Almighty painter

Chapter 859 The True Temperature

Alexander turned his head.

The hostess placed the fingertips of her left hand on the wrist of her right hand. The plain brocade carvings on the velvet gloves worn by the opera actress on her wrist reflected a bright and strong light under the spotlight above her head, and the man suddenly felt uneasy as if he was sitting on pins and needles.

"Ms. Elena? You..."

he called softly.

Anna ignored it coldly.

She just stared at Gu Weijing. "Like I said, we met once a week ago. Mr. Gu and I chatted for a while, mainly talking about this painting, this mysterious female painter, and also mentioned Van Gogh."

"Van Gogh, are you referring to..." Alexander didn't know why she mentioned the unpleasant conversation that Miss Irena mentioned, and spoke tentatively again.

Miss Elena continued to turn a deaf ear.

It's like I didn't hear it at all.

She had given the other party a chance. This kind of thing was not common given Anna's personality.

It took her so long to burn Alexander to ashes!

The woman felt that Gu Weijing was a bit thorny, difficult to deal with, and stubborn. When he got angry, he was even more stubborn and had a sharp tongue. "The Elena family, go to hell!" He dared to say anything, without showing mercy to others, and he would kill the conversation in a few words...

In fact, it is quite the opposite.

In the eyes of normal people.

Gu Weijing is a very gentle, good-tempered and approachable person.

The difference is.

Miss Elena was never gentle.

She is the one on the stage who is truly difficult to approach, has a sharp tongue, and never shows mercy to others.

What does it have to do with you to destroy you? If I say I will destroy you, then I will destroy you. I am referring to people like Anna Elena.

Again, the Irina family has lived in the tower where the art history clouds meet the sky for six centuries, leisurely fiddling with the ropes.

People are happy.

I will give you a hand, grant you wealth and glory, and let your family prosper.

If someone is unhappy, they will just wave their hand and throw you off the rope like sweeping away fleas.

Alexander had been acting like a monster in front of her for a long time, and was having a great time dancing on Grandma Kara's "grave". How could Anna, with her bad temper, tolerate this?

She really had been trying hard to be patient, and she was on the verge of losing her temper several times, but she forced herself to suppress it.

It wasn't Alexander who made her do these things.

The reason why he wasn't slapped into a two-dimensional foil.

Anna was just giving face to Gu Weijing.

Miss Elena tried to be a good listener... Gu Weijing was willing to let the conversation proceed in a relatively gentle manner, so she tried to remain as restrained as possible.

During this conversation, Anna felt as if she had become a smoldering furnace.

To put it more appropriately.

A pressure cooker.

Alexander was there, adding firewood to the bottom of the pot without knowing the consequences, throwing a piece of coal on the left and a piece of solid alcohol on the right. The water in the pot had already exceeded the normal boiling point. The "Anna brand pressure cooker" was always jumping on the edge of boiling and the temperature was still rising at a dangerous rate.

The reason why it hasn't really boiled yet.

Because Gu Weijing acted as the lid and safety valve on the pressure cooker.

His attitude made Anna suppress her anger.

If there was a pressure pointer on this pressure cooker, outsiders would definitely notice that it was constantly trembling in the red danger zone as Alexander spoke.

If Alexander could have noticed this, he might have let out a sharp cry, stood up and ran away without even looking back the moment Miss Elena showed her mysterious smile.

Escape from the opera house, escape from the Lion City.

The farther the better.

If he could get a ticket right away to Brino Aires, the farthest point on the Earth, he would go to Brino Aires. If he could get a ticket right away to Mount Olympus, he would go to Mount Olympus, either the one in Greek mythology or the one on Mars in our solar system.

Regrettably.

Miss Elena always looked too calm and indifferent... When Alexander cast his gaze at Miss Elena several times, she only revealed emotions as faint as mist.

This is a warning.

Unfortunately, Alexander did not understand it that way.

