Almighty painter

Chapter 1003: A Glimpse into the Art Exhibition

If art critic and biographer Robert Kent did not suffer from memory lapses and did not deliberately dramatize for the sake of dramatization during the writing process.

According to the preface to the book "The Power of Art," he met Ms. Sarah for the first time in the summer of 2019.

This elderly woman, whose words were plain yet sharp, capable of criticizing a painter to the point of utter devastation with the tone of a housewife criticizing a frying pan, was the art director of the magazine "Oil Painting" at the time, and very likely the last living art critic in Europe of that era to have conducted in-depth, face-to-face reporting on Pablo Picasso.

According to the book—

Director Sarah didn't like Gu Weijing's exhibition; she had many complaints about the entire exhibition. In front of Robert, she told him that trying to please her and win her favor was never an easy task.

British television ratings once beat the famous documentary series "Sex and the City".

An art scholar who is more famous than top-tier actors and whose words are eloquent and beautiful is no good.

Mr. Gu Weijing's solo art exhibition...

That probably won't work either.

She expressed her undisguised disappointment with Gu Weijing's art exhibition to Robert, saying, "It was a very petty exhibition."

……

“A truly brilliant exhibition should possess outstanding creativity.”

Sarah gazed at the green light flashing at the tip of the small recorder in her palm—a truly wonderful contrast, in the eyes of the art critics and editors at the *Painting* magazine.

Anna Elena, the youngest art director in the magazine's history, always preferred the most traditional paper and pen if she had a choice.

She would always carry with her a small notebook, about the size of her palm, with a soft leather cover, and a short, gold-tipped fountain pen. She would lower her head slightly and scribble away in the notebook.

Many of Ms. Elena's work habits were no different from those of newspaper celebrities fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, in the 1950s and 60s, or even in the Victorian era. If you replaced the pen with a dip pen and the lamp on the desk with a candlestick, then... it would even make you wonder if you had stepped into the era of Voltaire.

Since she joined the magazine "Oil Painting," the most modern thing she has ever used in the office is an electronic keyboard.

Director Anna prefers quiet, and no subordinate should disturb her when she is engrossed in her work.

She seemed to believe in some peculiar ritual, thinking that only the scratching sound of the pen tip rubbing against the paper was the music that could best please the Muses.

in contrast.

Sarah was nearly four times older than her predecessor. She was so old that she had been the boss of old men like Sir Brown, and so old that most of the staff had never experienced the era when she led the magazine.

Sarah is a true figure who lived through the golden age of the newspaper industry decades ago.

The old lady, however, was quite fashionable. She operated a paperless office, with photos of space observations from space probes on her desk. Her office had been renovated in a minimalist style, with a large, ultra-thin television hanging on the wall, and a voice recorder in her pocket. She was indifferent to noise, and would even watch melodramatic variety shows on TV while spewing out venomous remarks that would break the hearts of artists, all in a calm and collected manner, like a housewife recording her weekend shopping list.

Their styles differed so greatly, yet the psychological trauma they inflicted on the artists was remarkably similar.

Dear Deckard Anlen, even though he initially intended to have some fun, if he actually saw Sarah looking like this, he might still feel a pang of sympathy.

coming soon!
BRO!

The big one is coming!
Sarah's calm and collected demeanor completely crushed him on the beach. It was like a hamster encountering a venomous snake, a kind of PTSD-induced shock, comparable to poor Cui Xiaoming wanting to let out a sharp scream upon seeing a certain look from Miss Elena, feeling it was time to go feed the pigeons in Brisbane.

"Gu Weijing's works have always lacked a real magic that excites me. What I expect is a work like poetry, which is concise enough, with each line and each sentence connected to the next, like a tight chain that firmly locks the viewer's mind. Rather than this kind of exhibition where each work seems to be desperately shouting something, but in fact lacks a clear theme."

"Time?"

Sarah continued reading.

"This is the name Gu Weijing came up with for this art exhibition. I won't mention that it sounds like someone read a newspaper while eating breakfast and couldn't wait to write their ambitions on a napkin and use it as a name for an art exhibition. I know that Time magazine interviewed Banksy not long ago, but Mr. Gu, I'm sorry, it's far from the time for you to put a McDonald's paper bag over your head and appear on the cover of Time magazine."

"The exhibition should be called 'Clocks' rather than 'Time,' or 'Stopped Clocks.' Time should be continuous and uninterrupted, forever vibrant, full of the most ruthless and profound power. It simultaneously encompasses the present, the past, and the future, constantly giving birth to different possibilities... But clocks cut time into scattered fragments. Especially stopped clocks, they are merely fragments of time frozen in time."

"Seeing the trees but not the forest. Many people like to use this phrase to describe a painter's shortsightedness. Sometimes, people also use this phrase to describe art critics' interpretations of great artists... for example, to describe Picasso. But I'm sorry, I'm going to use this cliché to interpret Mr. Gu's exhibition."

"Using a few fragments of time, I wanted to explain time itself. This is not just seeing the trees and not the forest. It's just drawing a few scattered leaves in a forest. Then I put a sign outside the leaves that says, 'Look, this is the forest!'"

"Perhaps a few leaves happened to fall into some people's hearts, but... that's still too petty."

The old lady commented casually.

"A day has 24 hours, an hour has 60 minutes, and a minute has 60 seconds. Trying to piece together time with a stopped clock is like trying to build a desert by picking up grains of sand with tweezers."

"Ten paintings are not enough. Our young artists need to paint a thousand, ten thousand, ten million paintings."

Robert was completely stunned.

Is this... the legendary charisma of the art director of "Oil Painting" magazine?

