Almighty painter

Chapter 381 The Way of Realism

"KIH... uh, is it the Federation of Hamburg Artists?"

Gu Weijing thought about it in his mind for a moment.

Only then did he successfully match the letters KIH in Vattel's mouth, President, with the abbreviation of the Hamburg Artists Association - "Kunstverein in Hamburg".

The names of art associations in various countries are often long tongue twisters based on different regions and historical traditions, and the official names often change throughout history.

For example, the early official name of the Royal Society of Arts, RSA, was the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing and Commerce. Therefore, in conversations, people would often use the acronym to unify the abbreviation.

The Hamburg Artists Association is mentioned much less often and less often than the Royal Artists Association.

So Gu Weijing needed to think for a few seconds before he realized what it meant.

but.

It was only a few seconds.

"Is this the most powerful artist association in Germany?"

Germany is one of the traditional European art powers.

Logically speaking, after the merger of the two Germanys, the most influential art organization should be the BVDG (Bundes of German Galleries and Art Dealers), the organizer of Art Cologne, one of the world's five top art exhibitions.

But I know it from the name.

This is actually a joint organization between art dealers and the German Cultural Council. It is also responsible for judicial investigations into some illegal art counterfeiting, smuggling, and money laundering.

There is little direct connection with the painters.

Secondly, there are the independent artists’ associations in each city.

"Mr. Cao Xuan seems to be a member of this association."

He remembered that when Mr. Cao Xuan went to the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts to serve as the department director, he followed the locals and registered his name in the local Artists Association.

It seems that he is still its art consultant now.

Even if Mr. Cao did not serve in it, Gu Weijing would not be unfamiliar with the name KIH.

Every Dewey student who has studied Western art history will be familiar with the fact that it is one of the top art associations with the largest scale and the most far-reaching influence among all similar institutions in Germany and even Europe.

Hamburg has left a mark on the history of European art.

The artistic heart of most European countries is their capital.

Amsterdam is to the Netherlands, London is to the UK, Vienna is to Austria.

The French are the best at engaging in regional discrimination.

Although equality and tolerance are the cultural traditions of France, the old revolutionary base, they may not be too discriminatory against foreigners, but they like to fight among themselves.

Until the 20th century, Parisian artists looked at provincial artists. To be precise, all Parisians looked at provincials like they looked at orangutans from the Stone Age.

Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas, Maupassant... in the after-dinner literary readings of that generation of Parisians, whenever a rich and uncultured bumpkin appeared, they usually had to sarcastically say it for several pages, emphasizing repeatedly that this guy must be a nouveau riche bumpkin from another place. The rich man came to Paris to broaden his horizons and see the world, but he was definitely not an old Parisian born and raised like us!

The only exception is Germany, which has no obvious art center.

If you want to do rock music, you can go to Berlin. In terms of painting art, Hamburg and Munich are both good in the south and north. In terms of artistic atmosphere, the latter may be better, but because it happened to be an important art propaganda base for a certain head of state, it has historical baggage.

Hamburg has a long history.

Coincidentally, similar to its Russian counterparts, Hamburg's modern art culture also originated in 1812, the year of Napoleon's defeat.

Well, it’s not a coincidence anymore.

Two hundred years ago, when the Cossack cavalry brandished their sabers and galloped across the snowy fields, howling and slashing people, the great nobles of Hamburg were on the same side as they were slashing and slashing.

Yes, they are all allies of the French army.

When a whale falls, all things are born.

As the anti-French coalition invaded Germany, Hamburg became one of the thirty-nine autonomous states stipulated by the Congress of Vienna.

In books, historical materialism tells us.

As the old feudal royal and aristocratic rule was swept away, artistic creation from citizen life would flourish. Hamburg soon had its first artists' association. When the Berlin Artists Association was born, the Hamburg Artists Association had already developed and matured in the wind, rain, and snow.

Today, like Vienna, it is still an important art city in the center of Europe.

The leadership of the Hamburg Art Association is a very influential and important figure in the art circle.

