Almighty painter

Chapter 796 Love between Two People (Part )
Gu Weijing squatted patiently, his eyes following the little boy's finger and falling on the exhibition stand.

The child's right hand was stretched forward high. His fingers were too thin and there was a drop of gray-brown ink on the skin above the middle finger nail.

In front of his finger was a fat cat with black and white fur, concentrating on eating.

Gu Weijing recognized it as one of several watercolor sketches he had created for City Cat Bastof.

In the long poem that T. S. Eliot wrote for each cat, the one for Bastof begins with "He was a big fat cat" and ends with "Bastof was the fattest cat in the world."

When he saw this poem for the first time, Gu Weijing thought of his fat tabby cat.

City Cat Bastorf is not the cat with the richest emotions among all his works, but it is the heaviest cartoon cat he has created.

This "heavy" has two meanings, besides the fact that it is the fattest drawn in the physical sense.

Among all the cartoon cat images in the entire work, Bastov's body has the most delicate texture, the richest colors, and the most complex details.

It is one of the cats that Gu Weijing painted with the most and richest brushstrokes.

This fat cat that looks like a blown-up balloon was also painted by Gu Weijing like a blown-up balloon, with many delicate details and textures infused into the work.

Gu Weijing looked at the exquisite watercolor painting and then at the child's fingers.

When writing, writers are accustomed to using facial features, body shape, hair color, and even clothing to describe a person's age and experience.

Gu Weijing was very puzzled as to why no one had noticed that there were often strong differences between the fingers of different people.

Perhaps this is a sensitive perspective unique to artists.

When he was volunteering at an orphanage, he noticed the obvious difference between children's fingers and adults' fingers.

Adults’ hands are always covered with fine vertical and horizontal lines and wrinkles, which are the rings of growth that trees grow as they age. “Annual rings” still exist on children’s palms, but they are much smaller and lighter, even on the hands of those dirty little clay children in the orphanage.

It is the difference between the grain of a mature tree and the delicate veins in the flowers and leaves of plants.

Children's hands always give people a strong sense of tenderness.

The little boy's hand tried to touch his own delicate watercolor painting through the glass cover. To Gu Weijing, it was like a delicate blade of grass trying to support a heavy, layer-by-layer carved ivory ball.

This behavior creates a sense of visual contrast.

Can he understand his own paintings? Can he understand the magic of watercolor? Can he understand the poetry of T.S. Eliot?

A more abstract description.

The little boy, who is only a few years old, stretched out his hand to grab his own work, but could he really bear the "weight" of the cat in the picture?

Seriously speaking, little boys develop slower than little girls, and the boy next to the young mother should be a few years younger than Jasmine.

He looks like he is just in primary school. If he really lets out King Awang, who is like a little gas tank in his home, he might be able to beat two of him.

Gu Weijing was a little confused. He wanted to participate in the Biennale in order to win an award.

In front of us were parents with their children, friends with their friends, and young couples snuggling together. They came from all over the city, even across the ocean, to come here, walking among the exhibits that were like a forest around them. Why were they here, and what did they want to gain?

A few photos that were liked on INS, a check-in video on the TIKTOK homepage, and beautiful and relaxing memories.

Or something else.

Gu Weijing stared at the child's face, and a strong desire for knowledge surged in his heart, as if Gu Weijing had turned into a child, and the other party was a master of appreciation with great knowledge who could draw real nourishment from the works in front of him and feed back to himself.

"Tell me what you see in this work."

He smiled kindly and said softly, "Okay?"

I beg you.

Gu Weijing said in his mind.

"Tell your big brother about it. Didn't you learn painting in school?" Gu Weijing had a very good temperament, and his young mother probably wanted her children to communicate more with young and promising artists like him and cultivate more artistic sentiments.

So she didn't stop him. Instead, she patted the child on the head and whispered encouragement.

The little kid was stunned.

He probably didn't expect that while taking a nice vacation to have fun, he would run into such a hateful person who asked him questions about art appreciation.

He was a little confused, a little nervous, a little at a loss, and his face flushed.

The glass-like sheen of the watercolor painting shone in his pupils.

The furry child stared at the drawing in front of him, and then remained silent for more than ten seconds. Finally, he managed to utter a long word from his throat -

"what."

The little boy said softly.

Gu Weijing is a patient waiter.

Unfortunately, after making his only and complete art review, the little boy felt that he had completed all his tasks perfectly, so he reached out his hand again and continued to reach for the booth in front of him.

The mother probably felt that her child's performance was not very promising and she did not say anything that could show that her child was smarter than her peers. She shook her head slightly in frustration.

Gu Weijing also smiled bitterly in his heart.

He laughed at himself for being so obsessed with gain and loss.

What does the kid in front of him want to hear? A 3,000-word essay on art appreciation? What he should do is buy the special issue of Oil Painting magazine for this month's Singapore Art Biennial, instead of asking a kid who has just reached school age.

