Almighty painter

Chapter 596 Two Works
The painting is very good, but this sudden participation in the Singapore Biennale...

Old Yang's expression turned cold.

He quit Twitter.

I opened the first report again and looked at the shiny bald head of Cui in the photo. The middle-aged man's mouth was almost turned up at the bird's butt in the air outside the window.

"Oh my, you old man, you are so rude! You are playing tricks with your brother Yang. It's not fair to do this in private. Do you really think that our teacher Yang can't control you?"

He stared at Da Cui's photo and smiled coldly.

Case solved.

correct.

The taste, the color, the texture...it tastes like there is dog shit hidden in the bun skin!
Have a look.

Lao Yang said that this matter smelled fishy.

He was such a sharp-minded person that he could tell at a glance that this drama was aimed at Gu Weijing.

Old Yang now feels as sick as if he had eaten dog shit.

He is angry!

Do not misunderstand.

Lao Yang likes to run errands for Gu Weijing; it's just his personality.

As long as he thinks the other party is valuable, he likes to help with some small favors that are free of charge as a value investment in the future.

This does not mean that he has to think from Gu Weijing's perspective.

The situation is unclear now.

Although Lao Yang was willing to help Gu Weijing.

But he himself couldn’t really explain it. From his perspective, should he hope that Gu Weijing won an award at the Singapore Biennale? Or should he hope that Gu Weijing didn’t win an award at the Singapore Biennale?
He would never tie himself to Gu Weijing.

Instead of helping Tang Ning to step on Gu Weijing, he was willing to secretly sell Xiao Hao.

As a middle-aged man who has been polished by society and looks smooth but has a lot of experience, I have great respect for this young man's amazing potential.

In this fight, Lao Yang was just a bystander who was waving flags and shouting 666 on one side of the octagon cage, wiping the sweat for the fighters on both sides, and trying to please everyone.

He has become the working king among assistants, and the most important period of struggle has passed.

Lao Yang only needs to study how to make himself look cool and pretend to be cool happily.

At the same time, consider how to better monetize your network in the future.

He no longer needs to bet his entire fortune and life on a young man, go all in, and wait for his bicycle to turn into a motorcycle. If he wins, he will get a young model from the club, and if he loses, he will go to work in the prostitute industry.

Even if he is not a top art middleman who has a lot of painter resources, earns 100 or 200 million yuan a year, and travels in a private jet, Lao Yang is definitely not a low-level worker who rides a bicycle.

At least our brother Yang is a guy who drives a convertible Porsche and wears a 600 Euro leather jacket, right?

Even though he was unwilling to put in any effort to help Gu Weijing, on the other hand, no matter how Tang Ning tempted him, Lao Yang never really took action to harm Gu Weijing.

Why bother playing such a big game?

He is so stingy.

I wouldn't take up such a risky investment where if I win I'll buy an island in the Pacific, but if I lose I'll lose my pants.

With more experience and a little more oil in the gears of his network, Lao Yang has his big villa by the sea, a big yacht next to the villa, and a bikini-clad young lady on the deck of the yacht.

They are all clearly in sight!
Tang Ning?

Gu Weijing?
Or other disciples.

no matter who.

Go fight, go contend.

If you want to gain the greatest benefit, you have to rob it with real weapons.

Whoever can stand on the boxing ring until the end will be the one to wear the gold belt, win this overwhelming wealth, and be the one to be licked by Lao Yang.

They deserve this.

But now? Wait.

Old Yang doesn't care whether Gu Weijing can really win the award in the end, or whether he can really become Cao's disciple.

He accepted both outcomes.

There are also ways to deal with it.

and so.

He originally didn't care too much whether a strong rival of Gu Weijing would suddenly appear at the exhibition and snatch the award opportunity that belonged to Gu Weijing.

It's all fate.

This kid is lucky enough. Even if he didn’t win the award, it’s not Old Yang’s fault.

But the essence of this matter is not whether Gu Weijing can win the award, but the other party's poor handling of the matter.

Cui Xiaoming wants to participate in the exhibition, but this is not the way to do it.

If this report appeared at the beginning of the year.

When Old Yang saw it, he didn't say a word.

He would only sigh and praise, "What a clever painting."

Maybe even considering that everyone is now in the German circle, a close neighbor is worse than a distant relative, so look for opportunities to actively do one or two favors for the other party and build up connections.

He also transplanted one or two more hybrid wheat grafted between China and Germany into the green little crop field in his heart.

These are all future resources!
Lao Yang loves to do this the most.

But it has been so long, and the Singapore Biennale has been postponed for a long time due to the epidemic, so it can be regarded as skipping one session.

Combine the resources of two sessions into one and a half.

A full four years passed in between.

