes, “but I am fascinated by what happened in the twentieth century and how it continues to shape today. I don’t feel any obligation to tell this to the world, but for me the twentieth century was a century of humiliation – and through my painting, I’m still trying to understand this” (the artist cited in Jane Neal, ‘Referencing slapstick cinema, art history and the annals of totalitarianism, Adrian Ghenie’s paintings find a way of confronting a “century of humiliation”, Art Review, December 2010, online). Stridently monstrous yet beguiling in its intensity and beauty, Lidless Eyes stands at once as witness, victim and purveyor of mankind’s recent history.

此畫作於2016至2018年，屬於亞德里安・格尼以梵谷為原型的自畫像系列，作品展示的大師級造詣令人嘆為觀止，扣人心弦的的表現手法加上強烈的內在情感，為這個著名系列華麗謝幕。格尼畫過不少名留青史的人物，既有流芳百世，亦有臭名昭彰，例如影響深遠的達爾文、梵谷、杜尚，聲名狼藉的希特拉、列寧、史太林，紅極一時的貓王和喜劇雙人組勞萊與哈台。在所有名人當中，借用梵谷形象創作的自畫像在他心目中佔據特殊位置，樹立起格尼與藝術史及現代世界史對話框架中的重要支柱。此畫以後印象派畫家梵谷後期的一幅自畫像（巴黎奧塞博物館藏）為基礎，然而除梵谷外，此畫還包含了其他藝術元素，例如文藝復興時期繪畫的明暗法，弗朗西斯・培根筆下人物赤裸裸的心理狀態，以及格哈德・里希特在同時創造與毀滅虛幻空間的抽象畫中所使用的嫻熟手法。厚塗顏料層層堆疊，絢斕多彩，有如一份經過反覆塗改的人物記錄，當中的碎片經過左右拼湊，神秘人卻依然面目模糊，暗示了動盪不安的二十世紀及其後續影響。此畫是歷史與個人軌跡的完美結合，少年格尼對梵谷的崇拜遇上成年格尼對現代史黑暗時期的興趣，碰撞出這幅出色之作，在藝術家挑戰復興歷史繪畫和自畫像的路上，別具里程碑式的意義。

眾所周知，格尼年輕時對梵谷的《向日葵》系列心馳神往，這位藝術大師的生平和精神病史也深深吸引著格尼。這段緣分始於他在童年時閱讀過的一篇雜誌文章《文森・梵谷的悲劇人生》，不過家中缺乏藝術書籍，令這本雜誌陪伴他度過多個年頭，雜誌封面是一幅錯色的梵谷《向日葵》，內頁文章裡印有藏於巴黎奧塞博物館梵谷自畫像（1889年作）的黑白照片。1998年，格尼首度踏足奧塞博物館，親眼欣賞梵谷的自畫像，留下了極深刻的印象。梵谷那道穿透人心的凝視竟使他措手不及，內心的不安惡化成一陣陣生理上的眩暈。在探索這張藝術史上廣為人知的熟悉面容時，格尼參考了過往一系列藝術派別。他認為，「你無法憑空作畫，整個藝術史都影響著你的創作……庫特・史維特茲的拼貼、傑克森・波拉克的滴畫等二十世紀的視覺語彙組成一個任我使用的工具箱，這些元素都可能幫助我創作跨越歷史的具象繪畫，即諸如此類的人物肖像」（亞德里安・格尼，引述自〈亞德里安・格尼與馬達・拉度對談〉，載於《亞德里安・格尼：達爾文的房間》展覽圖錄，羅馬尼亞館，威尼斯雙年展，2015年，頁31）。

格尼1977年生於羅馬尼亞，成長時經歷尼古拉・壽西斯古的共產政權統治，現居於柏林。他的創作備受國際藝術界關注，其作品真切動人，充滿心理隱喻，探討人心之惡、極權主義、獨裁統治和虛妄易錯的人性本質。誠如藝術家闡釋道，「我們身不由己，生活在二戰之後，因此必須經常回顧過去，尋找那道歷史的分水嶺，鑑古知今」（亞德里安・格尼，引述自馬達・拉度，〈亞德里安・格尼：起與落〉，載於同上，頁49）。格尼在此畫中對梵谷的致敬有如一面稜鏡，折射出納粹黨人在民族社會主義盛行下，實行「頹廢藝術」清洗的文化政策。納粹的清洗運動目的在於淨化德國的「頹廢風氣」，期間從德國國內及納粹佔領的歐洲各地公共機構、私人收藏中，沒收成千上萬件藝術品。夏加爾、康丁斯基、孟克、畢加索等藝術家的作品被強行掠走，梵谷的畫亦難逃一劫，皆成為二十世紀暴力和壓迫的對象。1937年，眾多被冠以「頹廢藝術」之名的畫作在慕尼黑「頹廢藝術展」上展出，當中大部分被轉售、交易或銷毀。除了1937年的展覽，希特拉的「頹廢藝術」終極黑名單列出16,000多件藝術品，當中包括一幅藏於慕尼黑巴伐利亞國家繪畫收藏館的梵谷自畫像。

故此，這幅作品包含雙重意義：它既是歷史的反映，亦是藝術家的自我寫照。格尼不斷以藝術為媒介，探尋歷史對現今世界的滲透、衝擊和糾纏。他曾經說過：「我對極權統治下，不尋常的大氣候對日常生活的塑造尤其感興趣，共產主義並不是唯一一種情況。在那種特殊環境下，所有事情都遭到扭曲」（亞德里安・格尼，引述自馬達・拉度，〈亞德里安・格尼：起與落〉，載於《Flash Art》，2009年12月，頁50）。在面容扭曲、模糊不清的畫像中，也許埋藏著一股揮之不去的屈辱。藝術家寫道：「我不是歷史畫家，但是我想了解二十世紀的歷史，及其對後世乃至今日的影響。雖然我覺得自己並沒有義務告知世人，但是對我而言，二十世紀是一個充滿屈辱的世紀，我仍在透過繪畫去嘗試理解它」（亞德里安・格尼，引述自珍・尼爾，〈亞德里安・格尼借助笑鬧劇、藝術史和極權史，以繪畫對抗「屈辱世紀」〉，載於《Art Review》，2010年12月，網上）。今次上拍的作品散發出讓人毛骨悚然的氣息，然而當中蘊藏的熱烈情感與美感卻叫人難以移開目光，它站在眾人面前，彷彿是目擊者、受害者和敘事者合而為一的化身，將人類近代史娓娓道來。