Almighty painter

Chapter 941 Gu Weijing's Dilemma
Miss Elena only appeared in front of the teaching building for a moment very stingily.

A black Mercedes-Benz GLS with an Austrian license plate drove along the inner road of the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts. It was not driving very fast, but its timing was extremely accurate.

Almost at the same time that the wheelchair drove down the ramp in front of the building, the black SUV accurately blocked everyone's curious sight and mobile phone cameras.

After a while.

The dark car slid away silently, leaving behind only the brick-paved space and the lost crowd.

"How cold! I thought he would at least look at us."

A long-haired girl whispered regretfully as she looked down at the photos on her phone.

A brief moment.

She only had time to snap one or two quick photos.

"Is she always like this in school?" the girl asked. She was an international exchange student. The end of the summer semester was often the beginning of the international semester. She had just transferred to the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts not long ago.

"That's about right. She's always very cool and she doesn't want to be in the spotlight all the time."

The other guy standing by seemed to be more familiar with Anna.

"but."

"In normal times, she would nod in this direction and occasionally take photos with everyone. I guess she doesn't look like she's in a good mood today."

"Just by looking from a distance, you can tell that the other person is in a bad mood. Who do you think you are? A mind reader? Brother, are you very familiar with that person?" A familiar classmate nearby teased.

The young man shrugged.

"I know Gu very well. We live in the same building and share a kitchen."

"Which Gu?" The long-haired girl looked confused.

The black man who was speaking immediately became delighted.

"That Gu. Gu Weijing? Have you seen the news? He and Anna Elena were stranded on a desert island for nearly a week. It's hard not to be familiar with him. Some people say that she chose to study for a master's degree at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts because of Gu Weijing's presence here."

"That's not necessarily true."

Someone said casually.

"Gu Weijing was in the multimedia classroom last month. When the class was over, we were walking out of the teaching building and happened to meet Miss Elena passing by. I heard Gu Weijing casually greet her, as if the two knew each other very well."

"So?" The black guy shrugged, "What do you want to say?"

"No, what I want to say is - Miss Elena ignored him and didn't even look at him."
-
E3-6 teaching building.

A private classroom.

Unlike traditional centralized teaching buildings, the Academy of Fine Arts is scattered across various parts of the city of Hamburg.

The school allocates teaching space to each department according to the type of studio, and each studio is like a private castle.

Each professor is the king of the castle. Apart from large public courses, their small classes usually have less than ten students, and sometimes only five or six. But a classroom like this one, with only one teacher and one student, is very rare in the entire art academy.

"…those who are good at painting are also good at calligraphy. Calligraphy and painting are one and the same. As I have said before, for Chinese painting, calligraphy and painting are inseparable…"

The classroom is about 30 square meters, small, beautiful, and warm. There is a wooden floor and a light red wooden desk by the windowsill. Two comfortable sofas are placed in the open space in the middle of the classroom. The floor was waxed not long ago. The sunlight shines on the wooden floor, creating shimmering waves, and the shimmering waves are mixed with the very special aroma of Longjing tea and good ink gradually drying on rice paper, which is warm and intoxicating.

This was a very sleepy afternoon.

Both sofa chairs in the room were empty.

The professor and the only young student stood beside the light red wooden table. The professor held a pen in his hand, and the student stood aside and looked at it very seriously.

Next to the desk was an open copy of "Famous Paintings of All Ages".

Cao Xuan did not let Gu Weijing sign up for the large class he taught. Instead, the two of them took two small classes privately every week. The content of the class was also very simple, which was the book "Famous Paintings of All Ages".

When the old man gave his first class to his students, he specifically brought up "Records of Famous Paintings of All Ages".

result.

The painting textbook Cao Xuan chose for Gu Weijing was still Zhang Yanyuan's Records of Famous Paintings of All Dynasties. This seemed quite strange, and Gu Weijing was confused on the first day of their class.

The old man smiled.

He told Gu Weijing that "Records of Famous Paintings of All Ages" has a milestone significance in the entire history of Chinese painting. It runs through the history of painting from the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and collects painting theories of many famous art connoisseurs of previous generations including Gu Kaizhi and Xie He. Its importance and significance are beyond doubt.