The reason why children reach out to these illustrations is not only because these works are more colorful and delicate, attracting children of this age like flowers attract bees and butterflies, but what other reasons are there?

The reason why the little boy liked these drawings was exactly the same as the reason why Gu Weijing stopped in front of "Bukit Timah" just now because he wanted to enjoy the visual pleasure.

Gu Weijing did not turn around and leave immediately because of disappointment.

The experience of volunteering in an orphanage has helped the young man develop great patience with children.

He looked at the child's hands that wanted to grab things, but he didn't say that it was bad, against the rules, or that the display case was dirty, or that his hands were dirty and might leave fingerprints on the glass panel, affecting the viewing experience of others.

Gu Weijing smiled softly again.

He knows how to deal with children.

Sometimes you may feel that such young children are completely ignorant and impossible to communicate with. At other times, you may feel that as long as some truths are explained, such young children can be surprisingly sensible.

"Little boy, your mother will be unhappy if you do this. Would you like to not touch these booths and make your mother happier today?"

The little boy was stunned again.

His hand hung in the air hesitantly, as if he was facing a difficult problem.

Gu Weijing gave the child a thumbs up, stood up, and nodded goodbye to the young-looking mother.

"Excuse me, kids of this age are so naughty. Maybe it will be fine when they grow up a little bit..." The woman also nodded kindly at Gu Weijing, and then they said goodbye to each other and left with her child.

After this brief conversation episode in which unrealistic expectations were asked and understandable disappointment was answered.

Gu Weijing continued to stay in the booth for a long time.

With doubts in mind, he looked at most of the works in the exhibition one by one, trying to distinguish the quality of all the works on their inner level.

Gu Weijing's behavior is like that of the ancient Dongxia philosophers who looked at bamboo, hoping to see the complex principles of becoming a saint contained in it.

The result is just like that ancient philosopher, except that he makes himself dizzy.

He was unaware.

It was not until the time for the appointment to take Awang for a physical examination that Gu Weijing wanted to leave the Esplanade.

He planned to ask Mr. Sloth about his questions about art, but Gu Weijing was not sure whether Mr. Sloth could give him the answer he wanted.

Gu Weijing believed that Mr. Sloth would be able to give him a suitable answer.

From the moment he met Mr. Sloth, he regarded him as his own all-purpose Doraemon. Whenever Gu Weijing had a question, Mr. Sloth would give him an answer, and it always worked.

however.

That is always Mr. Sloth's answer, Mr. Sloth's answer, not the answer from Gu Weijing's heart. Just like Mr. Sloth can tell Gu Weijing what the manifestation of love is and how love sprouts.

But he couldn't tell Gu Weijing what love really is in the hearts of young people.

There are some questions in the world that should be answered by teachers, and there are some questions in the world that should be understood by students themselves.

Perhaps he was too confused, perhaps he was too lost, or perhaps it was the feeling that the answer was right on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't say it, and in the end he could only wait shamefully to take out the answer book to cheat, which made Gu Weijing feel that his first exhibition trip in his life was too depressing and incomplete.

When I walked to the door of the second floor of the exhibition.

Gu Weijing paused again.

He looked back for the last time today at the exhibition hall's array of booths and the works hanging on the walls.

He threw all the disturbing thoughts behind him. He no longer had the expectation of discovering love, the confusion of discovering the meaning of art, the contempt and criticism towards Tang Ning, and even the desire to become Cao Xuan's last disciple.

Gu Weijing threw away all the disturbing thoughts that made him painful or confused, just like he was shooting out a tangled ball of wool.

He looked at the booth from a distance.

Gu Weijing didn’t know what answer he wanted to get from this action, and he no longer thought about this art exhibition from the perspective of questions and answers. He simply looked, and simply experienced the action of “looking”, just like Forrest Gump running between the blue sky and the yellow earth with all his strength and without desire.

At this moment, the entire art exhibition came into Gu Weijing's sight.

Cui Xiaoming's "New Three Bodies of Buddha", CDX Gallery's "The Joy of the Sea and the Earth", "Bukit Timah", illustrator Detective Cat's "Twelve Arhat Cats"...

Gu Weijing was now standing at the entrance of the second-floor exhibition area.

Because of the visual movement of the exhibition design, he could only see the front of four or five works from his position. Most of the works were blocked by the booths or simply by the walls. The few works that could be seen were constantly blocked by the coming and going of people. The entrance was already some distance away from the exhibition area, and there was no way he could see it clearly.

Gu Weijing spent a lot of time in the exhibition area, and he had carefully looked at most of the works.

therefore.

What he was actually looking at was the "imaginary" art exhibition.

The imaginary world in his mind and the material world in front of him completely merged together as Gu Weijing turned his head to watch this action, just like a famous painting and its one-to-one copy completely overlapping.

