Almighty painter

Chapter 880 Anna vs. Gu Weijing in Round
"Mirror, mirror, who is the most beautiful lion in the world... meow?"

——Awang licked his paw dangerously.
-
“Intuitively this is a suggestion very similar to ‘The Old Church on a Thunderstorm’.”

The wind rustled the curtains by the window, making them sound like the slight background noise of a film turning. Against the background of soft white noise, the conversation between the two people in the room sounded like it was being slowly played out from an old tape recorder.

"Why didn't you take this advice? Why did you give up halfway through? Did you think it was an overly clichéd idea?"

"conventional."

Gu Weijing thought, "That can't be said completely. Looking at history is never cliché. Local religious conflicts still exist today... But I think such a painting would be too much like a cage."

"cage."

"Yes, the cage of shadows, it is trapped by shadows, so everything in the picture is dark, it is sunk in the quagmire of history, British colonists, Japanese troops, war, chaos, disorder... The main body of the orphanage is a group of children, they are a group of people abandoned by their parents, maybe their parents don't want them anymore, maybe their parents can't support them, or even maybe their parents are dead. Objectively, they have no family."

"Abandoned by their parents, abandoned by their families, and perhaps also abandoned by society." Anna said the word "abandoned" three times in a row. "Orphans are 'thrown' into an orphanage by their parents, just like being thrown into a huge cage. Perhaps society is also a huge cage for them."

"Isn't this a fact?" Anna asked back.

"It is true, but perhaps a bit cruel." Gu Weijing replied: "Impressionism is a kind of painting full of subjective emotions. Artists see facts, but they should not be limited by facts. What they see should be a kind of emotional emotion."

"What kind of sentimental emotions? Is it the sentimental emotions in your heart, or the subject of your painting - the subjective emotions of the children in the painting?" Miss Elena said.

"Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference. When Monet painted Woman with a Parasol, his wife Camille, according to the doctor's records, had contracted a serious postpartum disease... and was emaciated. So, was the sunny and charming woman in Monet's painting an illusion of Camille in his mind, or was there really such a charming, sunny and beautiful woman in Camille's spiritual world?"

Gu Weijing put his palm under his chin and said, "So I think that many times, as long as the two are close enough, the boundary between the subjective emotions of the painter and the subjective emotions of the people in the painting will become blurred and disappear, and they will overlap to a great extent."

He placed the palms of his hands together, one above the other.

“This is the so-called magic of empathy. In my mind, a good painter should have the ability to empathize with everything around him.”

"It sounds like there's a pretty rich emotional foundation."

Anna commented.

"I think I can understand the lives of those orphans to a certain extent."

"Is it because you often go there to volunteer that a lot of changes have been brought about?" Anna asked, noticing the surprise on Gu Weijing's face.

"I know you better than you think, perhaps."

The woman said calmly.

"That's definitely one of the reasons," Gu said. "On the other hand, it probably also stems from the environment I grew up in. I also come from a family that lacks parental care."

"You have the same environment as the children in the orphanage?"

"No, that's not right. It seems a bit... well, to be honest, my family is much wealthier than the children in the orphanage. My family taught me Chinese painting at home, and I grew up in a British aristocratic school. The only language taught in the school is English, and the 'second language' is French. My family has been planning to send me to study abroad since I was very young. I didn't have the experience of eating and living with those children, and I can't say that I really integrated into the life there. A few months is really too short."

"If I tell you today that it took me less than a hundred days to fully understand, empathize with, and experience the growth experiences of the children in the orphanage, I will definitely be biased and unfair to those children. It will also be unfair to those people who have been volunteers in the orphanage for one, two, or even many years."

"Their labor, efforts, and energy are far greater than mine. They are more qualified than I am to say what the same environment is."

Gu Weijing thought for a while.

Although it seems a bit strange to mention the word "rich" in front of the other party, it is like a small yellow ant bragging in front of a giant white elephant that he is strong enough to lift a large piece of potato chips.

The young man still said.

“But the power of empathy comes from this, doesn’t it?” Gu Weijing asked back.

"One cannot directly transform into another person physically, but the soul can be as close as possible. I understand their fragility because I was once the same. I understand their sensitivity because I was once the same. I..." Gu Weijing paused.

"I understand the anger in their hearts... because I was once angry in the same way."

"Every child who lived a childhood without the company of his parents may have had this kind of anger burning in his heart. These emotions are always chasing them. The feeling of insecurity and insecurity. The desire to be loved, but the fear of being hurt by love again."

"Do these emotions also constitute the shadows you mentioned?" Anna asked.

"I think so."

Gu Weijing replied.

"I am anxious about this, I am at a loss about this, I am confused and helpless about this. But on the other hand... love."

"Love is the answer to everything. I've said this a thousand times. It sounds so empty, but I really believe it now. Love is our power against life."

"I come from a chaotic country, but I grew up in a relatively stable environment. Real poverty, hunger, disease, crime...none of them happened to me, which is my luck. My parents were absent during my growth process, but I had my grandfather. My grandfather was a very vital person, and he built the order of my life. He tried his best to provide me with the best living conditions within his ability."

"Eastern parents are often the ones who rarely express love. As far as I can remember, my grandfather never said to me... I love you. But he made me realize that those unstable emotions are not all there is in life. I know he is always there, always in front of me. He allowed me to try to live a spiritually different life and walk out of the shadows of life. This kind of love, this spiritual barrier, ultimately gave me the power to return to tranquility."

"You have a good grandfather."

Anna stared at Gu Weijing with a strange look.

"Is it this kind of power that made him make such a choice in the interview just now?"

