Almighty painter

Chapter 1037 A Different Strategy

"...Sometimes...I feel...I'm in a very detached state, as if I'm at the center of the art industry...yet I'm also floating outside of it..."

“Gatsby,” said Mr. Sloth.

"Sorry?" the guest asked in return.

“—The Great Gatsby,” Mr. Sloth added.

Yang Dekang sat at the table, listening to the conversation coming through his earphones.

There was no kindling to ignite a raging fire.

There were no major contradictions or heated arguments with any element of interpretation.

Yang Dekang once wore a large headset on his head, like an enemy agent listening to telegrams in a war film, and seriously reviewed the podcast conversation between Mr. Sloth and Detective Cat, as well as the face-to-face conversation between Anna and Gu Weijing in Singapore.

The former had a harmonious atmosphere.

The latter is full of tension.

The two styles are completely incompatible, and without considering the changes in voice, it is impossible for them to be conversations between two groups of the same people.

Yang Dekang discovered that the "core" of these two conversations was exactly the same: they were both about Impressionism.

Or.

Talking about "Impressionism" is a rather superficial statement. In reality, whether they are expressing joy when discussing Renoir's "Bal du Moulin de la Galette" or contradiction when discussing Madame K.'s "The Old Church on a Thunderstorm," although the emotions they convey on the surface are completely different, they are essentially based on the same resonance.

This time, however, the situation is completely different.

"You always manage to come up with something new, Yang Ge!"

Old Yang picked his nose with his little finger.

Both sides were very polite in this conversation... or rather, both were very docile, both Mr. Sloth was docile towards Detective Cat, and both Detective Cat was docile towards Mr. Sloth, it was a question-and-answer session.

Say something.

I replied.

We chatted smoothly for almost twenty minutes.

Politeness or meekness are not compliments in such conversations.

They were as docile as two smooth pieces of ice, their conversation flowing smoothly back and forth without any apparent barrier, yet in reality, there was no friction whatsoever.

No one can truly live as a perfectly uniform block of ice, unless that is a shell encasing a person's true self, a protective shell for self-defense.

"Not domineering, not real!"

Yang Dekang stretched out his little finger and, in a domineering gesture, very real, smeared his boogers on the express delivery bag next to him.

Old Yang had just thought of "The Great Gatsby" in his mind.

The newly rich poor boy Gatsby and the heiress of a large family, Daisy, appear to be in the same space, talking closely to each other, and even intentionally creating a warm atmosphere, suggesting they are in an intimate relationship.

In reality, the two of them were never on the same wavelength.

“Anna Elena and Gu Weijing—they chose the wrong people from the start. This is a doomed combination.” Tang Ning’s confident voice still echoed in my ears.

“I was within and without,” Yang Dekang hummed softly.

"—I was within and without," Mr. Sloth said through the earpiece.

“I am both in and out of it. This is what Fitzgerald said from the perspective of Nick, the protagonist who observes Gatsby’s party.”

"uh-huh."

Gu Weijing gave a soft "hmm".

"Yes."

He replied, “What a fine way to put it. I was both within and without. I was neither Daisy’s first love, the poor boy Gatsby, nor Daisy’s husband, the wealthy Buchanan. I was always Nick—the bystander to this whole party. The most boring person at this party.”

"boring?"

Mr. Sloth asked in a calm and indifferent tone.

"Why do you say that?"

“I think it’s obvious. Even though Nick is the protagonist of the book and the narrator of the whole story, he connects all the characters at the desk and the whole book is based on Nick’s narration, but he may be the person with the least presence in the whole book.”

"Daisy would be attracted to Gatsby, Daisy would marry her own Buchanan, but the only thing you can't imagine is what kind of connection Daisy would have with Nick."

"Isn't it because they're cousins?"

"No. That's not what I mean. I mean, stepping outside of their identities and relationships. Throw all that stuff away and just put Gatsby, Buchanan, and Nick together, and you'll immediately realize that Nick is the least compelling and the most boring of them all. Like three paintings, you can't immediately pick out the most captivating one, but you know at first glance that it's the most boring."

"Then how do you define Daisy, Mr. Gu?"

Mr. Sloth paused, and Yang Dekang noticed a significant change in his tone at that moment.

"Excuse my bluntness, but what you're trying to say is..."

“Uh, no, no, it’s not what you think.” Gu Weijing interrupted the other person. “It’s not what you think, or rather, not entirely. In my description, Daisy is probably closer to art itself.”

"Art may love Gatsby, art may marry Buchanan, but Nick... he is the furthest from that word in the story."

"You mean a set of values ​​that belong to the middle class."

“That word is a bit offensive, isn’t it?” Gu Weijing said.

“I thought an artist like you wouldn’t be afraid of offending people,” Mr. Sloth said.

"Do not."

"I'm scared."

Gu Weijing chuckled softly through the earphones: "This is typical middle-class value."

“Strictly speaking, from a societal perspective, Nick isn’t exactly middle class. He’s Daisy’s cousin, went to Yale, joined the same club as Buchanan, lived next to a large estate, and was neighbors with Gatsby. How can that be considered middle class? Nick’s family background was definitely much more ‘upper-class’ than mine. At most, he’s just a kid from a wealthy family in the West who went to the even wealthier East Coast and saw what the real glamorous world looks like.”

"However, in the article, Nick does indeed feel closer to the middle class, only this middle class is a bit 'higher'."

“I am a relatively less wealthy ‘middle class’ person,” Gu Weijing said. “Actually, I have always wanted to have a relatively ‘tragic’ persona, as if I wanted to tell the world, ‘Oh, I have suffered, so ‘art’ is the reward I deserve.’”