As Gu Weijing's gaze moved, the exhibition base in the exhibition hall, which was shining with metallic iron, quickly became transparent, and the walls that divided the space and guided the flow of people automatically disappeared.

At last.

Gu Weijing looked at the dozens of paintings of various colors in the void.

All kinds of pens and inks, all kinds of colors, were completely suspended in front of him.

Gu Weijing's gaze swept across the three statues gazing at the world in "The New Three Bodies of Buddha", lingered for a few seconds on the Bukit Timah Hill, which was tangible but intangible, with lines but no body, and like clouds and smoke, and then passed by again.

At last.

The young man's eyes fell in a certain direction of the exhibition hall.

In reality, that place was a multimedia curtain wall playing digital artworks, but in his mind, Gu Weijing saw the "Othello Cats" booth behind the curtain wall.

He stared at the booth, looking at the cats jumping and running on the booth, emitting warmth and enthusiasm.

suddenly.

Gu Weijing felt a complex emotion.

Not pure joy, nor pure sadness.

It is not the self-admiration of the creator looking at his own work, but the tremor and resonance of the bystander's heart touched by the work.

Gu Weijing opened his mouth slightly.

"what."

The young man said softly.

Ah, he really understood. Ah, that's how it is. Ah, is that so. Oh, God, ah, this painting... This sigh was so simple in content and so rich in meaning that Gu Weijing's heart was filled with feelings that could not be accurately described.

He could not help but recall again that many years ago, Gu Weijing and Miss Mona Sandanu read Nobel Prize winner Hesse's "Siddhartha" together under a tree on the lawn of Fitz Middle School in order to complete their reading homework.

In the book, the famous "Om" uttered by the Buddha himself, at the moment when this universal sound representing the voice of wisdom in Sanskrit was uttered, the experienced Siddhartha Gautama realized the immortal life. In the lightning moment under the coconut tree, the dying young man who was about to welcome death remembered all the sacred things that he had forgotten in the past.

The emotions of all things in the world are condensed into one word.

Om.

It is meant to mean perfection.

When Gu Weijing was painting "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sunshine", he remembered this passage. At that moment, Gu Weijing understood the significance of the creator painting a painting to participate in the Lion City Biennale.

just now.

When his lips opened slightly and he let out an "ah", he suddenly understood the meaning that a bystander would understand when they see an excellent work of art.

All the indescribable and ineffable feelings were summarized by a simple syllable and expressed by his sigh that resonated from his chest.

The answer is actually right at your lips.

The mystery itself is the mystery.

The quality of all the works is what makes people stop and stay in front of the booth, what makes a child who knows nothing can't help but reach out his hand, and what makes people want to cry in front of some paintings.

There are indisputable and irrefutable reasons why Detective Cat's "Twelve Arhat Cats" should be better than CDX Gallery's "Bukit Timah", and Gu Weijing's "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sunlight" should be better than the "New Three Bodies of Buddha" which is like its shadow but more grand and more pleasing.

There is only one answer to all of this.

"Because of love."

Gu Weijing thought in his mind.

Ordinary people are just ordinary people. They are neither experienced painters nor knowledgeable art critics. They have no time to look at paintings, let alone paint. They may never have heard of Kandinsky, Klimt or even Jackson Pollock, whose paintings can be sold for 100 million like Van Gogh.

A ticket to an art exhibition may represent the many people in the exhibition hall and all their interactions with the art industry in the past, present, and for a long time to come.

They are unable to describe the exquisiteness of brushstrokes, nor can they analyze the technical style contained in a work through points, lines and surfaces as carefully as Cui Xiaoming does. They are also unable to quote from classics and draw on various historical materials like the scholars and editors of Oil Painting magazine.

But ordinary people are not ignorant of art.

It’s not that they don’t understand beauty, and it’s definitely not that they don’t understand “love”. They may not know that it is love, but love is in their hearts.

Standing in front of the work, opening your lips and letting out a gentle sigh are the most gorgeous and beautiful words of art appreciation in the world.

Even the most ornate and elegant art critics in the world will only let out a sigh when they are truly moved by a part of a work.

This is the echo of the soul in the chest after a person is struck by the work, forgets everything, and then remembers everything, having thousands of words but not knowing how to express them.

With this sigh, the tangled ball of yarn rolled away automatically.

The essence of art is "ah".

"Ah" is love.

Love is the only and complete answer.

Cui Xiaoming said that the essence of love is luck, money, and power.

"not like this."

Gu Weijing turned his head away.

Luck is luck, money is money, power is power.

And love is love.

Sometimes they are tangled together like a ball of wool. If you untangle them all and let them stretch naturally, you will understand that these are completely different things after all.

Love is not even the cause of human suffering.

Love is the root of human growth.

(End of this chapter)