When I taught the first class for Gu Weijing, I mentioned its shortcomings from a critical perspective, not intending to criticize it from a condescending perspective.

First of all, I need to remind myself that when painting, I should always have enough warmth.

Secondly.

The purpose of the first lesson is to tell Gu Weijing that even the views in a famous work like "Famous Paintings of All Ages" are by no means entirely correct.

same--

Then, when Cao Xuan was taking classes with Gu Weijing, his opinions and conclusions might be quite wrong. Everyone has their own cognitive limitations. Since we are learning and studying, and since our goal is to create something unique, it is necessary to always show a rational suspicion of authority.

Children are never the product of copy and paste of their parents.

The same is true for the mentor-apprentice relationship.

Gu Weijing should have understood the purpose of the class from the beginning. Cao Xuan's private lessons were not to make Gu Weijing more and more like the second Cao Xuan, but to make Gu Weijing more and more like a better version of himself.

The old man also used the book "Famous Paintings of All Ages" as teaching material.

This is to tell Gu Weijing that since he is doing academic research and taking classes, then in addition to being skeptical, he should always maintain a respectful and humble attitude towards academic research and knowledge.

A solid knowledge base is the basis for expressing cautious skepticism.

After arriving in Hamburg, Cao Xuan did not ask Gu Weijing to draw a complete sketch in class for a whole semester, let alone teach Gu Weijing how to paint.

In the past, when Professor Lin Tao taught online courses, he would help Gu Weijing sort out the problems in his works bit by bit and tell him where he needed to improve in terms of penmanship, lines, and ink color.

When the old man taught face to face, he never mentioned these aspects.

He only asked Gu Weijing to do one thing.

Expo.

Read "Famous Paintings of All Ages".

Read a book extensively - it sounds like a strange statement.

Read widely, read widely. How can one read widely just a single book?
Gu Weijing had heard of the title of "Famous Paintings of All Ages" before. Some scholars said it was the "Historical Records" of art, and Mr. Cao also made such a request. He just thought that "Famous Paintings of All Ages" would be a work of great volume, which would take hundreds or thousands of hours to read.

Not to mention one book, it is a whole 24 history.

At the very least, it should be like Sima Qian's "Records of the Grand Historian", with a magnificent 500,000 words.

When he really got the book in his hands, Gu Weijing realized that he was wrong again.

"Famous Paintings of All Ages" is very short, with a total of three volumes. Excluding the general introduction in the first chapter, the second chapter begins with Gu Kaizhi and Wei Xie, discussing paintings of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and ends with the tenth chapter on painters during the Tianbao period represented by Wang Wei. The entire text is less than 5 words. If you read it quickly, you can finish it in a few hours.

It's more of a pamphlet than a book.

But he actually spent hundreds and thousands of hours on this booklet.

Cao Xuan and Gu Weijing worked on it for a whole semester.

In the first six months after arriving in Hamburg, Gu Weijing spent one-third of his free time every week reading "Famous Paintings of All Ages".

The 50,000-word booklet became more and more popular as he read it.

"Famous Paintings of All Ages" is not just a book, it is a cookbook - this is what Yang Dekang said.

once.

He met Lao Yang at school and mentioned this incident. Yang Dekang said to him: "Have you heard of "Listing the Dishes"? It says that I will invite you to dinner and you will eat steamed lamb, steamed bear paws, steamed deer tails, roast duck, roast chicken, roast goose... It is easy to memorize all the names of the dishes. Everyone can do it. But if nothing else, knowing what each dish should look like is very difficult. Knowing how to cook it specifically is even more difficult. It is even more difficult to cook the dishes yourself and prepare a full banquet by yourself - it is extremely difficult."

"Do you know what 'finely researched and refined, with the intention to resemble the form' means? Do you know what 'painting Wangchuan on the wall of Qingyuan' means?"

Yang Dekang poked the sausage on the plate with a fork, looking extremely resentful.

No.

Brother Gu, you don’t know anything...you...you only know to let Miss Elena be your agent!
Ugh.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, just keep silent.

To be honest.

For ordinary people, memorizing "Menu of the Menu" itself is a difficult task, let alone memorizing a book of 50,000 words.

