Almighty painter

Chapter 1013 Campus Star
In Hamburg in February, the snow on campus had melted away, but the air still carried the chill of late winter.

"Mind?"

The man shook his head.

So the painter stood up and walked over. After the sound of the rollers sliding, the half-open window on the side of the living room was closed tightly, and a piece of paper on the table was blown to the ground by the last gust of wind.

The room became quieter.

“My hometown is in the tropics near the sea, where there is no winter in the strict sense. I studied abroad for several years. At first, I thought it was very interesting to see snow, but after a while, I still felt uncomfortable with the cold. There is a Chinese idiom called ‘Lord Ye loves dragons,’ which is roughly what this situation is like.”

Gu Weijing waved his hand, indicating that Robert was not needed.

He knelt down, picked up the note himself, and placed it on the table.

"Oh, I know... you wanted to write something interesting, sorry. Isn't talking about these things rather boring?"

"No, no, it's quite interesting."

"A painter who's afraid of the cold, yet he paints works that look like ice sculptures?"

Robert wondered if he could use this sentence as the opening line for today's interview article. They had been chatting earlier and talked about Gu Weijing's painting that had been stolen.

Its name is "Winter".

"There will always be a difference between the nature depicted in a painting and the real nature."

Gu Weijing said that when people see natural elements, they often base their observations on a common understanding, such as ice being transparent, roses being bright red, and trees being brownish-red. All of these observations are based on common sense about vision.

But in the painter's brush.

Pure ice can also present an ionic state where fire and smoke are mixed together; roses may be like mist; and trees... may present an overflowing blue like the sea.

"It doesn't necessarily have to be painted this way," said painter Gu Weijing, adding that he was just giving an example.

The place of landscape painting in art history is inevitably somewhat "awkward," especially for an art form like watercolor.

Gu Weijing raised his hand and pointed to the photos hanging on the wall.

"That was the watercolor of the past. But it was more than just the watercolor of the past."

For centuries, with underdeveloped transportation and a slow pace of life, many people—farmers, ordinary citizens, and even the middle class or semi-upper class—may have spent their entire lives in very small, isolated places.

Even "travel" itself is a "pseudo-concept".

Why do people travel? A person might travel to a big city for medical treatment, transport goods from one place to another for business, pursue education, or "make a name for themselves"... These concepts are all easy to understand.

But people find it hard to understand traveling "for the sake of traveling".

For many people, travel means risk, illness, and uncertainty; it means going from a familiar place to a strange and unfamiliar place that they cannot adapt to.

Even travel means death.

With the end of the Middle Ages, in the 17th and even 18th centuries, the "Grand Tour" began to flourish in continental Europe. Some people, after reaching adulthood, began to choose to travel to Central Europe, to Greece, Vienna, Venice, or Florence, and of course Rome.

However, this so-called fashion is still a privilege limited to a very small number of people.

To undertake such a journey, one would need at least one's own private carriage, and a risky long-distance trip could cost the equivalent of a million dollars today.

"The works of watercolor painters have greatly provided society with an imagination of distant landscapes. They allow people living in the mountains to see what the sea is like. They allow people living on the other side of the sea to know the appearance of the mountains, and of course, the magnificent waterfalls, all kinds of landscape architecture, the snow in winter, and the flower fields in summer."

"But in the nineteenth century, everything changed. Then came the twentieth century. In 1900, humans were still traveling by horse-drawn carriages, and half a century later they landed on the moon. A few decades later, people were using personal computers and sending emails to each other online. Every decade, human society changes more than the entire previous thousand years combined. And watercolor? Watercolor remains stagnant."

"Do people really need a kind of color painting that is visually spectacular? The development of the Industrial Revolution has greatly changed people's lifestyles. Today, the price of a beautiful hand-painted watercolor painting is enough to buy two round-trip train tickets for hundreds of kilometers. One of the great features of watercolor is its accurate reproduction of reality, but no matter how exquisite the painting is, it is powerless in terms of perspective, light and shadow, and the precision of form until a second-hand electronic camera clicks for a few dozen euros."

"The entire field of realistic landscape painting seems to have fallen into a severe existential crisis in the face of such a clamor. Why do they still exist? What is the meaning of their existence?"

Robert recalled his previous conversation with Gu Weijing.

Robert couldn't help but subtly compare "Gu Weijing" and "Dack Anlun".

Both of them are signed artists with the same gallery, have held solo exhibitions at the same museum, their careers are intertwined because of the Maes Gallery, and even their "status" in the art industry is quite similar.

Gu Weijing made a name for himself and was riding high.

Dac Anlen also had his moment of glory, with a stable audience and more than a decade of market experience that Gu Weijing lacked.

They were also the two highest-ranking professional painters that Robert had interviewed.

even.

The first impressions Robert got after meeting them were all pretty much the same... to be honest, not good.

They can hardly be described as "stunning".

Whether he met Deckard Anlen or Gu Weijing, Robert initially felt a sense of "disappointment as the spotlight faded."

Think of Deckard Anron, the superman of art.

MAN!

Superman!
All you need to do is wear your underwear on the outside and a red cape. With one hand, you can lift a Boeing 747, the Queen of the Skies; with the other, you can straighten the Leaning Tower of Pisa; with both hands, you can push the Earth backwards; and you can stand atop a New York skyscraper under a crescent moon... Uh, okay, that last one is a bit of a crossover.

Anyone who dares to use that nickname must be incredibly cool.

Robert went there with the intention of paying homage, but when the hotel room door opened, a middle-aged man with a stubble beard, looking haggard and tired, came out.