He always felt that some art critics were like furniture designers, who neither saw the trees nor the forest, but saw every tree as furniture.

result.

Ms. Sarah is hardly a designer; she's so bad at designing furniture that she's practically a walking waste recycling machine. The art exhibition that captivated Deckard Anron was, in this old lady's mouth, chewed up in a few slurs and turned into nothing more than wood dust.

Robert didn't know.

What's so special about an art exhibition?

The man he had traveled all the way to see, Deckard Anlen, had just been chewed up by Sarah a few months ago, and hadn't even made a sound.

"Is this art exhibition...completely devoid of any merit?"

Robert couldn't help but ask.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

He covered his mouth again and waved his hands repeatedly.

Ms. Sarah was clearly working, and at this moment, he had no right to speak.

"Not really."

The old lady glanced at Robert. While she wasn't choking anyone, she could at least give people a moment to breathe.

"Well... I need to point out that the painting techniques displayed in this exhibition surprised me. Strictly speaking, in this respect, it completely exceeded my expectations. Especially considering Mr. Gu's age, his talent in this aspect is beyond doubt."

The sheer number of elements covered in this exhibition made it clear that the last artist Sarah could recall from her career was Picasso.

Picasso was a creator known for his versatility.

Murals, oil paintings, watercolors, prints, sculptures, ceramics... even welding—in his youth, Picasso seemed to be frantically learning every skill that could be used in his artistic creations.

Gu Weijing is not only equally versatile, but he is also quite proficient in each of his skills.

“Especially in some of his works, the skill he displays… is already approaching historic levels.” Sarah nodded admiringly. “I’m not one to praise others very much. But on this point, I don’t want to find fault.”

"But I still have to say—what's the point?"

The old lady changed the subject and continued.

"This cannot mask the lack of meaning in the work itself."

"It's like clinging to a stopped clock and endlessly gilding and inlaying it with gold and silver; it's all in vain. Focusing solely on the technical sophistication of the image while ignoring the essence is like only capturing a few leaves in a forest—it's fundamentally quite boring..."

Chi Chi Chi.

Hehehe.

Clang clang clang.

Mr. Robert Kent, chin in hand, watched as the Sarah shredder, with its hammer, chisel, saw, and drill, pulverized everything in the art exhibition.

"……So."

"It's time to draw conclusions. Was this a very, very bad art exhibition?"

Sarah looked at Robert sitting in the chair in front of her.

Robert responded with a silly, dumb look.

Art exhibition?

There are no more art exhibitions; they've all turned to dust.

"Before coming here, I didn't have high expectations for this exhibition, and I was prepared to come to this conclusion."

"But—that's not the case."

Sarah thought for a moment.

"This art exhibition itself forced me to make this answer. It said to me, 'Hey Sarah, you're a son of a bitch.'"

In Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," Zarathustra, through curses and anger, forces a venomous snake to retract the venom that had bitten its neck.
-

When have you ever seen a venomous snake kill a dragon?

"Zarathustra asked."

If you have an enemy, do not repay evil with kindness; rather, be angry than shame your enemy! If you are cursed, I do not like you to turn around and wish the other person well.

It's better to respond with a few curses.

— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Prussia)
-

"I know what I saw was not a great exhibition. It will not be remembered or talked about a hundred, two hundred, or even five hundred years from now. It will not be able to transform the entire art industry. Of course not, but there are very few art exhibitions in the world that will be remembered and talked about a century, two centuries, or even five centuries from now. And there are only a handful of art exhibitions throughout history that can transform the entire art industry."

"It is unfair to demand that any exhibition meet such standards."

"This exhibition is better than I initially imagined."

"It was petty and boring, but I saw the artist's attempt to touch the depths of the soul. It was far superior to the many exhibitions of my time that were filled with displays of artistic talent and incredible inspiration, but were actually rife with 'return on investment,' 'appreciation potential,' and 'the next five years' growth will be several times that of the stock market'..."

“I saw the power of art, and the role it played in this exhibition.”

“Just a few months ago, I met Gu Weijing at a school residency event. At that time, I asked him, ‘Mr. Gu, do you know Midas?’”

"How can one avoid becoming Midas, how can one avoid being swallowed up by the curse that has consumed one artist after another?"

The old lady was holding the recording pen in her hand.

"Gu Weijing answered me with an art exhibition... Know thyself."

Is this a good answer?

"Not counting."

Sarah said, “The way to avoid getting lost is not to get lost, and the way to avoid losing yourself is to find yourself. This is like a petty, mechanical answer that inevitably falls into the trap of circular reasoning.”

"But at least."

"I suppose that's one answer."

"I can give you an A."

……

for a long time.

Sarah's review of Gu Weijing's first exhibition in the magazine "Oil Painting" has sparked much speculation.

"An A-level art exhibition."

Although Gu Weijing's art exhibition only occupied a small section in the "Oil Painting" column, and the text content was pitifully short, it is said that Sarah only wrote one sentence in her comment.

However, given the circumstances at the time, this comment was enough to cause a huge uproar in the art industry, and even within the magazine "Oil Painting".

It wasn't until the book "The Power of Art" was first printed and sold out that people found another possibility for interpretation in Robert's writing.

This "A" is not the "A" in "ABCD". It is the first letter of the German word "Ausreichend".

Sarah seemed to be playing a slightly mysterious double entendre at this moment.

U, Ungenugend, 6 points.

Translated as "poor" or "failing".

M, Mangelhaft, 5 points.

Bad, or failing.

A, Ausreichend, 4 points.

Barely passed.

This is the passing score in a 6-point exam.

"Gu Weijing, I want to congratulate you. Your art exhibition has passed."

(End of this chapter)