摘要：今年是《纽约客》创刊100周年。在群星璀璨的封面艺术史中，玛丽·佩蒂是一个被忽视的名字。她以细腻笔触描绘上世纪中叶贵族家庭的脆弱与孤独，用温暖色彩包裹衰败与疏离。她笔下的皮博迪家族与女仆菲伊，不仅是时代的缩影，更是人性深处的微光与裂痕。本期重温这位神秘艺术家的

有趣灵魂说

今年是《纽约客》创刊100周年。在群星璀璨的封面艺术史中，玛丽·佩蒂是一个被忽视的名字。她以细腻笔触描绘上世纪中叶贵族家庭的脆弱与孤独，用温暖色彩包裹衰败与疏离。她笔下的皮博迪家族与女仆菲伊，不仅是时代的缩影，更是人性深处的微光与裂痕。本期重温这位神秘艺术家的生命与创作，看她如何以沉默的洞察，照见一个时代的黄昏。

译文为原创，仅供个人学习使用

The New Yorker｜Showcase

纽约客｜一览无余

The Mysterious Cover Artist Who Captured the Decline of the Rich

那位捕捉富人衰败之谜的封面艺术家

Mary Petty was reclusive, uncompromising, but she peered into a fading world with unmatched warmth and brilliance.

玛丽·佩蒂（Mary Petty）离群索居，固执己见，但她却以无与伦比的温情与才华，窥视着一个日渐衰微的世界。

By Chris Ware

在《纽约客》艺术家的万神殿中，玛丽·佩蒂的名字几乎无人知晓。但在她那个时代，她是一群女性艺术家之一——其中包括海伦·E·霍金森（Helen E. Hokinson）、埃德娜·艾克（Edna Eicke）、伊隆卡·卡拉兹（Ilonka Karasz）和芭芭拉·舍蒙德（Barbara Shermund）——她们为这本当时主要由男性主导的杂志贡献了众多知名且深受喜爱的素描和画作。佩蒂（1899-1976）嫁给了这样一位男性艺术家艾伦·邓恩（Alan Dunn），后者在《纽约客》上发表了近两千幅漫画。他们几乎一生都住在东八十八街12号的一间小底层公寓里，邓恩在生活区的绘图桌工作，佩蒂则在卧室里的一块小画板前创作。佩蒂——曾就读于布朗克斯区的霍勒斯曼中学（Horace Mann）——没有受过正规的艺术训练，邓恩有时或许开玩笑地称她为他的“学生”。但在他的画作首次出现在《纽约客》（1926年）的一年之后，她的画作也紧随其后。

图注：1941年5月24日

除了发表二百一十九幅漫画外，佩蒂还贡献了三十八幅色彩鲜明、细节华丽、构图完美的封面作品。至少在我这位《纽约客》封面艺术家看来，这些作品在其复杂性、丰富性，尤其是其中的人性关怀方面，从未被超越。《纽约时报》在佩蒂的讣告中将其描述为“描绘了僵立于战前槌球世界的无血色的贵族们”。它们远不止于此。佩蒂的漫画无疑很有趣，蕴含着一丝阴郁，我想这对此后年轻的爱德华·戈里（Edward Gorey）产生了一些影响。但她的封面作品更深入地打开了这个世界；它们是结构精巧的杰出水彩画，是具有玩偶屋般魅力和细节的舞台造型。对佩蒂来说，搞笑（gag）只是叩开门扉的借口。她的眼光非凡，通过最微小的细节唤起了爱德华时代：锦缎墙纸、铺设精美的厨房地砖、细长的黄铜水龙头、柔软的天鹅绒内饰。

艺术家高中毕业纪念册上的照片，1918年

詹姆斯·瑟伯（James Thurber）在艺术家唯一出版的作品集《这琐碎的步调》（"This Petty Pace", 1945）的引言中，将年轻的佩蒂描述为一个“纤弱的女孩”。和她丈夫一样，她最初也更喜欢邮寄投稿，但到了二十世纪四十年代，她已成为杂志社办公室里“常见的景象”，“冷静且几乎毫不沮丧地坐在椅子边缘”。瑟伯报告说，她会花三周时间完成一幅画；完成后，她会说她讨厌它，也讨厌自己。“当然，其他所有人都喜欢它和她，”瑟伯补充道，并观察到佩蒂在其作品中提供的“不是技巧，而是魔力……她捕捉时间于一种缩短的蹲伏姿态中，这强化了她的讽刺效果。”

