Almighty painter

Chapter 221 Development route and "The Little Prince" rewriting

Illustrators and serious painters are two industries that are highly similar but not the same in essence.

Illustrators are like slobbering singers, pursuing an easy-to-understand sinking market, and their highest ideal is to become a popular cultural symbol.

The most profitable illustrator is KAWS, who takes the trendy brand and makes art toys.

Every year, millions of co-branded light luxury products are sold worldwide, earning dozens of dollars per item, and hundreds of millions of dollars in net income.

Among the people who bought the KAWS joint name.

Has a large number of non-trend art lovers.

They don't even know what trend art is. The connotation of KAWS artistic symbols is something that nine out of ten can't understand, but under the influence of religious fanatic atmosphere and social popular environment, it will naturally bring about a circle-breaking effect.

Essentially top-notch illustrators hope that their work will be brainwashed like "Little Apple" by Chopstick Brothers.

From kindergarten children to square dancing aunts, it doesn't matter if you like it or not, you can hum "You are my little apple" anyway.

The bottom of the coolies in this industry sell cheap illustrations online.

The middle and high-level earn money from publishing houses, game companies, and film and animation distributors.

And the top bigwigs earn directly the dividends of mass traffic.To achieve the goal of "everyone in the world gives me one dollar, and I will be a rich man".

A serious painter is a composer who conducts a classical symphony in a golden hall, pursuing timeless works that can overcome time.

They hope to establish a school and conquer art history with epoch-making works of art.

The market for illustrations goes down, while the market for artists represented by serious galleries goes up.

The more money you make, the more high-end you are, the easier it is to be mediocre.

You don't need billions of people to know you, you don't need to consider any employer's opinion like an illustrator, and you don't need to draw too many works.

There is only one thing to do - to conquer the richest group of collectors with outstanding artistry.

Trendy artists who engage in trendy brands, no one knows his name, so they are thrown to death.

A serious painter who sells tens of millions of dollars of paintings every year is well-known in the industry, but he has never even heard of it outside the industry. It is really normal.

The great oil painters of the Renaissance often only cared about what the great nobles and senior priests thought. They were originally the servants of the upper class power.

Great painters usually have extremely low sales volume and extremely high unit prices.

A painter who can sell a record-breaking $1000 million for just one painting is more qualified than a painter who sells ten works for $100 million.A painter with an average price of tens of millions of dollars is more compelling than a painter who sells a hundred works of one million dollars.

Andy Warhol was able to become the darling of the "mythical" gallery back then, because he had a huge number of works, and the average selling price was comparable to that of Monet.

Sometimes, the distinction between the two professions becomes blurred and can be transformed into each other.

In classical music, there are also things like "Athlete's March" that sounded during the running time that every primary and middle school student hates.

Pop music Bob Dylan can also win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

However, taking Gu as the current development route choice,

He wisely judged that it was not a necessary choice to overlap the identity of the detective cat and the name Gu Weijing under the spotlight.

If I can win an award at the Singapore Art Exhibition and successfully become Mr. Cao Xuan's disciple.

He is a proper successor of the top "academic school", a serious painter with roots in Miaohong.

In the eyes of his potential audience in the future, being an illustrator is not necessarily a plus.

And more importantly - after the gallery heard the news, there was a high probability that the future agency contract would ask for a share of the money from its own illustration business.

Can provide little help.

Don't say anything else,

Ma Shi Gallery is of course very prestigious among collectors, but its service groups are different. It is not possible to get a high-quality contract like "The Little Prince" from the publishing house.

"The gallery side promises to package and promote the artist... and has exclusive rights, and the geographical area of ​​agency includes all countries and regions around the world..."

Gu Weijing read the contract.

It is completely expected to see this kind of clause. Ma Shi Gallery has been in this industry for nearly 100 years, and it is impossible for there to be any obvious loopholes left.

"What is an exclusive right?" Gu Weijing asked.

"Exclusivity, uniqueness, whatever you want to say, after signing the contract, you can't work for other galleries, you can't be a joint agent with other galleries, you can't submit manuscripts for consignment. Note, it is any other gallery, ugly words, you give your own calligraphy and painting Publication of contributions is also not allowed. In principle, you are also not allowed to participate in art exhibitions, academic conferences and art competitions held by any other gallery.”

Hanks shrugged, "However, if necessary, you can obtain the written consent and authorization of Ma Shi Gallery in advance. We don't mind too much if we have a way to go to other houses for exposure."

"Only the gallery?"

