Almighty painter

Chapter 853 Mixed Doubles (Part )

“Dialogue is usually seen as a collision and confrontation of ideas. It is related to the compatibility between the interlocutors, the cultural background, the topic of the conversation, the purpose of the conversation, and many other dimensions... Using psychology to explain this process makes people feel too complicated. Let’s talk about something simpler - magic.

Don't underestimate the power of words.

Conversation, whether it’s a conversation between interviews or between recordings of podcasts, can essentially be seen as a kind of magic… I mean – dialogue, it’s a power exerted on the outside world to try to get the truth, lies, or the unimaginable but extremely expected answer.”

——Mr. Sloth "Mr. Sloth's Art Salon·Issue 1·When people are talking about art enthusiastically, what are they expecting?"
-
Alexander must have fallen under a witch's spell.

Yes.

He believed that he must have been struck by a "thunderbolt" for no apparent reason. Even if it was not the "Avada eating a big melon" that flashed green light, it must have been the spooky "soul leaving the body", which was the mind-stealing curse that allowed the caster to make a spider with eight long legs dance a rhythmic tap dance while happily rushing into the fish tank and drowning itself.

God.

How did things turn out like this?
His mind was still a mess. During the entire conversation, the host firmly controlled the rhythm of the conversation.

She asked the questions, asked the two guests to answer them, and then she came up with an answer herself.

Strictly speaking, no one said that what Miss Elena said was the correct answer. Alexander was very sure that many things were not mentioned in his thesis at all. There was no teleprompter on the scene, and Anna definitely did not have a thick "Annals of the History of Nineteenth Century Art" or "One Hundred Questions on Impressionism with Prizes" in her hand.

Even Anna herself didn't say it, her answer was the correct answer.

But people just naturally believe this.

She is so serious, so calm, and so indifferent.

As majestic as an arrow shot from the moon chariot.

He is Danish, and in the stories his grandmother told him when he was a child, he imagined the sun and the moon as flaming arrows.

Throughout the year, the brother and sister, the sun god and the moon god, would shoot an arrow every day at different angles to illuminate the sky, and then the burning arrow would fall into the sea and be extinguished. This is said to come from ancient folk legends in some European regions.

So imagine what those ancient mythologists thought of this matter?
He said, no one has ever guaranteed that the brother and sister would not miss the target, right? For example, if they suddenly sneeze, cough, or get bit by a bug, it's normal. Even an Olympic shooting champion can hit someone else's target with a crucial shot.

Alexander had worried about this as a child.

If the sun deviated from the proper angle that day, and the arrow of summer became the arrow of winter, and the arrow of the moon flew halfway, it would fall down due to myasthenia, and instead of falling into the sea, it would hit the Little Mermaid sculpture on the shore of Copenhagen, and that would be the end of it.

Later he found out that it wouldn't.

Like him, the ancient scholars who recorded celestial phenomena would quickly realize that the moment the bowstring is drawn, the arrow’s fate is sealed.

It will accurately pass through layers of star curtains, follow the predetermined trajectory, and firmly nail itself on the target.

Whether it is a hundred years or a thousand years.

Unchanging from time immemorial.

They told the mortals around them that this was the majesty of God.

In the Impressionist painter quiz, Anna had this kind of majesty.

He and Gu Weijing were just mortals participating in an archery competition. Mortals make mistakes, miss targets, cough and sneeze, and get distracted by scratching mosquito bites while shooting arrows.

Anna Elena wouldn't.

Her natural and detached demeanor made the onlookers believe that her arrow would hit the target exactly before she drew the bow. Before she opened her mouth, she made the scholars and tourists at the scene believe that if they looked through the books on art history, they would find that what she said would be the most correct answer.

in other words.

He and Gu Weijing were not contestants who came to take the quiz. They were just hunting dogs that picked up arrows for the Moon Goddess. The arrows were too fast and too accurate, and only very rarely could the hunting dogs catch up with the pace of the arrows. When the arrows were halfway through their flight, they would catch up, approaching the arrow and running with it.

