Almighty painter

Chapter 1064 The Defeat of the Boxing Champion

Every artist who achieves market success during their lifetime has their own creative peak, during which they are loved by collectors and sought after by critics.

Wealthy individuals from all over the world, especially art dealers, stood by the door with banknotes in their mouths and tails wagging, eagerly waiting for artworks to fly out of the windows.

Some people have a very short peak period, perhaps only a few years, becoming famous at fifty and then dying at fifty-five.

Some people have such a long peak period.

He became famous in his twenties and was favored by the market until he was ninety years old.

Gu Weijing has both the success of Picasso and Rembrandt—starting as a young and promising artistic prodigy who won every award he wanted—and the short life of Van Gogh.

Just as a symphony was reaching its climax, with all the instrumental parts playing together, Hunter Bull, like a merciless rest, pressed the pause button for it.

or--

Stop button.

Ole, being the son of a banker, certainly knew how to read market sentiment. In art investment… a field where people would spend millions of pounds on an empty can… market sentiment might just be everything.

Good art or bad art doesn't matter; you need to convince investors that you're selling gold, not dog poop.

The theological concept of "justification by faith" has never been so vividly demonstrated in any aspect of history as it has in the modern art market. If everyone believes you're selling gold, then even dog shit will become gold; if everyone believes you're selling dog shit, then even gold will become dog shit.

The true Philosopher's Stone can do more than just turn all metals into gold.

The real Philosopher's Stone can also turn all gold into dog poop.

Five hundred years after the Reformation, the theories of Martin Luther once again saved the most important asset investment held by this German bank.

Hunter Boole.

Holy shit!

His eternal God, his wrathful Lord, the twelve-winged angel who descended to earth for Ole Kruger, smoking a cigarette and picking his nose, descended from the sky, using his supreme power to part the sea of ​​people, and painted a huge pile of holy dog ​​shit on Gu Weijing's canvas!
How could Ole not feel happy?

The market is cruel, unpredictable, and ruthless. If you've enjoyed the glory of wealth, you must accept its harsh poison.

When everyone was chasing after Gu Weijing, when he and Anna Elena were weaving that golden fairy tale, he was a magical person, a genius, a sorcerer.

He's always right, whatever he says is right, whatever he does is right, whatever he draws is right.

He is the gold mine itself; he can scatter it at will, and the sky will be filled with shimmering gold dust, inexhaustible and boundless. What is two hundred million US dollars then?

Today, if you look at the rich lists, the richest people in Europe are not those who own banks or sell arms, but those who sell luxury goods.

Selling perfume is far more profitable than selling Dassault fighter jets; it's a truly high-net-worth business.

A successful intellectual property (IP) is perhaps the greatest luxury.

When Picasso died, he was probably one of the top ten richest people in France. His personal wealth could have exceeded that of the entire Dior Group at the time. The person who painted all his life was much richer than the Hélène family, who risked their lives in the Thirty Years' War and the Battle of the Three Emperors, fighting the French with machetes and causing mountains of corpses.

Money is really just a number.

It's possible that two hundred million US dollars, in two or three years, will really just be the money that Gu Weijing makes from selling one or two paintings.

He was very close to success, and in some ways they had already succeeded, thanks to the influence of the Maes Gallery, which allowed them to turn back and secure the Hamburg Art Association in just a few weeks.

A tactically flawless surprise attack caught the magazine "Oil Painting" completely off guard.

He is about to complete the final piece of the puzzle in shaping his personal legend.

That day.

After nearly ten years of ascetic life, Ole got completely drunk. He was truly desperate. In that instant, he began to believe that Gu Weijing was indeed a superman who could fly around, an invincible opponent. He tried countless methods, but the sword would always turn into a phantom the moment it touched his body.

They exist in different dimensions.

Gu Weijing is invincible.

How could a bullet from the mortal realm harm Superman's steel body? What would be the point of all his efforts then? Until Hunter Bull struck a baseball pitching pose and hurled a pile of dog poop at him from the sky.

that moment.

It's like being reincarnated.

Ole was reborn in his soul.

"Drag him down?" the banker thought for a moment.

“Drag him down,” Ole said. “He doesn’t have much liquid cash on hand, so we’ll wear him down slowly, bit by bit.”

Like a bullfight.

Waiting for the angry bull to slowly bleed its last drop of blood as it runs.

"Besides oil paintings, his other styles of work are also very popular. He is a student of Cao Xuan and also a student of Ke Cens. His ceramics, porcelain paintings... are all cash cows," the banker said critically once again.

“Father, you said that this is in addition to ‘Oil Painting’.”

"Ole said."

A clever double entendre.

They not only owned oil paintings, but also "Painting," one of the world's most authoritative art review newspapers. In the entire collecting world, painters ridiculed by "Painting" were as miserable as models ridiculed by "Vogue" in the fashion world.

And the magazine is called "Oil Painting," not "Watercolor" or "Ceramics," right?

To be honest, even in European art critics these days, no one dares to openly claim, as was the case when the Count founded the magazine "Oil Painting," that there is only one art form in the world: "oil painting." Painting watercolors is like playing the viola—just second-rate people who can't play the violin or paint oil paintings.

Those who do pottery are in an even worse situation.

Not only are they not second-rate, they might not even qualify as anything special. At best, they're just a bunch of mud-playing enthusiasts, roughly equivalent to peeing and mud-playing.

If you said that, someone like Kozens might even be tempted to sneak a "bomb" and go after those sons of bitches at the magazine. But you can't say it like that. Whether such thoughts would exist in the minds of some prejudiced people is another matter entirely.

and.