Determine the value of a foreign artists' association.

The easiest way is to check the official website to see if there are enough art masters in their membership list, and you can make a simple judgment.

The quality of the Artists Association is too watery.

Even if any of the great painters were born and raised in the local area, they would not be happy to have their names listed in the membership, as they would despise it and lower their style.

Easily affect personal brand value.

in contrast.

If an art association is very influential and can bring enough benefits to a painter's career, then everyone will want to have a name in it and be proud of being a member or academician of it.

The French Academy of Arts and the Royal Society of Arts are both in this category.

They are all from the Artists Association.

The atmosphere of the Yangon Painting and Calligraphy Association's grass-roots team is obvious.

Not to mention the official website, there is not even a Wikipedia entry. At first glance, it looks like some deceptive pheasant association. They can only hire painters like Gu Weijing's grandfather Gu Tongxiang to serve as the association's consultants.

At the beginning of the year, masters gathered for the Shwedagon Pagoda project.

I've come here, but I haven't heard of anyone who is happy to be a part-time foreign member of their calligraphy and painting association. Old man Wu was also wondering if he could hold a ceremony and take the initiative to dress up as a few honorary members to increase the association's value.

Even if I take a few handshake photos and hang them on the wall of the store?

It's also good to make customers think that they don't know what's going on.

As a result, the Yangon Tourism Bureau thought that people might reject it directly, which would be disrespectful to the country, so they slapped Old Man Wu back for trying to act like a monster.

And the Hamburg Artists Association. You can directly hire a super painter like Cao Xuan, whose paintings at auction cost more than 10 million US dollars, to become a formal consultant of the association.

The influence of the members is great, and the influence that the association can exert will naturally increase with the tide.

The permanent director of the Yangon Artists Association, like Grandpa Wu next door, who is content to eat oranges from the government all day long, reimburse his private car gas card, and travel with public funds every year, is not the same concept.

These well-known European artists' associations are very powerful.

in tradition.

The governing structure of the association from the beginning often includes city officials and mayors themselves to provide power and protection.

A wealthy local business tycoon and old-school collector serves as the patron.

The most respected and prestigious artists or curators, as well as the directors of major art museums, serve as presidents and jointly decide the development direction of the association.

Forming a solid triangle of power-art-wealth support.

Perhaps not as much as the leader and patron of each generation of the Royal Society of Arts was the King or Queen of Britain.

But they all hold real wealth in their hands, and the real power to make people famous.

These artists' associations are not just an art association. They have their own art exhibitions with a long history, their own foundations, regular large-scale association art exhibitions and the power to hold individual exhibitions for outstanding members of the association.

Solo exhibition!

For 99.99% of the world’s art practitioners, it is a word that is destined to be so high-level that they cannot touch it.

That pheasant show doesn't count.

A serious solo exhibition requires a huge team and funds, dedicated to serving the painter himself. Every solo exhibition is a gilding and improvement of resume.

In the contract signed between Ma Shi Gallery and Gu Weijing, the ultimate reward that made Shengzi’s mother jealous was a personal exhibition in Abu Dhabi.

The Hamburg Artists Association has such financial resources and influence to open solo exhibitions for their outstanding members.

Also.

They also have good long-term cooperative relationships with various important art museums in Europe, and even Documenta, which is as influential and famous as the Venice Biennale.

That is to say, it is a non-profit art organization in name, and there is no strong contract to tie their members together for their own use.

otherwise.

Gallery giants such as Mas Gallery, Leeson, and Gagosian are only considered small galleries for younger generations in front of these artists' associations.

"Deo is a close relative."

"After World War II, the third chairman of Oil Painting magazine made a bet with the Art Association of Hamburg at that time. To be precise, it was an extremely generous promise, a promise to boost the spirit of artists at that time. You You know, the land after the war is in great need of something like that."

Munich was the art base for the German army’s cultural and artistic propaganda during the war.

As a famous failed art student, Mustache has been burning with "different passion" for art throughout his life.