"Only the gallery? Other than that, what else..." Hanks suddenly thought about it with some vigilance, "It is not allowed to go to the auction company without permission! There are appendices behind the detailed rules and contract."

"You want to be Hearst, it's still a little far away." He curled his lips half as a joke, half as a warning. "You want to hold a special auction secretly, and you don't have a serious auction house to undertake it."

Regarding the restrictions on auctions, it was an urgent contract that Ma Shi Gallery made up after 08.

In the industry, the term "exclusive agent" in the original painter's contract, in the past half century, has often and only restricted painters from cooperating with competing galleries and other dealers.

No restrictions except for the gallery.

This is the only way for painters to realize their works of art in the general sense in the social concept.

Just pinch the source.

As a rule, painters cannot go directly to auction companies, and auction companies are not allowed to bypass galleries and primary dealers to cooperate with artists themselves.

This is a common unspoken rule in the industry. No one will do it. It is a bad rule and does not conform to the healthy development of the industry.

Even top galleries such as Ma Shi, PACE, and Gagosian.

The content of the contract is also quite similar.

Until 2008, Hirst bypassed his agent gallery Gagosian at the time, and directly persuaded Sotheby’s executives to hold an unprecedented auction with “no intermediary to make the difference”, which probably sold for more than 2 million pounds. s work.

This violation of market rules almost shocked the entire art world.

The industry’s evaluation of Hearst’s matter is mixed, and various half-truths and half-false behind-the-scenes news of this transaction have been circulated for more than ten years, and there are many opinions.

There is a very marketable argument that this auction is one of the important triggers for Hirst and Gagosian, who has worked together for many years, to announce their breakup.

Immediately after the incident, Mashi Gallery added relevant "anti-Hearst" clauses to his template contract.

Why doesn’t the gallery have a simple sentence in the contract, so that all the artists’ future commercial endorsements, IP peripherals, and even the commercial ownership of future trendy designs and all possible peripheral rights and interests must be taken away?
Not that the gallerist is kind.

It's because it's not the middle ages, and it's not a contract of sale, which is regulated by relevant laws.

This kind of general overlord clause, after being sued to the court, will it be difficult to say whether the risk of being judged invalid by the judiciary is uncontrollable because of the use of vague clauses in the contract law to control the final interpretation right or it is obviously unfair. .

The small money the painter earns secretly is not appreciated by the gallery.

A painter who can earn a lot of money secretly can also afford a luxurious team of lawyers.

At that time, there will be lawsuits for such a treaty.

The Calder case, the Jeff Koons Gallery case, the Henri Matisse Foundation v. Warren case, all have similar convictions.

Some have obtained results after lengthy litigation, and more often, in the face of rising lawyers, both parties in the litigation can no longer play and reach an out-of-court settlement agreement.

A large gallery like Ma Shi Gallery is more willing to clearly list what the artist can and cannot do, responsibilities and rights before signing.

"Ma'am, this share is too high, I really can't give such a contract..." Hanks didn't take Gu Weijing's question too seriously, and turned to Mrs. Sakai.

"How about this, put our quotation here, you go back to think about it at night, and find someone who can make the decision." Mrs. Sakai suggested.

After Hanks thought about it, he simply stopped struggling.

He came today with the expectation of "finding ignorant old farmers in the countryside of Yangon to buy cheap ownerless donkeys".

Hanks also only brought money to buy the mud-legged donkey cub.

When he found out that Miss Sakai was riding on this little donkey, and the buttocks were covered with the marks of two great artists, Professor Sakai and Lin Tao.

Regardless of whether the transaction can be concluded,

This is no longer an ordinary hunter agent like Hanks who can make a decision. He really needs to call his superiors for instructions.

Gu Weijing found the appendices behind the dozens of contracts.

He glanced at it roughly.

The requirements are very detailed, including auctions, tax declarations, and even small things such as the gallery paying the exhibition fee and the painter's need to pay an additional 5% of the sales share if he can participate in high-end sales exhibitions such as international art fairs in the future.

However, there are no restrictions on cooperation with publishers.

Serious painters in galleries make money by illustrating books for publishing houses. There is no precedent in the industry.

Theoretically, according to the restrictions of this contract, my future projects like "The Little Prince" should not be subject to commission...

Should be like this?
Gu Weijing originally wanted to ask Hanks clearly about illustrations.

He was also afraid that he would be self-defeating, because he didn't have the corresponding conditions.As soon as I mentioned it myself, people added it when they went back.

Anyway, it seems that I can't sign today.