This time, it was Gu Weijing.

The other person sold their first artwork for £101 million.

His starting point is the end point for many top-tier painters.

The price of such an important work with special significance certainly cannot represent the average price of his real works. Divide by ten, and if Gu Weijing's last ordinary medium-sized works could sell for tens of thousands of US dollars, that would be equivalent to the price of some biennial gold medal-winning works.

Not to mention the legendary nature of the other party's personal experience.

He discovered the painting that was supposedly commemorating Ms. K. in the magazine *Painting*, and he became involved in the ship robbery. Upon his return, Ms. Elena resigned from her position as art director of *Painting* and became his personal agent.

A petty thief broke through the window overnight and stole his artwork.

One hundred media outlets wanted to interview him, and NBS wanted to make a short documentary about him, but he was rejected by all of them without hesitation.

It might be more difficult to see him than to see Sophie Marceau.

Robert always thought this guy must be incredibly cool and domineering. He was the epitome of cool, domineering, and arrogant.

In his imagination, Robert thought this guy must be incredibly unique, someone who would wear a big leather jacket or waxed jacket with chains, paired with custom-made trendy pants, sunglasses that could cover half his face, someone who liked to tilt his head up at a 45-degree angle to look at the sky, and someone who would spout off Keats, Byron, and Hegel, someone as brilliant and dazzling as a star.

Such an artist, even when mixed in with a large group of people, should immediately give you a sense of the other person's extraordinary qualities.

In fact.

Robert stood there stunned for two seconds before finding Gu Weijing among the large group of students.

He looks no different from an ordinary person.

He was neither superhuman nor arrogant, and he had no undisguised domineering aura. His smile was gentle, and he looked like a shy and introverted young student.

It seems that the school teacher who had stared at him with eyes as bright as burning torches and who had trained him to be an automatic apology machine was more in line with the image of "Gu Weijing" in Robert's mind than Gu Weijing.

however.

I've only been sitting here for half an hour.

Robert realized that there must be a reason why his classmates would surround him like a celebrity, with eyes that could even be described as reverence.

It wasn't because his very first work sold for a million pounds, implying a limitless future.

It wasn't entirely because his very first work sold for a million pounds, suggesting a limitless future.

Gu Weijing —

He wasn't Superman with his red cape on the outside, nor was he a domineering, cool, and arrogant man exuding a unique wildness from within. He wasn't even the kind of neurotic artist who seemed to have unstable "rationality" and might go berserk at any moment, shooting you or himself.

He's just an ordinary person who's a bit shy and introverted.

But he's the kind of ordinary person who, once you talk to him, chat with him, ask him questions, and talk to him for a while, will inevitably develop a "good feeling" towards him when you look into his dark eyes.

Fortunately, with Sarah's recommendation, Robert got an internship at a fashion media company in Paris, and two months later, he was successfully promoted to a full-time position.

During this time, Robert also met with quite a few people.

Neither of them possessed Gu Weijing's "glory," nor did they possess Gu Weijing's "sincerity."

The other person will answer whatever question you ask.

If I can't answer, I simply can't answer.

He neither gives perfunctory answers nor avoids the issue; his hair is neatly combed at the temples, and when he speaks, he always looks you in the eye.

……

Where were we?

Gu Weijing placed the note on the desk and casually asked.

Robert's gaze swept over the note, which read, "32 weeks until submission of artwork for the Master Project."

There was a suffix after the time, the content of which was the underlined sentence on the copy of *Thus Spoke Zarathustra* on the bookshelf—

"Humans are something that should be surpassed. What have you done to surpass yourselves?"

The most interesting thing is that in the corner of the note, there was a simple sketch, drawn with a ballpoint pen, of a watch...

"This is something I wrote to myself."

Gu Weijing noticed Robert's curious gaze, and generously handed him the note in his hand, saying, "Remind yourself of the next important schedule."

“What about this watch?” Robert pressed his thumb against the edge of the note, examining the watch and secretly comparing it to a simple line drawing. He wondered if he, Robert Kent, could draw one that cost a million pounds, even if it was done by a famous artist.

"What I drew and what you drew are essentially the same."

Gu Weijing seemed to have the ability to read minds.

"Like I said, even if my finished work were stolen from the studio, it would be very difficult to sell from a market perspective. Because it has neither my signature nor can it be 'identified' as my work by many buyers. To be honest, in the black market for art, many buyers are only buying a signature, not the intrinsic value of the work itself."

Ah.

Judging from his tone, it was as if he had a great deal of knowledge about the underground art black market.

Robert found it amusing.

he asked.

"So what does this watch mean? Does it represent time? Like the 'theme' of your previous art exhibition, Time?"

"No, it just represents a watch."

Gu Weijing turned his head to the side and drank the hot black tea in his cup.

“As is customary for the project, Breguet will sponsor a watch for the creator of the best work in the Master Project each year.”

Robert was shocked again.

That's way too direct.

"Do you really want that watch?"

Robert was puzzled. Mr. Gu was someone who could paint a million pounds a day. While luxury brand watches were certainly expensive, it didn't mean he would draw them on paper to remind himself of them every day.

"That's too mercenary, like tying a carrot to a donkey's head." Gu Weijing blinked. "Right?"

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

Robert began to apologize.

That's not what I meant. Oh—

He suddenly realized something.

"You have an upcoming endorsement deal with Breguet, right?"

“No, I have a watch endorsement contract with the Hermès Gallery. As a painter at the Hermès Gallery, I cannot wear any competitor's watch in public.”

Gu Weijing shook his head mysteriously.

(End of this chapter)