Disturbing white smoke began to come out of the stove here, and Gu Weijing noticed this. He tried hard to pull out the firewood under the stove, but the idiot Alexander thought he was just flattering the boss, so he kicked Gu Weijing away, happily picked up a big gasoline barrel, threw it on the stove, and took out a mobile phone from his pocket, ready to take a photo with a smile.

Bang!
The safety valve was finally removed, or it might have been popped off by the pressure cooker itself.

Amid the astonishing heat, the furnace began to emit a high-pitched and loud whistle.

It drowned out all the sounds around it.

For such a long time, Gu Weijing had been trying to have a conversation and communicate with Alexander, but Alexander was never willing to listen.

When Miss Elena started speaking for Gu Weijing, Alexander no longer had a chance to speak.

She also easily drowned out all the noise around her.
-
“At that point, our conversation was focused on one thing.”

Anna said coldly.

"About choice - about the courage to choose one's fate and the guts to face pain. Van Gogh was great because he bravely chose a more difficult path. This is probably what Mr. Gu said at the time."

she asked herself.

"At the time, I quoted the views of my predecessors and gave an example of going to the dentist, saying that Van Gogh's paintings... were like a correction to an ordinary and mediocre life."

"I think this sentence can also be used to answer your previous question, if you don't mind."

"The pain that Monet chose to experience, in my opinion, may also be a rebellion and correction against the ordinary and mediocre life. Of course, this is just my opinion. Since you said so much before, I believe you have a different opinion?"

She said she wanted to answer Alexander's questions and ask for his opinion, but she didn't even bother to look at him.

Alexander was silent.

Some coldness can burn people. Anna remained calm and never screamed hysterically, while Alexander was becoming more and more restless. "Actually, I have a different opinion."

It was Gu Weijing who spoke again.

"Please say."

"I think this statement is too lofty. Choosing pain? What does it mean to choose pain?" Gu Weijing, as always, displayed his "thorny" spirit.

No matter whether the object is Mr. Alexander or Miss Elena.

He treats them all equally.

"I don't think this is an appropriate statement. Some pain is something you can choose, while some pain is the helplessness of life." Gu Weijing shook his head. "Some of the choices in Van Gogh's works, that muddy feeling... I agree to regard it as an active choice of pain, or even what you said about the correction of mediocre life. But in other cases - can you say that a person who can't afford to eat actively chooses pain? Can you say that a person who can't survive the cold and wraps his feet with newspapers actively chooses pain? Is it possible that the real pain in the world is overly aestheticized? Instead, people can't experience that real feeling."

"Well, let's not talk about that."

Gu Weijing said again.

"Moreover, how to correct a mediocre life? How to correct it? How to correct it. It's not just Monet who suffers with him, but also his wife and children. I think your words contain a strong sense of power, full of the feeling of arbitrarily deciding the fate of others according to one's own will."

"There is also a kind of cruelty, as if to say that Monet's suffering was fake, that the poverty, cold and hunger were all deliberately chosen by him, and that he deliberately and actively chose to impose on his wife."

"So what is this anyway?"

The host has never met someone who can argue with her so much in her life!

Anna was not angry.

In the past, she would definitely be angry, but not this time. The one who would be angry was the former Miss Elena, not Anna who had experienced everything during this period of time.

She wanted to tear Alexander to pieces because he dared to go against her will.

Gu Weijing?
Gu Weijing did the same thing, and it had been like this since they first met, and it had never changed. The first time they met, they almost had a fight right there in the cafe.

She did not submit to the other party's opinion, but she was not angry either.

She was thinking.

Miss Elena felt that she had been standing in a special art gallery all her life, and she felt people's joy and pain through those works.

All the oil paintings are beautifully executed and well done.

But they are all static things, solidified things, characters played on the stage. They do not have the natural and real taste, and there is no real blood flowing out of the stab wounds.

Only a few moments.

A living person will walk out of the painting, and a warm feeling will spread from the picture, whether it is blood, tears, or the temperature of skin.