Gu Weijing felt that he should also discuss this kind of matter with Mr. Sloth.

……

"Dear Madam, the two steaks you ordered, Chef Gordon confessed that if you are willing to sign and take a photo on the wall at the entrance of the restaurant, this meal can be free for you."

The waiter in a white uniform brought a fried golden meringue-wrapped steak to the table on a white porcelain plate, and said softly.

"Wherever you go, you are so eye-catching, little Anna." Osborne joked, taking a sip of the sparkling champagne lightly.

In the traditional impression, London is known as the capital of dark cuisine, but it has the highest density of high-end restaurants on the Michelin and Black Pearl lists in the world.

Among them, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay is one of the most famous.

Its owner, Gordon Ramsay, the Scottish hell chef, once ranked in the top ten in the selection of the most attractive men in the UK, and has more than 5000 million followers on Douyin, Youtube and Twitter.

The restaurant is even more non-committal.

Anna glanced at the publicity boards on the porch not far away, which were covered with various autographed photos, including superstars like Tom Cruise and Ronaldo.

"Didn't Mr. Ramkey's restaurant only invite public figures with millions of fans to sign autographs?"

"Your videos have been played more than [-] million times. Mr. Chef believes that if you are such an impressive beauty, as long as you are willing to open an account, you will have a million followers in a short time."

Men from corrupt countries are not as promiscuous as the French or Italians, but it is still a piece of cake to be a waiter in this kind of restaurant and flatter people casually.

"If it's convenient for you, ma'am, Mr. Chef would also like to invite you to participate in the recording of his next Douyin cooking class."

"Whenever I am interested in learning cooking, I will call Mr. Ramsay, just sign it." Anna shook her head politely and sent the waiter away.

"Well... don't you think about it?"

Osborne watched the waiter go away, and shook his head regretfully, "The signature Wellington steak here costs 89 pounds, but it's a pity that no one comes to ask for the autograph of a middle-aged man like me."

"My treat, Uncle Osborne." Anna said with a smile, "Thank you for your help."

She flew to London specially for this trip, just to see Osborne.

She promised Ms. Detective Cat that she could handle the change of the cover art.

In fact, there are many obstacles in the actual operation, which is far from being described by the word "difficult".

On the "Little Prince" project team, from top to bottom, there is no motivation to change the draft and rework.

After Anna sent a few emails, seeing little effect, she simply flew here from Austria and met President Osborne face to face.

It took her a lot of work to finalize the matter this afternoon.

"Well, I eat this meal with peace of mind. Anna, you don't know how troublesome this matter is. The entire project team complained. We were supposed to catch up with the Easter promotion schedule, and the time was very tight. It has already started. The production lines of the printing factory are all pre-booked. In fact, re-typesetting is still a trivial matter, and the printing teacher is going crazy."

Osborne smiled, "I stuck him in the office from last night to today, and asked him to revise the draft over and over again. Later, this poor guy became a little hysterical. I have no doubt that he wants to live in his heart." swallowed me."

The printing cost of art albums is several times higher than that of ordinary publications.

In addition to the cost of the paper itself, the most expensive thing is the color correction.

The two most common printing methods in the industry are monochrome printing or CMYK four-color printing.Monochrome printing is to print a book in pure black, the cheapest printing method.

And four-color printing,
C stands for cyan (Cyan), M stands for magenta (Magenta), Y stands for yellow (Yellow), K stands for black (Black), and all other colors are mixed and matched with these four base pigments. More than 90.00% of the color books I saw are in the CMYK four-color printing mode.

However, the expressiveness of an excellent artist's brushstrokes exceeds the coverage of four simple colors.

There will be problems that the gray is not gray enough, the blue is not blue enough, and the purple is not purple enough.

According to different storage conditions, storage period, ambient temperature and other factors, monochromatic pigments will also have color difference in printing, not only the artist's original painting is different.In mass printing, two different books drawn from different batches will also have slight color differences.

The problem of chromatic aberration and color cast is not serious. In order to lower the cost, many art albums are printed with CMYK four-color printing.

However, if the publisher's requirements are more demanding and the budget is sufficient, then there is a better choice, using special inks and special production lines for mimeographing.

Not only printing picture albums, but also printing currency will adopt a similar method, but printing in large quantities can dilute the cost.

In "Wu Shuang", the "color-changing ink" that Fa Ge worked out is a kind of special ink.

In addition to the ink, the printing and color correction teacher has to do fine-tuning manually, so that the final product can bring about the same effect as the printed document.

(End of this chapter)