Naturally, a certain head of state would not let go of Hamburg, another city of art, but it was just slightly better than Munich, which could hardly wash away its sinful undertones.

According to the current official propaganda, KIH had no choice but to fall under the control of the German military regime during the war.

A large number of famous artists of the time were persecuted.

This is already a very nice statement.

Not nice to say.

The leadership of KIH at that time had always maintained close contact with Mustache and were Goebbels' important artistic assistants. They plundered and collected more than hundreds of thousands of "degenerate works of art" from various countries.

After more than seventy years of various pursuits.

Until a few years ago, when the tax department conducted a surprise inspection on a private apartment in Munich owned by the old chairman's son, they still found another 1400 famous paintings that had been looted during the war.

"You have to stand upright after being beaten. Post-war German local art has carried a lot of baggage. Ms. Miller, the new president of KIH, invited "Oil Painting" who played an important role in sheltering artists who were under residential surveillance and persecuted during World War II. Chairman, came to Hamburg to give a speech."

"It is well known that the more annoying a mustache is and the more persecutory its opponent is, the better its reputation will be after the war."

"The chairman was thrown into prison three times, twice considered for execution as a political prisoner, and even his family members in exile in Switzerland were once on the Gestapo's assassination list. Can you imagine that such a person survived until the war? How will you be received?"

"I can guess some." Gu Weijing nodded.

"The biographer said that he was the Churchill of the art world. The old man was once a director of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, while the mustache was not even qualified to enter the school, but the other party liked to talk about art all his life."

Gu Weijing remembered the jokes he had read in online forums.

"Some people say that as long as he is alive, that mustache is talking about the connection between German art and Germanic nationality. When he pretends to be a cultural person, whenever he thinks of that face, he will remember that he is actually just a guy who didn't even go to college. A failed art student. When he was blaming Fang Qiu on the European battlefield, his artistic heart of inferiority still stung Adolf."

"Perhaps he could make the whole of Europe bow his head and throw all the artists who did not obey him into concentration camps and special prisons of the Gestapo, but the whole of Europe also knows that he was imprisoned in both 1907 and 1908. The school ruthlessly rejected him, thinking that he was not qualified to study there. That is the past and regret that Adolf’s classmate can never change.”

"Maybe, thinking about what the chairman has done, compared to Churchill in the art world, I feel more like Schindler in the art world. Of course, "Schindler's List" will not be released for another half century. In 1946 In the spring and autumn of that year, the old chairman's reputation was far higher than that of Schindler himself, and he was much more famous."

Watter smiled.

"Listen to my grandpa. In the 1940s and 1950s, that old man's reputation almost reached its peak in the art world. Especially in Germany, because of its shameful history, every art association wanted to invite him to give a lecture. ——'As if from the saint' you can buy enough things to atone for your sins."

The sketch teacher made a gesture with his hands as if he were counting indulgences.

"This is not an exaggerated metaphor. If he were a priest or a bishop, after his death the Holy See might really discuss canonizing him or something. When Richard came to Hamburg to preach, he spoke with President Miller had some differences of opinion.”

"The chairman believes that classical art will never die. Impressionism is just another inheritance and interpretation of classical aesthetics. Painters still have to return to the technique of brush and ink."

"President Miller of KIH is a supporter of another school of classical art theory. She believes that since the birth of the camera, the improvement and development of techniques... cannot be said to be useless, but it is not as important as before. Beyond the conventional The form of creation is the future direction of art development. For example, Picasso, who was already the leading painting master at that time, is a very strong evidence."

"The two people argued endlessly and finally made a bet. They bet on whether the next watercolor master of realistic art would appear."

"President Miller took out a watercolor painting "Berlin Palace", which is a masterpiece of Menzel's paintings."

"There is an old saying in the German collecting community. Every capable man should collect a piece of Menzel's work and put it in his living room."

""Berlin Palace" is the most important personal collection of President Miller and a representative work of realistic art. At that time, it was worth approximately 400 million Reichsmarks, the price of a Rolls-Royce."

(End of this chapter)