佩蒂的封面由特定的人物来定义——实际上，是一个特定的家庭，皮博迪（Peabody）一家，可以通过他们的面孔、富有的社会地位以及一种特殊的孤独感来识别。这家人最常出现在一栋巨大的褐石建筑中，由年长的贵妇皮博迪夫人领导，她紧抓着自己的财富，而现代性与无关紧要性正悄然渗透墙壁。

至少，表面看来是如此。但仔细观察，会发现比仅仅失去地位更深的创伤。在一幅封面中，皮博迪夫人坐在她奢华餐桌旁，端庄地拿着一本书，无视她秃顶的中年晚餐伙伴；只有当你注意到墙上那幅画——一个男孩和他的母亲——你才意识到她的同伴是她的儿子。（然后你会注意到他们之间的空椅子。）

图注：1952年5月3日

一个菲伊（Fay）娃娃，由佩蒂手工制作，约1956年

皮博迪夫人在这个系列中的陪衬是女仆菲伊（Fay），她照顾着日益孤僻的女主人，而她自己的生活似乎也同样无形地流逝。在1948年的一幅封面中，菲伊站在阴影笼罩的楼梯顶端，听着楼下舞会中乐师们的演奏。在1949年12月31日，她通过一楼窗户的防盗栏杆吹响一个玩具喇叭。在或许是佩蒂最具存在主义意味的封面中，菲伊在擦拭一个银壶时，被哈哈镜中自己脸的映像怔住了。观者寻找着可笑之处，但看得越久，就越觉不好笑。

图注：1945年11月10日

随着时间的推移，佩蒂温柔地揭示了一种微妙的情谊。菲伊不再隐形，她和皮博迪夫人一起打牌。两人在新年时拿出珍藏的香槟。然后，皮博迪夫人看起来比以往任何时候都更像幽灵，她拉动铃绳召唤菲伊——但那老化腐烂的布绳在她手中断裂，她的珍珠似乎散落在地板上。

图注：1966年3月19日

这幅发表于1966年的封面是佩蒂为杂志创作的最后一幅；在另外两幅被拒后，她辞职了。邓恩后来写道，佩蒂“无视所有评论，抗拒所有宣传，固执地走自己的路，作画从不为了取悦评论家或出人头地，而仅仅出于对她题材的热爱。她最大的错误是在与《纽约客》闹了点小别扭后就放弃了自己的事业。”

被杂志拒绝的两幅佩蒂封面之一

这幅图像是对一种正在消失的生活方式最后的致意

右侧的现代建筑平淡冷漠，与褐石建筑的温暖光芒形成对比

夫妇俩继续住在东八十八街12号，邓恩一直为杂志供稿直至1974年去世。佩蒂的结局则更为悲惨。1971年12月初，她失踪了，后被邓恩在一家医院找到，她在一次暴力袭击中遭受了严重殴打。她永久性脑损伤，在护理院中度过了余生，在遭遇袭击五年后孤独离世。♦

Chris Warehas contributed graphic fiction and covers to the magazine since 1999. His books include the graphic novel “Rusty Brown.”

克里斯·威尔（Chris Ware）自1999年起为本杂志提供图像小说和封面。他的著作包括图像小说《铁锈布朗》（Rusty Brown）。

In the pantheon of New Yorkerartists, the name Mary Petty hardly registers. But in her time she was one of a group of women—Helen E. Hokinson, Edna Eicke, Ilonka Karasz, and Barbara Shermund among them—who contributed well-known, well-loved drawings and paintings to a magazine that was then largely dominated by men. Petty (1899-1976) was married to one such man, Alan Dunn, who published close to two thousand cartoons in The New Yorker. They spent nearly all their life together in a small ground-floor apartment at 12 East Eighty-eighth Street, Dunn working at a drawing table in the living area and Petty at a small board in their bedroom. Petty—who had attended high school at Horace Mann, in the Bronx—had no formal art training, and she was sometimes referred to by Dunn, perhaps jokingly, as his “student.” But a year after his first drawing appeared in The New Yorker, in 1926, hers followed.