During this period, Cui Xuanyou never had any intention of pushing his son to participate in the exhibition.

It's coming.

It was not until Cao Xuan made that phone call and told him that a junior who painted fusion paintings wanted to participate in the Singapore Art Exhibition and thought that his style would be a good match for the exhibition, so he asked if he could give him some advice.

What's the matter with you suddenly pushing your son to participate in the exhibition?

It’s okay to reject Mr. Cao.

It is human nature not to want to teach.

It's all your freedom. Even if Lao Yang feels unhappy, he can just complain a few more times at most.

But right after you answered the phone, you turned back to lie on the bed and thought, "Fuck, fusion painting and the Singapore Art Exhibition, this is really a good idea! Why didn't I think of it? Quick, ask Xiao Ming to participate in the exhibition. Instead of letting Cao Xuan's juniors take the limelight, how can it be better to let my own son take the limelight?"

During this period, I didn't even make a phone call to explain the situation.

This is your carelessness.

Doesn't this mean that Mr. Cao respectfully asked a question, but instead of asking the question, he caused trouble for his own juniors?

He roasted the old man over the fire.

Lao Yang is neither Tang Ning's assistant nor Gu Weijing's assistant.

He is Cao Xuan's assistant.

Therefore, he did not think about the problem from Tang Ning's perspective, nor did he think about the problem from Gu Weijing's perspective.

He was used to thinking about problems from Cao Xuan's perspective.

Mr. Cao Xuan is a magnanimous man and perhaps he doesn't care too much about these little thoughts that are not worth mentioning.

Even if Gu Weijing knew the inside story, he probably didn't have the courage to resent Mr. Cao for such a thing.

But Lao Yang cares.

This was more than just an insult to Cao Xuan; it was a slap in the face to Old Yang.

Angry ING.

"You don't do things properly, so you can't blame me, Old Yang, for being unfair. I want to teach you a lesson. Are you playing tricks? It's not that easy to push your son to win the award."

Old Yang scratched his chin. He chewed potato balls in big mouthfuls, as if he was chewing Cui Xuanyou's big bald head. He glanced at the screen of his mobile phone and pouted his lips again and again.

The overseas waiter who worked in the restaurant and had previously praised his nice jacket saw this scene and couldn't help but secretly took out his cell phone when he saw that the manager was not paying attention.

The screensaver photo above was taken by him last summer when he was working at a pet shelter. It shows a Chihuahua with shiny black and brown fur at the door.

He loves this fierce dog.

He looked at the screen saver, then looked at Lao Yang who was eating at the dining table.

That posture, that look, that greasy fur, that flirtatious way of scratching the chin at just the right moment—

"It's really like him...cool!"

When Old Yang got angry, even his appetite was poor.

He has no appetite today.

He only drank two glasses of dark beer, ate two fried duck breasts, four mustard eggs, a portion of braised beef in vinegar, twelve potato balls, and a small cake.

The remaining part of my stomach was already full from anger.

Old Yang didn't have the appetite to eat the last few German Thuringian black pepper sausages that were served.

Lose weight.

He asked the waiter to bring a lunch box, packed all the sausages, wiped his greasy mouth, picked up the car keys, and was too lazy to deal with the bird droppings in the car.

He simply opened the car door, got in, and opened the electric convertible.

Sunglasses area.

He started the car and drove towards the Academy of Fine Arts.

"The water is a bit deep."

While driving, Lao Yang was still thinking about the work of Cui Xiaoming that he had seen.

It is indeed a good painting.

But Lao Yang felt it was a bit strange.

He smacked his lips, as if something in his heart was touched.

It wasn’t Cui Xiaoming’s paintings that moved Lao Yang or touched him.

Instead, his "killer instinct" kicked in.

It's like a cowboy walking into an unfamiliar bar and preparing to have a good drink, when suddenly his instinct tells him something is wrong.

Perhaps it was the bar waitress's unusual hospitality that made him suspect that this was a shady shop.

Or maybe among the men gambling at the card table nearby, there were a few who looked exactly like his portrait on the bounty poster.

Anyway, my subconscious mind is ringing the bell in my heart.

"Ding Dong!"

Reminding him that there was another way, the cowboy unconsciously grasped the handle of the Smith & Wesson revolver in the holster.

What's the problem?

Old Yang pinched the steering wheel and smacked his lips, and suddenly... he stepped hard on the brakes.

The convertible stopped on the street.

He knew what was wrong, why he kept thinking about Cui Xiaoming's painting. The unfinished painting, the creative ideas, the artistic philosophy, were clearly similar to the Korean artist Bai Huainan's "Television Buddha".

This is also what is said in the introduction below the official tweet.