When Gu Weijing read the Records of Famous Paintings of All Ages again later, he came to the section about painters of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and saw Zhang Yanyuan's annotations, and realized that the so-called "meticulous study of dots and brushes, and the retention of meaning and resemblance of forms" was the summary of the brushstroke style of the Southern Dynasties painter Xie He by Yao Zui, a painting critic during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

It's the end of the winter semester.

The course finally entered the stage of studying Tang Dynasty painters, and Gu Weijing discovered that the seemingly strange and unpopular saying "Paintings on Qingyuan Temple and Wangchuan" mentioned by Lao Yang was actually referring to the murals of Wang Wei, which he was very familiar with. It was from Zhang Yanyuan's personal perspective that he believed that it was difficult for outsiders to copy the paintings to fully reach the level of the painters themselves.

In the story, Zhang Yanyuan always felt that Wang Wei's works were too simple and not clever enough, until one day he went to Qingyuan Temple and witnessed with his own eyes Wang Wei's works painted on the walls of the temple decades ago. He stood in front of the colorful and majestic Wangchuan on the mural for a long time and thought that Wang Wei was truly a master.

Therefore, Wang Wei was placed first by Zhang Yanyuan in this chapter.

Gu Weijing remained silent.

Edward Yang said it was easy to memorize “Menu of the Dishes”.

Perhaps this is true for Yang Dekang. Gu Weijing doubts that Yang can really memorize this entire book of famous paintings of various dynasties with tens of thousands of words like reciting the names of dishes.

Mr. Cao’s requirements are not limited to just naming the dishes.

Asking Gu Weijing to cook all the dishes made by his predecessors in the same way in his own pot is obviously asking too much.

It might be a little difficult to let Gu Weijing know how the dish is cooked.

At least, at least.

Cao Xuan hoped that after Gu Weijing finished studying the book "Famous Paintings of All Ages", he would be able to have a general understanding of what the main dish on the table should look like, as it spanned a thousand years from the Pre-Qin Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

This is what the old man calls an exposition.

This is also very difficult.

Knowing what a painting looks like should be a very simple thing. Just look at it!

Unfortunately.

Throughout the long history, too many ancient and precious works have been lost.

Take Gu Junzhi for example, the legendary pioneer of flower, bird, fish and insect paintings in traditional Chinese painting. All that remains today are the painter's quirk of painting only in clear weather and the historical allusion of "climbing the stairs".

So I can only look for literature.

The literature is often extremely mysterious and stingy.

Just like the eight words in the first half of what Lao Yang said, "The strokes are meticulously researched, and the meaning is retained in the form." These simple eight words, or dozens or even hundreds of words at a time, may be the complete summary of the essence of Xie He's life's work by art critics at the time.

And he may even be one of the most famous artists in the history of the Southern Dynasties.

Many of the works that have been handed down to this day are not originals, but copies of the originals by later generations, or even copies created based on copies. This touches on the paradox of the second half of Lao Yang's sentence - "Painting Wangchuan on the wall of Qingyuan".

Zhang Yanyuan has always felt that many of Wang Wei's works were a bit "dull".

I went to Qingyuan Temple to see the original murals, and then I exclaimed, "666, this is amazing."

There are too many uncertainties in the art form of copying, which is closely related to the painter's state of mind and the copier's own artistic level.

Yu Shinan and Feng Chengsu were both top calligraphers, and they copied Wang Xizhi's "Lanting Preface". The latter also used the secret technique of the Tang Dynasty imperial court, "double hook filling color", with several folds in one stroke and five layers of ink, trying to perfectly restore the changes in the ink color of the calligrapher. Today, both Yu Shinan's version and Feng Chengsu's "Shenlong version" are considered to be superb works in the evaluation of calligraphers in the past thousand years, and can be called the ultimate copy.

There is no difference between the two.

Yu Shinan excels in "spirit" and Feng Chengsu excels in "form".

And what is the highest evaluation of these two copies? - "Inferior to the originals."

Only the authentic ones are included.

There is still a category of authentic works.

One has spirit, the other has form, but it is very difficult to truly achieve 100% perfection in both form and spirit, so - it still needs to be authentic.

"Brother Yang is indeed well-educated." Gu Weijing couldn't help but admire him.

Cao Xuan's solution was to think.

In every class, he would pick out a painter and let Gu Weijing slowly think about what he thought the other person's work should look like.

(End of this chapter)