This is the origin of solar and lunar eclipses.

The results of it?
Alexander desperately bit the arrow and retrieved it. What answer did he get?
Oh, sorry, the arrow just now was poisoned, so I shot it randomly.

Are you kidding me?
Anna Elena, the new art director of Oil Painting magazine, shot 99 arrows right into the bull's eye with the heroic spirit of an archer.

As the final shot.

She just casually and aimlessly pulled the bowstring towards the sky.

"Oh, that...I just made it up."

Hearing this, Alexander was completely stunned.

There must be something wrong with the way this world is opened.

She had just been talking so seriously about Monet and Zola, about Paris, and about her thoughts and feelings when she read the letter. Her voice was sincere and her words were firm.

Alexander had indeed never heard of the letter.

But he already knew that Monet and Zola knew each other, they wrote many letters to each other, and Zola also mentioned Camille many times in his memoirs.

A known.

Camille was Monet's wife. Monet loved Paris, and Monet occasionally liked to say some seemingly weird words.

He already knew.

Miss Irene's answers were always correct. At the same time, Miss Irene said that this was a very simple question. Although the materials she cited were relatively obscure, any scholar who had seriously studied issues related to Monet and Camille would definitely know the answer.

……

If this was a question that tested the time of writing and the complex background of creation, Alexander would have simply backed down and at most said something vague and ambiguous.

He's not stupid.

There are many related practitioners in the audience.

He made up an answer casually and pretended to know the answer when he didn't. If he wasn't exposed now, it would be extremely embarrassing when someone looked through his book after the interview and found out that he was talking nonsense. It would be more embarrassing than admitting defeat and saying "I don't know".

But this question was too simple. Miss Irena had directly told them the writing time and creation background of the letter. She even hinted to them that the letter might have some philosophical correspondence with "Woman with a Parasol" and "The Dying Camille". She just asked them whether they had noticed this connection when they were studying the letter before.

There really isn't a simpler question than this.

For example, when you really don't know what to write on the test paper, you can just copy the question exactly as it is on the answer sheet and earn one or two hard-earned points.

What other answer could Alexander give? And.

It's like an illusion.

From an angle that the audience and the camera could not see, he saw Miss Elena turn her head and look at him with expectant, inquiring eyes.

She pursed her lips and seemed to smile gently.

It was as fast as a dream.

So, Alexander was bewitched by the witch's spell, and following the smile, he was in a trance, talking in his sleep, tap dancing, and rushed into the fish tank happily.

First, the soul leaves the body.

The next one is "drilling heart and cutting bones".
-
silence.

There was a brief silence on the stage.

The movements of the guests on the stage and the audience below were all frozen for a moment, and everyone listened to Miss Elena speaking in a tone of astonishment, confusion, disbelief, and a hint of alienation.

"Feel sorry."

Anna paused.

There seemed to be some sympathy on her face. "The love for Paris, the robbers or the prostitutes, I just changed it from a short poem by Baudelaire."

"I made up that story on stage because it just occurred to me and I thought it would be a funny little joke."

puff.

As if to echo the host's word "interesting", as if the silent atmosphere around him doubly highlighted the embarrassment on Alexander's face, or as if Anna Elena, the host who had always controlled the rhythm of the entire interview with a majesty that was inconsistent with her age, suddenly had a calm face, but the tone of her voice was like a naughty girl, and the sentence "I made up all that just now", which in itself was too comedic with a contrasting color, and had some kind of magical deconstruction quality.

It was like the majestic queen in the oil painting suddenly started eating strawberry ice cream with Doraemon printed on it.

Rosings laughed out loud instantly.

He didn't say a word.

He just stood there laughing, covering his mouth with his hands.