But... deep down, the idea of ​​the inclined triangle composition, the light treatment at the junction of light and dark, the use of religious elements, and the style of the entire painting all reminded Lao Yang of another work.

That one, "Good Luck Orphanage in the Sun" by Gu Weijing.

Like.

It's so similar.

From the outside, these two paintings seem to be completely unrelated and are two works that are completely different.

But deep down...how could they be so similar?

Normally speaking, the Biennale is an art competition and everyone goes there to win a prize.

Painters all hope to keep their works hidden and not show them to the public until the last moment.

It is quite counterintuitive that Cui Xiaoming stood in front of his unfinished painting to take interview photos for the Lion City Biennale.

There are similar things.

It usually only occurs in two situations.

One is that the painter's painting style is too special, his techniques are too good, and he is very confident in his own creativity.

He believed that even if his opponents saw it, they would not be able to copy it, so it did not matter at all. He just wanted to leak some news in advance to increase exposure and attention.

The second is the opposite, he...he is the one who plagiarized and is anxious to get his work out.

The industry is tired of this trick.

Legend has it that hundreds of years ago, when oil painters were competing with each other in the Paris Salon, some would secretly look at other people's paintings, then paint them overnight and show them to critics and scholars of the society first.

Caravaggio and Baglio have been arguing for centuries about whether they plagiarized ideas and who plagiarized whom.

According to rumors, Picasso also liked to take a look at other people's works, learn the essence of them, and then paint them himself and hold exhibitions.

He was even called a "professional copyist" in the French art world at that time.

Or, a simpler example.

Things like plagiarism in art are a bit like the academic community's rush to publish papers.

The first person who takes it out gains both fame and fortune, has everything he wants, and is sought after by others. The second person who gives it out is often worthless.

This kind of thing is difficult to investigate, or even impossible to investigate.

Many scholars firmly believe that the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by Nobel Prize winners Watson and Crick was plagiarized from the contribution of British scholar Rosalind Franklin next door. Some professors engaged in the study of the history of science even directly defined it as "the ugliest plagiarism of creativity in the history of science, a dirty trick."

But many people have come forward to provide evidence to support this view.

It is very likely that people will never know the truth of the matter again.

The most serious and rigorous scientific disciplines, such as the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, are shrouded in the shadow of plagiarism.

When it comes to the field of art, "creativity" is such an ethereal and intangible thing.

It will always be a confusing matter as to who copied whom.

The standard is that whoever takes it out already owns it.

Based on Cui Xiaoming's painting direction.

Given the unique way he painted that picture, both possibilities are possible.

Most people, including the judges, would probably think it is the first one, which is Cui Xiaoming's confidence in his unique painting idea of ​​combining East and West.

But Lao Yang felt that there was something wrong here.

Not right.

Cui Xiaoming... He must have seen Gu Weijing's painting "Good Luck Orphanage in Yangon" somewhere.

There is no evidence to support Lao Yang's idea.

The owners of these two paintings, one from the East and the other from the West, are a world apart, and the contents of their works are also a world apart.

Under no circumstances can anyone say that Cui Xiaoming plagiarized.

But that’s what Lao Yang really thought.

Arbitrary, preconceived, or...intuitive.

Just right.

Lao Yang's intuition has always been very accurate.

Bang!
The local dog smelled something fishy and twitched its nose. The greasy middle-aged cowboy pulled out his pistol and shot right at the bull's eye of the problem.

Normally.

Even if Gu Weijing put his works on the streets and shouted them out to the world, in Myanmar, a chaotic and little-appreciated "art desert", his works would still not be appreciated.

Regardless of whether this "art desert" is Eurocentric discrimination, it is objectively difficult to hype up the works of Cui Xiaoming, a second-generation painter from Berlin.

The only possibility is the promotion by caring people.

How could a work that was only circulated in a very small circle coincidentally appear in front of Cui Xiaoming, a "just right" competitor?

If this matter is really as he thought...

"That's really interesting."

Lao Yang put the car into gear again, stepped on the accelerator, and the sports car sped towards the end of the street towards the sunshine.

"Mr. Cao, Mr. Cao, something happened!"
-
Hamburg is modeled after the Suzhou garden "Chaxuanju".

The song ends.

The record player with automatic changer moved the needle to the second disc, which was an album by Paul Robeson, a black bass singer from the 1940s.

This set of records only has six records, and they are the early single-sided records.

Each record can only record one song.

First came "Old Man River", the classic theme song of the musical "Show Boat", then "Freedom Song" and "St. Louis Blues"... When it came to the last one, it was an extremely familiar tune that played from the speakers in the record player.

"Arise, You who refuse to be bond slaves!"

"Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves."

