Almighty painter

Chapter 1054 Gu Weijing's Miraculous Year (Part 1)
Among the guests in the audience, a middle-aged man was holding his arm and gently blowing on the red marks on his arm caused by sharp claws.

"call!"

I've said it a hundred times.

Your brother Yang hates cats!
He puffed out his cheeks, listening to the woman's speech on the projection screen. When he heard the name "Detective Cat," he felt an itch in his heart that was even stronger than the itch on his arm.

"Go ahead and play, go ahead and play! Ha! You two can just sit there and do your role-playing!"

He felt as if he were watching a vibrant and captivating stage play.

Throughout the play, both on and off screen, the characters and actors, their roles and their real selves, are all enacting a complex story in which fates are intertwined.

And he, the true great detective, Mr. Yang, was the only one who understood the whole play. Old Yang knew everything, but he couldn't say it.

Old Yang reached out, pinched his chin with his fingertips, opened his mouth, and hummed softly.

"Wang!"

A low bark came from the dog, and Yang Dekang looked to the side.

……

Among the guests in the audience, a Springer Spaniel with chestnut curly hair was lying next to Miss Elliot, the female secretary, gently licking the fur on its chest.

"Ugh."

August licked the tip of his nose with the tip of his tongue.

Around noon, it smelled the extra cat food from afar, ran over to snatch it, but lost.

I've said it a hundred times.

August hates cats.

It licked its tongue, its big ears listening to its owner's speech on the projection screen. When it heard the name "Detective Cat," it felt more aggrieved than it felt inside. Springer Spaniels are extremely intelligent dogs, but there are some things they simply can't understand about the complex relationships between humans that are beyond their comprehension.

Other aspects.

It possesses a sense of smell that is hundreds or thousands of times more acute than that of humans.

They're clearly the same person. It's such a simple thing, why can't they understand?

In August's mind, it was like two couples playing blindfolded hide-and-seek in a maze, each time cleverly missing each other.

"Go ahead and play, you two can just play there!"

August was extremely worried about the tug-of-war between Anna and Gu Weijing.

Only the Springer Spaniel, the true detective dog, saw all of this clearly back in Singapore.

They're just taking advantage of the fact that dogs can't speak human language.

The dog knows everything, but it can't say it.

August scratched his chin with his hind leg and let out a soft groan.

"Ugh."

A sigh from a middle-aged man, carrying the aroma of Munich smoked pork sausage from his lunch, came from beside him, and August turned to look.

……

The man and the dog stared at each other in silence.

between heaven and earth.

All sounds are silent.

Old Yang, who was scratching his chin, felt a little embarrassed watching the dog scratching its chin beside him. He took his paw off his face, turned around, and sat up straight. August also stopped scratching, straightened his upper body, put his front paws on the ground, raised his head, and looked like a quiet, handsome man that silly cats could never imitate.

After a few seconds.

Yang Dekang secretly turned his head to glance at the dog, and he saw that the big dog was also turning its head to look at him.

The man and the dog locked eyes again.

Yang Dekang thought for a moment, then beckoned to Gouzi with his finger.

August hesitated for a moment, and the Springer Spaniel stood up completely and tentatively strode over.

"Hey, August, come back here. Don't disturb the other guests." Elliot felt the leash being pulled in her hand. She looked down, tugged at the leash, and whispered the command.

"it does not matter."

Yang Dekang waved his hand and said softly, "Remember its name is August, right? It's really beautiful."

The middle-aged man extended his palm in a friendly gesture toward the Springer Spaniel.

August hesitated for a moment. It was intelligent enough to understand the meaning of such basic gestures. It stretched out its forelimbs and placed its white paws with black spots in Yang Dekang's palm.

Yang Dekang bent down and scratched August's chin.

Dogs are still the best.

Dogs are so cute!

A man and his dog leaned against each other, watching the opening ceremony of the Elena Family Museum together.
-
After the opening ceremony, these guests who came to watch the opening ceremony were also the first to be able to visit the Elena Family Museum in its entirety.

The museum arranged hotel accommodations in Marin County, Lower Saxony, while some particularly important guests were fortunate enough to stay directly in spare rooms at Marin Castle.

evening.

On the forest path next to the castle.

A man wearing a short-sleeved shirt and sneakers is running around the castle.

"...Honey, honey, yes, I've been keeping up with the daily check-in...I didn't eat dinner tonight, and at the lunch buffet I only had a sandwich and a vegetable salad. I've sent you the photos...yes, it was all salad dressing. The museum doesn't offer light meals, but I didn't drink anything!"

"Yes, I will run more."

"I love you too!"

The man pressed a button on his Bluetooth headset, hung up the phone, wiped his sweat, looked at the sunset and the evening glow on the horizon, and a happy smile immediately appeared on his face.