He didn't utter a single vicious word, but the look on his face, which had trained me strictly not to laugh no matter how funny it was unless I really couldn't help laughing, was more lethal than any of Rosings' fierce attacks on the stage today.

Gu Weijing didn't smile either.

He shook his head and looked at Alexander a little sadly.

"I disagree with a lot of what Mr. Alexander said today, but one thing is true: Claude Monet sometimes looked like a somewhat cruel husband. At least, the relationship between him and Camille was not the flawless, outstanding, perfect love that people imagine when looking at the paintings."

"This is not the pink romance of a prince and princess that you would expect from a fairy tale or a lot of people who have fantasies about the life of an artist."

"That's absolutely right. Camille disobeyed her parents for Monet and chose to elope with Monet despite her family's opposition. It looks just like what Medea did."

"That's right. When Camille was seriously ill, Monet began to live with Alice, the wife of his wealthy patron, Mr. Ernes. Yes, Ms. Alice later became Monet's second wife. This sounds like what the Greek hero Jason did."

"It's still not wrong."

"When Camille was dying, Monet sat by her bed and painted. Then he mentioned in a letter to a friend that at the moment Camille died, he was surprised to find that she was still instinctively pursuing changes in color..."

"…In the early years of their marriage, they were very poor…"

"They are not facing a utopian fantasy world. They are facing many, many constraints."

Gu Weijing said.

"There is a saying in the East that poor couples will have more sorrows in life than rich couples, and there will be hundreds of things that make people sad. It does not mean that poor people have no right to pursue happiness, but that objectively, they will encounter more difficulties and they will be subject to greater burdens and pressures from society."

"In the marriage between Monet and Camille, at least in the early years when Monet was on the verge of bankruptcy, they faced the same question of whether to buy bread for the family or to buy expensive painting supplies or pigments with the same money."

"From my perspective, sometimes Claude Monet's choices...are very sincere about art."

Gu Weijing paused.

The young man smiled.

"In other words, you might also understand it as...um, well..." He chose his words carefully.

"In other words, from another perspective, it means that you don't have a strong sense of family responsibility?" Miss Elena replied calmly.

Gu Weijing turned his head and glanced at Anna.

He turned his head again.

"Well said, a serious accusation, but not excessive. When you only have one salary, you and your wife and children are starving and cold in the countryside. You use this salary to create art."

"Especially when your painting style is not welcomed by the masters of the Paris Academy, which may mean that you will not be successful, using it to create works really means that you lack enough love for your family."

"And Monet..."

"He does look like someone who might spend his money on high-end paint. We know clearly that Monet was quite wealthy in his later years. He was not as wealthy as Picasso, but he lived a good life. Impressionism began to be popular, and he had many collectors from all over the world. He had his own estate, where he grew water lilies in the pond, and he hired a designer to build a Japanese bridge. Although that bridge was not very Japanese, we can say that apart from his physical illness, Monet lived a good life."

Gu Weijing smiled again.

"Without accurate data, we can't figure out the exact financial situation of the Monets in 1876. It's also unclear whether they could afford the £100 first-class ticket at the time. But as far as titanium white is concerned, I wouldn't be surprised to see some new and expensive pigments in Monet's studio, even in his poorer and more destitute years."

"Because he is just that kind of person. Mr. Alexander is not wrong in saying this. I have said so much here today to refute what Alexander said, not because Monet is the most famous name in the entire history of European art. It does not mean that I have to whitewash him, nor does it mean that I cannot admit that there are stains on Monet, or things that look like stains. It is not to deny the existence of things."

"Do not."

"This does not help us to truly understand Monet in a three-dimensional way. It does not help us to truly understand the Parisian art world in the 19th century. What I really want to say is that if we only use these things to understand Monet, it is also very unfair to Monet, and it does not help us understand the sacrifices and greatness that Monet made."

"If we only use this kind of thing to understand Camille, it is also very unfair to Monet's wife, and it does not help us understand Camille's bravery and strength."

he continued.

(End of this chapter)