In addition to publishing two hundred and nineteen cartoons, Petty contributed a series of thirty-eight vividly colored, magnificently detailed, and flawlessly composed covers, which, at least in this New Yorker cover artist’s opinion, have never been surpassed in their complexity, their richness, and, most of all, their humanity. The Timesdescribed them, in Petty’s obituary, as “drawings of bloodless patricians frozen in the prewar world of croquet.” They’re much more. Petty’s cartoons are undeniably funny, couched in a dourness that I imagine had some effect on the young Edward Gorey. But her covers opened this world further; they’re brilliant watercolors of exquisite construction, set pieces with the charm and detail of a doll’s house. For Petty, the gag was just an excuse to get in the door. Her eye was extraordinary, conjuring an Edwardian era through its tiniest features: the brocaded wallpaper, the finely tiled kitchen floors, the thin brass faucets, the plush upholstery.

James Thurber, in an introduction to “This Petty Pace” (1945), the sole published collection of the artist’s work, describes the young Petty as a “slip of a girl.” Like her husband, she initially preferred to mail in her submissions, but by the nineteen-forties she had become a “common sight” at the magazine’s office, “sitting, cool and almost undismayed, on the edge of a chair.” Thurber reports that she would spend three weeks on a drawing; when she was done, she would say that she hated it and herself. “Everybody else, of course, loves it and her,” Thurber adds, observing that what Petty offered in her work was “not a trick, but a magic. . . . She catches time in a foreshortened crouch that intensifies her satirical effects.”

Petty’s covers are defined by specific people—indeed, by a specific family, the Peabodys, who are recognizable by their faces and their moneyed social position, as well as by a peculiar loneliness. The family most often appears ensconced in a large brownstone, and they’re led by the elderly dowager Mrs. Peabody, who clings to her wealth as modernity and irrelevance creep through the walls.

At least, that’s what seems to be going on. On closer inspection, one finds deeper wounds than a mere loss of status. In one cover, Mrs. Peabody sits at her opulent dining table, demurely holding a book and ignoring her bald, middle-aged dinner partner; only after you notice the painting on the wall, of a boy with his mother, do you realize that her companion is her son. (And then you notice the empty chair between them.)

Mrs. Peabody’s foil in the series is Fay, a servant girl who looks after her increasingly isolated matron, and whose own life seems to pass by just as invisibly. In 1948, Fay stands at the top of a shadowed staircase, listening to musicians play at a ball below. On December 31, 1949, she blows a toy trumpet through the burglar bars of a ground-floor window. In perhaps Petty’s most existential cover, Fay, while polishing a silver pitcher, is stopped by the fun-house reflection of her face. One looks for something to laugh at, but the longer one looks, the less funny it gets.

As time goes on, Petty gently reveals a delicate rapport. Fay, no longer invisible, plays cards with Mrs. Peabody. The pair bring out a reserve of champagne at New Year’s. And then Mrs. Peabody, who looks more ghostly than ever, pulls her bell cord to summon Fay—but its aged, rotted cloth rips in her hands, and her pearls appear scattered on the floor.

This cover, published in 1966, was Petty’s last for the magazine; she quit after two others were rejected. Dunn later wrote that Petty “ignored all comment, fought off all publicity and went her own headstrong way, drawing never to please critics or get ahead, but solely from the love of her subject matter. Her greatest mistake was to abandon her career after a tiff with The New Yorker.”

The couple continued to live at 12 East Eighty-eighth, with Dunn contributing to the magazine until his death, in 1974. Petty met a more tragic end. In early December, 1971, she disappeared, and was found by Dunn in a hospital, having been badly beaten in a violent assault. Permanently brain-damaged, she lived the remainder of her life in a nursing home, dying five years after the attack, alone. ♦

来源：左右图史