The deep and simple voice of a black bass came out from the loudspeaker, and listening to the tune, it turned out to be the famous "March of the Volunteers".

Cao Xuan can still remember the background of this album.

Forties.

Although the United States officially joined World War II with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, MGM Studios produced a series of films to praise the heroes who fought desperately against the brutal enemy on the battlefields of the Soviet Union, Britain and China in order to pay tribute to the anti-fascist alliance in World War II.

Among them, the Chinese version of the anti-Japanese movie is the famous "Dragon Seed".

Oscar winner Walter Huston plays the farmer Tan Lin, and Hollywood Queen Katharine Hepburn, one of the greatest actresses in Western film history, plays the heroine Xiaoyu.

When the plot reached its climax and Xiaoyu destroyed the Japanese devils' headquarters, this passionate variation of "March of the Volunteers" sounded.

Its English name is "Arise".

When people get old.

It is easier to recall the past.

War is a strange thing.

It is so ugly, violent and cruel, but it can also highlight the noblest, bravest and most heroic side of human nature.

It is a life-and-death struggle between good and evil, angels and demons, freedom and oppression.

From Asia, Europe, America, to Africa.

From the Chinese battlefield to the Soviet-German battlefield, and then to the Pacific battlefield.

From the rural areas of northern Shaanxi to Stalingrad and then to Midway Island, across race, region and ideology, the people of the world united together and fought shoulder to shoulder.

This is human heroism.

There are many kinds of heroism in the world.

Orchid (Alan), the eldest daughter-in-law in "Dragon Seed", took the initiative to leave the shelter to protect her two children when the movie showed the Japanese army carrying out the inhumane Nanjing Massacre, wantonly burning, killing, raping and looting. She attracted the attention of the Japanese army and was brutally tortured to death by the Japanese army.

Her husband held her bruised body and spoke loudly to everyone in grief, telling them that although his wife Alan was just a rough, illiterate peasant woman, she was extremely brave and heroic in protecting her children with her life, and was a "real hero" in the world.

Cao Xuan knew that the last part of the speech inevitably had some of the directness of American thinking and lacked the implicit expression of grief of a simple old oriental farmer.

Great sorrow is silent.

When faced with ultimate grief and ultimate anger, it is difficult for the old farmer to express the eloquent extroversion of Roosevelt when he gave a recruitment speech in front of the television.

But what does it matter?

An unarmed peasant woman fought against the devilish enemy with her life and heroically protected her children.

Needless to say.

This is certainly true heroism.

The farmer, who was honest at the beginning and just wanted to survive, finally awakened to the brutal nature of the Japanese devils and wanted to fight. He was extremely brave and realized that he must drive the Japanese army out of China without giving up an inch of land. In the end, he became a true anti-Japanese fighter.

This is of course also a kind of heroism.

The emotions that are truly penetrating are the most common emotions and the emotions that can most resonate with people's hearts.

It will not fade because of changes in artistic form or expression, because of Eastern or Western thinking, because of whether the writer is Eastern or Western, because of whether the performer or the singer has black hair and black eyes, or blonde and blue eyes, or has yellow skin or black skin.

It is always moving.

Even an Oriental like Cao Xuan will still be moved when seeing the American-style expressions in "Dragon Seed".

When "Dragon Seed" was released, Americans still stood up excitedly and applauded when they listened to "March of the Volunteers" composed by a black singer and written by Tian Han and Nie Er for "Children of Storms", which was based on the prototype of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army.

Because the hearts are connected, it is touching.

Cao Xuan didn't have any classes this afternoon. After lunch, he just randomly picked an album and put it on the record player.

He has been a record lover since he was a child.

What kind of education did Mr. Cao receive and what kind of cultural resources did he have? He had been listening to jazz and playing the saxophone there since the 1930s.

He maintained his hobby of listening to records throughout his life.

Today, there are more than 5000 record collections in his personal study alone. It may be a bit of an exaggeration to say that he is one of the leading record collectors in the Eastern Hemisphere, but in the whole of Hamburg, the hometown of musicians Mendelssohn and Brahms, perhaps no one has more music record collections than Cao Xuan.

It was just a random coincidence that I got this Paul Robeson album.

However, at this moment, Cao Xuan, who was wearing reading glasses and holding a tablet computer, thought that this coincidence was just right.

Everything is just right.

He dragged the photo on the screen with his skinny fingers, and couldn't help but purse the corners of his mouth.

Gu Weijing made rapid progress.

to be frank.

Cao Xuan thought about how Gu Weijing would be able to win an award at the Singapore Biennale. He had met too many talented young people in his life.

But he really didn't think about it——

He can send a work like this.

"Mr. Cao, old man, are you in the study?"

Just at this moment, there was a knock on the door.

(End of this chapter)