"Like the most classic line in The Great Gatsby—'Before you judge other people, do you know that all of them have had what you have had?'" "There's always been a voice telling me this."

“Gu Weijing, please, stop talking nonsense. The conditions you have are much better than those of many other people. It’s just a matter of mental weakness. Honestly... throughout your childhood and your entire growth, have you really suffered anything?”

"No."

"I had a very complete childhood, and I had excellent educational resources. That kind of tragic childhood like in Grimm's Fairy Tales has never had anything to do with me. I have always lived in a crystal ball made of the 'love' of my family. In the city I live in, and in many other parts of the world, there are many, many truly tragic things happening: war, turmoil, displacement of people... but that has nothing to do with me. To me, they are still suffering from afar. What I have experienced, what I consider insurmountable difficulties, what I think is all the unfairness that fate has brought upon me, are nothing to those who truly live under heavy burdens. What I have experienced has never been the true face of this world."

"There are many people in this world who are under much more pressure than I am, and there are also many people who are much stronger than me."

"Throughout every stage of my life, I've had people around me who truly loved me, which is certainly a blessing. And for art? It's hardly a misfortune. But we can observe one thing—"

“There are many great artists who come from very poor and destitute families. There are also many artists who come from very wealthy families; Cézanne was the son of a banker, and Manet’s father was a judge in Paris.”

"Uh."

Gu Weijing pondered for a moment.

"It's complicated to explain, let me think about how to express it."

"Picasso?"

Mr. Sloth said, "Picasso was probably the kind of painter who came from a middle-class background. He was neither rich nor unfortunate, and he... should be the most important artist in the history of Europe."

"Yes."

Gu Weijing replied, "Picasso is a very good example. He came from a typical middle-class background, and even his early major buyers were urban middle-class clients. A classic example is that an ordinary white-collar couple made hundreds of millions of dollars by collecting Picasso's works and selling them decades later. They became extremely wealthy overnight."

“I am never saying that one’s background determines a person’s character. Or that the middle class cannot have a good appreciation for art.”

"So what are you trying to say?" Mr. Sloth asked.

“Picasso was a painter from a middle-class background, but he almost never painted those classic works that reflected the aesthetic tastes of the middle class, right?”

Gu Weijing countered with a question.

“The middle class has no aesthetic sense,” Mr. Sloth said.

“No, that’s too absolute,” Gu Weijing disagreed. “Everyone has aesthetic sense and the right to express their own aesthetic preferences.”

"but--"

Gu Weijing said, "Let's continue talking about Picasso. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can actually feel that Picasso had a very contemptuous and disdainful attitude towards the aesthetics of the traditional middle class."

“I can actually understand what Picasso despised and scorned. He probably thought it was boring. To put it nicely, it was pretentious; to put it bluntly, it was affected.”

Yang Dekang leaned back in his chair.

He thought once again of what Tang Ning had told him.

Gu Weijing is a boring person. He can't be Picasso. Even if Picasso were here, he wouldn't like Gu Weijing's work.

“I was within and without, which is Nick’s unique quality.”

Gu Weijing said.

“In the story of The Great Gatsby, neither Gatsby nor Buchanan possesses the melancholic detachment, the confusion and bewilderment that Nick exhibits. Even Buchanan is a very ‘self-consistent’ person; his selfishness and indifference are perfectly reasonable in his mind. But Nick is different.”

“I’ve forgotten the original text, but when I was reading that book, I could clearly feel this emotion lingering around Nick—deliberately trying to imitate the life of the upper class, yet unable to truly integrate. That’s probably why the director arranged for Nick to see a psychiatrist at the end of the movie. He was always like a ghost, switching between different identities. Gatsby and Buchanan were themselves, but Nick wasn’t.”

Yang Dekang put the newly received large birdcage aside, opened the door of the old cage, and tempted his macaw to move.

The middle-aged man looked at the parrot's large beak and muttered something under his breath.

"Yet high over the——"

"However, the window that hangs high above the city, shimmering with a golden luster, will surely offer a secret to every passerby who happens to look up in the dark of night."

"I was once just a passerby like that."

"Gazing at those windows, I felt a sense of curiosity."

"I am both in it and outside of it. I feel both fascination and disgust for this ever-changing and vibrant life."

Gu Weijing said.

“In Singapore, I once went to an artists’ party with my elders.”

Yang Dekang recalled the scene in Singapore at dusk, when he drove Gu Weijing through the gradually brightening neon lights of the city towards the Raffles Hotel.

"That day, I remembered a time in high school when I laughed at a classmate because he had buttoned up the bottom of his suit jacket."

“We actually come from similar family backgrounds. I can always see a reflection of myself in the other person.”

"So, I really wanted to use that kind of laughter to prove that we are different. To prove my own correctness, to prove that I am a superior person, a more classy person."

"so boring."

"That day, when I thought about it, I felt so ashamed. I felt it was the most boring thing in the world. I felt like such an idiot. How could I do such a... such a disgusting thing?"

Gu Weijing's voice was soft.

"That day, I felt like I had become a different person."

“But… just a week later. I received a gift from Anna… she wasn’t my agent yet, and she gave me a gift. A custom-made suit from a very famous tailor shop.”

"Mr. Sloth, can you guess how much that suit cost?"

“I’m not sure,” Mr. Sloth said after a slightly longer pause.

"Fifty thousand Singapore dollars, which is about forty thousand US dollars."

Gu Weijing said.

"How much does a car cost? Before that, I couldn't even comprehend how a piece of clothing could cost that much. I'm considered middle class, but it would take my family a very long time to earn enough to buy a piece of clothing like that."

"So, it was a terrible gift?" Mr. Sloth asked.

"Quite the opposite. I love it."

Gu Weijing said.

(End of this chapter)