Such as now.

The heiress of the Elena family will hate everyone who dares to go against her will with a calm attitude.

Anna found it interesting.

"Do not."

Anna thought for a moment.

She retorted earnestly.

“It is difficult for people to completely determine their own destiny. This is true for the emperor in the Palace of Souci or the beggar on the street in Paris. But this does not mean that there is no room for courage to play a role.”

"At least for Monet, hunger, cold or poverty were all things that were destined to happen to him."

"Monet's family conditions were not bad."

Painting is considered a technical job.

Learning poetry, painting and being interested in art can be considered the privilege of upper-class children in European history. In the early years, parents of wealthy families were quite happy for their children to learn these things... provided that they did not really become painters.

Analogy to Eastern society.

It has a little bit of Peking Opera flavor, the so-called... it's okay for fun, but it can't be used as a career.

Whether you have money or not depends mainly on who you compare yourself with.

Monet's family conditions were poor compared to those of young masters like Manet and Degas.

No matter how well-off the families of Manet and Degas were, they were still begging for food compared to Irene's family. On the contrary, no matter how poor Monet's family was, they didn't have to compare with the poorest people. Compared with the mainstream citizens living in an international metropolis like Paris, they were quite rich.

His father's family was in the trade agency business, and on the side they also sold small jewelry and such, so they were the type of township entrepreneurs.

His father Adolphe Monet's famous teaching motto was: "Business is their only respectable profession, and art is just a pastime for dandies."

Of course.

After discovering that his son had become a painter, he also experienced the classic scene of "Well, if you don't listen to Lao Deng, Lao Deng won't give you money!" This is the standard template for European artists in the 19th century.

The only difference is——

Manet's father, the Chief Justice, was furious, but in the end, he was still his own son and there was nothing he could do. Even if he was scolded, he still had to pay the annuity.

Cézanne's father, a well-known banker, was furious and stopped supporting his child. But two years later, he softened his heart and could not bear to see his son starve to death, so he had to support him secretly.

Monet's father was really tough.

If you don’t give me anything, even a copper coin, I’ll let you die of starvation! They expelled him from the family and cut off all contact with him. According to Monet’s own words, “I won’t even give him a crumb.” Even when the inheritance was divided, Monet was left with almost nothing.

“Even Camille didn’t come from a poor family,” Anna said. “Although she worked as a model in a public studio, this was considered a prostitute-like profession by the conservative class at the time. However, she appeared there more as an art lover than many female body workers at the time who got paid in this way.”

"Camille was the daughter of a silk merchant. Her family's annual income was about one-fifth to one-sixth of Monet's father's company, but it was still several thousand francs, which was at least considered a decent middle class. For Monet, she gave up the help from her family."

"The choice goes both ways."

"Mr. Alexander just said that Camille abandoned her family for Monet and endured a painful life. This is true. But it can also be said the other way around. Monet also abandoned his family for Camille."

"Camille's parents felt that their daughter should not marry a poor painter. She had better choices and could live a more decent life. Monet's father felt that a model's undignified career was totally unworthy of his family's status."

"As long as the son was willing to come back and inherit the family business, he would have more decent women to choose from. In the end, they got together and got married in secret. As a result, Camille was looked down upon by her parents. Monet lost the last living allowance from his family."

"The most interesting thing about this story is that, in a sense, Monet and Camille are like mirror images of each other. In the process of getting married, they made exactly the same choice and even suffered similar consequences. This is also the most touching part of this story. In my mind, there is no such thing as one person intentionally inflicting pain on the other."

Miss Elena shook her head.

"They embraced each other. To ignore Monet's dedication, to ignore Monet's love for his wife, a man's love for a woman, just like ignoring a woman's love for a man, would destroy the tension of this courage."

Alexander listened to Miss Elena's voice with a gloomy face, and his heart couldn't help but beat fast.

(End of this chapter)