"He turned you into a good lion with wings on its back who is unwilling to eat people. You flew away from the barren prairie, all the way here, to Singapore, and finally sat in front of me," said Anna.

"It is the nature of lions to eat people. Those who do not eat people are truly noble and good lions."

The woman leaned back in her chair and made a psychological analysis.

"Is this a compliment?"

Gu Weijing looked at the woman.

Anna neither confirmed nor denied it. She thought for a moment and asked again, "The crystal ball theory. Kara's grand tour lasting several months was like sitting in a crystal carriage and looking at the outside world... Then, Mr. Gu, do you think that your hasty observation and portrait of the children in the orphanage for a hundred days, and the painting "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sunlight", will also be a crystal ball-like portrayal?"

"I don't know. As a painter, it's hard for me to rule out this possibility. I need a little more time to give an answer."

Gu Weijing thought for a while.

He did not give a precise answer.

"However, precisely because I cannot rule out such a possibility, and precisely because this may be a 'crystal ball'-like work, I do not want the crystal ball to become a prophecy ball. I do not want to define their lives with a gloomy painting. I do not like life to be a cage for them." "The person who gave me painting suggestions at the beginning seemed to say that being born in such an orphanage meant that you were doomed to be unhappy, and that being born in such an orphanage meant that your life was doomed to be gloomy. Even being born in such an orphanage meant that you were doomed to become a person locked in a cage."

Gu Weijing recalled Brother Hao’s mechanical determinism that “there is no good or evil in the world, only fate.”

He shook his head.

He said "destined" three times in a row.

“I don’t want all the children who see this painting to think that their future life must be a cage with the label ‘unfortunate’ on it, and that their fate is firmly locked in such a cage.”

"No one has the right to decide a child's life and define their life as a tragedy. Not me, not the British, not the statue of the Virgin Mary."

“No one is qualified to do so.”

"The sick Camille can have a sunny and charming beautiful girl living in his heart. The child abandoned by life can also have the heroism of life in his heart."

“That’s what I wanted to express with this painting.”

Gu Weijing concluded.

“The shadows are there, but so is the sunshine.”

"In 'Old Church in Thunderstorm', it's raining heavily, while in my work, the weather is sunny and charming. This is the biggest difference between the two..."

……

Anna stopped talking.

The woman turned her head and stared at the clear sky outside the window, waiting for Gu Weijing's voice to gradually fade away in her ears.

"You just said that you don't know what the symbolic world is and what the real world is."

Anna's voice was very soft.

Like a ghost.

"In his psychoanalytic theory, Lacan divides a person's mind into three dimensions: the symbolic realm, the imaginary realm, and the real realm. This is the theory of the three realms of art."

"The specific theory is very complicated. Let's understand it in a relatively superficial way. The imaginary realm represents the projection of the self-spirit, like an idealized self in a mirror, which is the self-identity and other-identity constructed in the mind. The symbolic realm symbolizes laws, morals, cultural atmosphere, identity labels..."

"So it's possible that in the symbolic realm it's raining heavily, while in the imaginary realm, the world that people make up, it's sunny and bright."

"Lacan believes that it is extremely difficult for people to completely touch the real world and live completely in the real world at a certain moment. At the same time, there is an important principle in the Three Realms Theory -"

“It is very difficult for people in society to escape from life by completely immersing themselves in the world of imagination. Doing so will almost certainly bring new troubles.”

"Mr. Gu——"

Anna said: "People can't live in the sunshine of imagination."

She looked out the window at the sky.

“The heroism of life.”

The woman recited the words that Gu Weijing said and sneered softly, with deep disdain and disappointment in her laughter.

Maybe at this moment.

Anna's disdain was even greater than what she had just felt towards Alexander.

It's much more disdainful than that.

There is also a lot to lose.

"Bring me a slice of Indian Trader-style sandwich," Anna commented sharply.

She turned her head suddenly.

He stared at Gu Weijing with an almost sad look.

"If your grandfather were sitting here today, and if he really understood lions or Hemingway as you said, he would definitely understand that the word 'good lion' I just said was absolutely not a compliment. The real meaning is exactly the opposite."

"There lived a group of bad lions on the African savannah. They hunted all kinds of prey every day, and they especially loved to eat Indian merchants. The good lion was different, and it came from a noble place. It spoke French that other lions couldn't understand, drank cocktails, and ate pasta. Its favorite saying was - I have a good dad, and my dad is a noble griffin. Compared with other lions, it is kinder, much kinder, and has no regard for those bloody and barbaric predators."

"That's pretty rude isn't it?"

Anna clenched her palms and preached in a calm voice.

“And at the end of the story.”

"The good lion flapped its wings behind it, flew across the sea, and flew to Vienna. It landed on Heroes' Square and looked at the majestic bronze warhorse sculptures. After appreciating enough of the works of art, it strolled to the tavern it frequented most in Vienna."

"Hemingway wrote, the waiter in white gloves bowed to it and asked it, respectable, lovable, kind and noble good lion -"

"What would you like to order today?" Anna looked at Gu Weijing.

"Sandwiches, as usual," said the good Lion. He thought for a moment, licked his lips, and asked the waiter -"

"Are there any sandwiches that taste like Indian merchants? It looks at its hometown and the room full of noble people, and feels very happy."

Anna repeated again.

"Mr. Gu, all lions eat people. Good lions eat people, bad lions eat people too. Eating people is a virtue of lions."

"For those brave lions, eating people is a lion's virtue. It is hypocritical to escape from all this in the fictional sunshine."

"That's cowardly."

"Lions have a strong and wild heart. If I were you, I would never give up the anger in my heart. Mr. Gu Weijing."

“Anger is power.”

(End of this chapter)