If you cultivate yourself as an "IP" (intellectual property), then what collectors are buying isn't just a piece of art, but a part of that "IP"—a part of your name, a part of your legend. Buying art follows entirely different market logic than buying newspapers or magazines like Playboy or Penthouse.

Please, just be honest.

Everyone in the industry says they pay for their own artistic appreciation. The appreciation of a work is due to the validation of its "artistic merit," the quality of the brushstrokes, and the depth of thought.

Don't be ridiculous. People who buy newspapers care about the day's headlines, people who buy Playboy care about the bikini-clad women in this issue, but when someone spends a million dollars on a painting, are they really concerned about the things they talk about?
Don't condemn them outright.

But there are probably far more people thinking about getting a sports car than people thinking about so-called "art".

The Elena family, while claiming to love art, secretly locked Carla in a dark room and whipped her. Meanwhile, her mother, Gu Weijing, lamented on a podcast, "Ahhh, money has distorted the art market! The value of art has been replaced by monetary value!"
Ahhhhh!

I am in so much pain, yet I am so great; I am great because of my immense pain.

Stinky dog ​​poop!
He's making money like crazy. Is someone holding a gun to his head and forcing him to make money? His way of rebelling against consumerism is selling a painting for $2000 million? That's awesome! As long as my work sells for high enough, nobody can afford it!
When he was taking the money, I didn't see any sign of his pain.

When he signed the performance-based contract with Maestro III, which stipulated that he had to achieve a certain sales target, why didn't he seem distressed?

When he was in New York preparing to order a private jet, why didn't the outstanding artist Gu Weijing feel any distress?

This is like someone determined to lose weight, and their method is to secretly eat five cakes and 20 donuts when their wife isn't looking, hoping to boost their metabolism by training their stomach. What, did you buy your personal weight loss coaching from a young Kazunari Sakai?
genius!

A peerless genius, one in a million!
Perhaps, in this sense, people who buy pornographic magazines are much more "real" than people who buy Monet.

Art investors never buy just the content of a painting; they cut a piece off the artist like slicing a cake.

The person who spends $100 million to buy an empty can isn't buying a few dozen grams of tin.

A few dozen grams of tin sheet is not even worth 100 cents, at most 10 cents.

The remaining $999,999.090 was used to buy a part of "Andy Warhol," and the $100 million spent on Picasso was also a part of Picasso.

You can even tell someone directly.

"Oh, I bought a Picasso painting."

The painting itself isn't important; Picasso is. When buying luxury goods, you're often buying a part of the upper-class lifestyle, a certificate of status.

If the cream on the cake is spoiled, it's not enough to just replace it with a different piece; the whole cake will be ruined.

Ok.

Even if it wasn't spoiled, imagine you find a piece of cake with dog poop on it, and the bakery owner waves a fork at you and says, "Oh dear, oh dear, sorry, it was an accident. I'll cut you another piece. The rest of the cake is fine."

Honestly, my friend, even if it wasn't actually spoiled, would you dare to eat it?

Art is a way of expressing a person's thoughts, emotions, and aesthetics. There are so many art forms in the world, but thoughts, emotions, and aesthetics are interconnected; they are all part of the artist's being.

If Hunter Bull recently exposed the "lies" woven by painter Gu Weijing and his personal agent Anna Elena in front of the world.

His oil paintings can sell for $2000 million, not because they are particularly good, not because "only Gu Weijing could create such dazzling works in this era," but simply because his agent is Anna Elena.

therefore.

It was only then that the market pushed it to a height it never belonged to before.

Then.

How can you prove that Gu Weijing's traditional Chinese paintings are so popular not because his teacher was Cao Xuan, and that his achievements in watercolor were not because he was a student of Samuel Kertész... that is why he reached a height that should never have belonged to him?

[They were a bunch of charlatans... They promised to make real gold and silver, but they only ever deceived people with fake metals and minerals.] — Anna Elena stood in the square of Marienburg, ambitiously telling the story of Leonardo da Vinci to the audience and guests.

She would never have imagined it.

These words, like a boomerang, flew through the air for seven years, took a big detour, and seven years later, they hit Gu Weijing squarely on the head.

"Bang!"

The two of them kept describing to critics how beautiful their clothes were, saying things like "only Gu Weijing could paint them" or "only a smart person could see them," while Hunter Bull said that the two of them were not wearing anything at all.

When a boxing champion suffers a humiliating defeat in the ring, being knocked to the ground with a single punch, it becomes extremely difficult for him to regain his title by defeating others.

Whether you want to or not.

He can only fight in the second, third, and fourth matches.

Win or die.

Either reclaim your title or prove you no longer belong to this era. If person A plays 50 matches in their lifetime, with a record of 49 wins and 1 loss, and person B plays only one match, with a record of 1 win and 0 losses...

In that match, B knocked A out with a single punch.

Then all the honors that A has received will become part of B's ​​personal legend, and will become B's stepping stone.

This is the situation that Gu Weijing is facing.

Therefore, he understood that he had to defeat Hunter Bull, which is why he abruptly ended all his plans and flew back from New York across the Atlantic.

Ole understood this as well.

“I won’t give him that chance.” He put the folder he was holding on the table. “I need money, a lot of money.”

Gu Weijing is a stock.

The Elena family is bullish, while Kruger Bank is bearish.

Both going long and short require capital. Now the situation has reversed; they are on the defensive, and the advantage lies with them.

The banker didn't turn around, nor did he look at the contents of the folder.

"Since you've considered everything you need to, then go ahead and do it."

He waved his hand, raised his chin slightly, and said lightly.

(End of this chapter)