He continued running, panting heavily.

……

He ran around Marin Castle twice more, and when he came to a side path in the woods, he suddenly stopped.

A young woman dressed as an office lady stood by the roadside, holding a rope, looking helplessly at a lump of something at her feet.

The middle-aged man glanced at it.

He recognized her as Anna Elena's private secretary.

He pressed hard on the sports watch on his wrist, then walked over.

"Hello," he said.

"Is this...walking a cat?" Sakai Kazunari asked, puzzled.

The secretary nodded.

Augustus the dog is just a dog, a special dog.

I may not have been able to steal from Awang, but the dog will tell his parents.

It fulfilled its duty as a tracking dog, wiggling its rear end and turning to go to another room, tugging at the hem of her clothes, and "carried" Miss Elena over.

August understood the rules of survival very well. He had offended the nun... and he still wanted to run away?
Anna didn't say anything at the time. After all, it was Gu Tongxiang who opened the canned food, and she was too embarrassed to lose her temper with Old Master Gu. Miss Elena just said that Awang had already been fed, but if it was hungry, it would be okay to eat a little more.

The woman looked at Awang Ganfan with a kind expression, then took out a food scale, weighed the amount of canned food the tabby cat had eaten, and used a calculator to precisely calculate the extra calories it had ingested.

Anna had a lot going on on the museum's opening day, but that didn't mean she couldn't handle Awang.

She asked her secretary for a favor.

The staff drove along the tree-lined path to a place 1.4 kilometers away from the castle, and then had Elliot bring water and lead Awang on a walk back.

Awang has decided to give up.

Now, it plopped down on the ground, stubbornly staring at the female secretary, looking like it wouldn't get up no matter what if she didn't hug it.

"Is that so?" The uncle stared at the cat on the ground.

"Let's stay here a little longer, it's not far now."

Elliott also looked down at the cat and said helplessly, occasionally raising his head to steal a glance at the middle-aged man's profile.

So handsome!

Uncle Sakai recognized the once chubby, round cat, and his heart melted.

"Poor thing. Its name is Awang, right? I used to hold it. It was such a cute and gentle cat."

"right?"

Elliott answered tentatively.

She didn't really want to offend this handsome middle-aged man, but honestly, if cats had personalities, the secretary thought this tabby cat wasn't exactly the cute and gentle type.

“Losing weight is tough,” Kazunari Sakai said.

Elliot said, “Miss Elena said that being too fat is bad for its health. Overweight cats don't exercise enough, which puts a lot of pressure on their joints and makes them prone to depression. Now its daily cat food is a fixed amount.”

Uncle Sakai shook his head: "To lose weight, I guess I can't eat this, I can't eat that, I can't consume too much sugar, I can't consume too much fat, even if I eat salad dressing, I have to..."

It was clearly a tabby cat.

For some reason, when he was young, Kazunari Sakai, who was as sensitive and sentimental as glass, said that his eyes were a little red.

He suddenly opened his arms.

"Want a hug?" he asked.

"Meow."

Awang jumped into Sakai Kazunari's arms almost immediately.

A man who once had a big belly and a cat who once had a big belly embraced passionately in the sunset outside Marienburg Castle.

Somehow.

This scene was so touching.

"Let's go back," Uncle Sakai said gently to the cat, stroking Awang's ear tenderly.

“Um…” Secretary Elliott was a little embarrassed to be the one to spoil the mood, so she stammered, “Miss Elena, if you don’t want to be held, Awang has to exercise more on his own.”

"Just this once."

Kazunari Sakai stroked the docile cat in his palm, which was almost purring softly.

"Please keep this a secret for me, okay?"

He winked his long, narrow eyelids at Miss Elliott, turned around, and, holding the tabby cat like a baby, strolled off toward Marin Castle.

Elliott neither agreed nor stopped them.

She turned around and looked at Sakai Kazunari's long shadow cast by the setting sun, recalling the look in his eyes when he blinked just now.

Somehow.

The capable secretary blushed slightly.

Today it is today.

Humans still can't imagine just how handsome Kazunari Sakai must have been in his youth.
-
"It is said that in the works of French writer Victor Hugo, there are two kinds of people in the world: one kind of people have the temperament of a cat, and the other kind of people have the temperament of a dog. And today, for pet lovers, there are also clear-cut cat factions and dog factions."

"This preference for pets is also evident between Anna Elena and Gu Weijing."

"Gu Weijing's preference for cats goes without saying, while Ms. Elena has kept a Springer Spaniel by her side since her aunt passed away. This preference for pets is also very evident among the family, friends, and social circles of the painter and his agent."

"For example."

Yang Dekang, who once served as Cao Xuan's personal assistant and Gu Weijing's grandfather Gu Tongxiang's personal agent, is known for owning a parrot that can recite the works of Keats, Byron, and Hegel. In fact, Yang Dekang is also a "dog lover." This bias is reflected in many aspects that people would not expect, such as the well-known art history book, "The Power of Art: Gu Weijing and Anna Elena: From the Heart," written by Robert Kent, because a large amount of material came from Mr. Yang during the writing process.

"Therefore, it is also a work with a very clear stance."

"This book makes extensive mention of August (the name of Anna Elena's Springer Spaniel) in Gu Weijing's work, as well as paintings related to dogs, but rarely mentions cats."

"Quite the opposite."

"The entire Sakai family are staunch cat lovers. Mrs. Sakai herself has owned more than ten cats. The cat owned by Gu Weijing has not only appeared in Gu Weijing's own paintings, but also in the paintings of Ms. Sakai Katsuko. It has even appeared in the elements of personal artworks designed by Sakai Kazunari."

Whenever Kazunari Sakai mentions his cat named "Awang," he always refers to it as "cutie" or "that cutie." He has also said that it is the gentlest and cutest cat in the world—

"..."

—Quoted from the short essay "Art Musings: Oddities and Gossip in the Industry: The Cats Artists Love, the Dogs Agents Love"
-
The term "Miracle year" is typically used to describe extraordinary periods in history, specifically when a person or work achieves remarkable success in a particular field, such as art, science, or industry.

—Dictionary Notes on the Year of Miracles
-
History has seen many years of miracles.

When people talk about miracle years, they think of 1905, the year Albert Einstein published four physics papers, including "The Production and Transformation of Light," which revolutionized the scientific community's understanding of time, space, mass, and energy.

It will serve as a cornerstone, reconstructing the entire framework of modern physics.

This seems to be a trigger, a metaphor.

In 1905, Einstein published his first paper, titled "The Production and Transformation of Light," a thoroughly scientific work that elucidated the wave-particle duality of light in the photoelectric effect. Sixteen years later, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.

[Let me repeat that.]

What is the name of this paper?

【The Origin and Variation of Light】

Like a mirror image, over the next 150 years, on the other side of science, in the art world, those miraculous years that are firmly remembered by people all seem to have some kind of subtle, mysterious connection to the generation and transformation of light.

If we designate 1905 as the "Einstein year"

So, 1932, about ten years after Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics, was a pivotal year for him, a year that would determine his life and destiny. The shadow of war loomed over Europe, and just months earlier in Asia, the Japanese Kwantung Army had deliberately bombed the South Manchurian Railway tracks near Liutiaohu, Shenyang, and then used this as a pretext to frame the Chinese army, brazenly shelling Beidaying. The September 918 Incident erupted. Although the Nanjing Nationalist government adopted a policy of non-resistance, some patriotic troops and people, represented by General Ma Zhanshan, spontaneously organized resistance.

The world's arduous and protracted anti-fascist war began in the East.

In Europe, the shadow of war was gradually looming.

That year, Einstein and his wife Elsa decided to leave Germany to teach at Princeton. A few months later, on a ship sailing across the Atlantic, the Einsteins heard this brief message in German on longwave radio—

【Adolf Hitler wurde zum Reichskanzler ernannt.】

Adolf Hitler was officially appointed Führer of Germany.

Under the thick gloom of war, Albert Einstein decided to leave Europe immediately. However, for another person living in Paris, France, it might be some time before he truly felt the impact of the war.

This year was a pivotal one in Pablo Picasso's life.

His marriage to his first wife, a beautiful ballerina, was becoming increasingly strained; however, at the same time, the rest of his life was filled with happiness.

He was having a passionate affair with his young mistress, Mary Therese.

Within just one quarter, he had two major career retrospective exhibitions running simultaneously: a retrospective at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris in June and a retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Zurich in Switzerland in September of the same year.

They achieved unprecedented success.

Looking back on Picasso's career, it was these two major art exhibitions that established his position in the history of world art; these two exhibitions almost encompassed the first half of the artist's life.

Since the end of the two exhibitions, the young man who once scraped together money to buy a ticket for the last-class train to come to Paris has officially become a master recognized by the entire critical community.

He is no longer a "Parisian celebrity."

He became a "world master".

In a sense, it was precisely the historical significance of these two exhibitions that allowed Picasso to successfully save his life when the German army later marched into Paris.

In the same year, Picasso brought his unique "light" style to its extreme, attempting to make the light in his paintings more sensual and expressive.

[Woman with a Watch, Woman Sitting by the Window, Dream, Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, Woman on a Black Chair, Woman on a Red Chair.]

In just a few months, Picasso produced some of the most representative works of his career.

The works Picasso created in 1932 alone could easily be valued at over a billion dollars today.

(End of this chapter)