Almighty painter

Chapter 637 Whale
There is a type of collector in the industry, called whales.

This term actually originated from Internet vocabulary.

Its original meaning refers to the fact that among the huge user base of an online game, there are often one or two super rich people among the top one ten-thousandth of players.

They are willing to spend huge amounts of money on virtual equipment in games, spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Such players only account for a small proportion of the total players, but the profits they bring to the entire game can even exceed the total of all the remaining ordinary players combined.

They are like the blue whale, the top creature in the ocean.

Entire ocean ecosystems revolve around them.

The profits generated by one or two Blue Whale players for an Internet company can cover the operating costs and labor expenses of the entire server.

Every Internet company will treat such a rich man as an ancestor, and will even set up a customer group within the company for such a player, providing him with 24-hour VIP one-to-one customer service to keep abreast of his feedback and needs for the game.

This concept also applies to the field of collecting.

There is a group of extremely generous wealthy people in the collecting world who spend astronomical amounts of money on various exhibitions and auction houses every year... truly astronomical amounts.

Those who buy one or two small-sized Monet paintings a year may not be classified into this circle. They can only be regarded as ordinary super-rich people. In the collecting world, they are not considered whale players.

If you want to be called a "Blue Whale", you may have to buy one or two works like "Water Lilies" a year on average.

Starting from tens of millions of dollars, there is no upper limit.

Apart from the fact that they are all extremely rich, it is difficult to classify these collectors into any unified user profile, just like whales have different habits.

Some people like avant-garde art, some prefer classical art, and some have been spending a fortune on traditional oil paintings for twenty years. There was once a famous British earl who married a wealthy woman and spent the equivalent of his American father-in-law's money on collecting romantic paintings.

Similarly, some people only love the spots of Pop Art and discard Romanticism as a worn-out shoe, thinking it is all outdated and boring art forms, and they would not spend a penny on it, and would not even accept it for free.

The whereabouts of these "big fish" are always talked about with great relish in the industry.

Some whales often hang out near the shore, like the famous whales in Sri Lanka that regularly jump out of the water in the bay.

Every time there is a big auction or art festival, people will excitedly glance at the VIP boxes, just like every year when whale watching season comes, there will be thousands of tourists gathered on the cruise ships.

waiting.

waiting.

When they started bidding, it was like a whale jumping out of the water.

People will hold their breath and watch the beautiful and huge creature spinning and wagging its tail in the sun, making millions of splashes in the art market under the spotlight.

Everyone raised their phones, checked in, took selfies, and felt that they had been lucky.

The whales that appear regularly in Sri Lanka have been given unique names by zoologists.

These tycoons who frequently hang out at the Biennale are well known to those in the industry about their origins.

For example, Irina's family, the Qatari royal family, a DreamWorks shareholder who died of lymphoma in 2018, the late Paul Allen, the former co-founder of Microsoft who owns the NFL's Seattle Seahawks and the NBA's Portland Trail Blazers, Jochen Zeitz, the former global CEO of PUMA and chairman of the Zeitz Foundation, and so on.

There is another type of whale that has an extremely low profile and does not show any pattern of movement.

They are the "Count of Monte Cristo" of the art world, always shrouded in a hazy and mysterious color.

Some of these people have been founding shareholders of a Swiss bank since their grandfather’s grandfather’s generation. Today, this bank manages a huge amount of wealth equivalent to the GDP of a medium-sized country.

Some are wealthy families in South America, holding 2.5% of the shares of Vale Mining Company, and some are legendary entrepreneurs hiding behind the scenes in Malaysia...

These people's whereabouts are also very low-key.

They rarely appear in person at ordinary auctions. Money is just a number to them. They hold enormous power, so outperforming others at an auction and receiving applause and shouts of "666" from everyone no longer arouses their desire and interest.

They almost only cooperate with familiar senior brokers and gallery agents, purchase transactions anonymously through Internet calls, and even directly give themselves a buyer and a transaction permission. They can bid at will within the limit of $1000 million or $ million without asking, and then go climb Mount Everest.

They don't care how much they spend on a piece of art, whether the deal is worth it, or what the return on investment is.

All they cared about was that when they came down from the snowy mountains and returned to the hotel by helicopter, the things they wanted had already been taken by their private butler and placed on the coffee table in the living room in an aluminum safe.

These people are not even afraid that buyers and sellers will set up a trap to harm them during the buying and selling process.

Anyone who dares to do this.

Generally speaking, it’s best to go to the Himalayas yourself and find a glacier to jump off.

Wealth is something that they have so much of that they have become numb and tired.

Sometimes, when you pass by it, you don’t even realize that a giant whale is swimming under you and a huge shadow is covering you.

Such people.

Tonks had only been up close once before.

It was a "silent auction" held at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York. There was no public bidding and no shouting from the auctioneer. Guests walked freely among the booths displaying the collections. If they were interested, they entered their bids on the terminal, and the system would automatically push the highest bid for each collection to the guests present. There was no loud shouting and it was more like a social cocktail party than a special auction house-style buying and selling market.

That day.

Half of New York's celebrities came.

Everyone was wearing a neat suit, wearing a rose gold or diamond-studded formal watch, holding a champagne glass, tasting the fresh caviar from the tray in the waiter's hand, and there was a famous performer playing the piano next to them.

In short, the scene was extremely vulgar.

Tonks put on her best suit and tie and followed her mentor out to see the world.

The auction was halfway through, and Tonks was drinking champagne and stuffing her mouth with caviar while looking at the current bids for each item on her phone.

He had to admit.

Although the British always feel that the Americans have some shortcomings.

For example, they are naive, silly, uneducated, unpresentable, old-fashioned, have strange accents, are good at catching buffaloes, and don't talk about how to paint... But when they are in high-class situations, they are still very classy.

At least he's really rich.

The most important piece of artwork in that auction was Picasso's "Woman with a Watch".

Several well-known wealthy people are chasing after that work.

Tonks saw on her phone that the bid in the venue had reached 7350 million US dollars.

He didn't know who had offered the price, but $7350 million was a completely unimaginable amount for Tonks's income that year... and it still is now.

But now, he has the opportunity to see transactions of this magnitude from time to time.

The Tyler Museum of Art, if it can convince its board.

For some very important art transactions, the investment department is even able to enter the competition with funds exceeding tens of millions of US dollars.

But back then, in a transaction of this level, he could only sip champagne on the side.

Even if he was just shouting 666 on the side, the shock he felt when such an epic transaction was actually happening around him was hard to describe in words.

all in all.

Except for the fact that he couldn't fit into those small circles, everything was eye-opening to him.

As the silent auction was drawing to a close and the crowds at the party were dwindling, Tonks thought that for many years to come, this painting of "Woman with a Watch" would be hidden in the private collection of some super-rich man, or even in the safe deposit box of a bank.

Never appear in the world again.

It doesn't cost any money just to take a look.

The mentality of a loser who thinks one look is too little and one look less, and if you don’t look more, you’ll be missing out.

Tonks wandered over to the bulletproof glass display case again.

At this time, the big guys who were surrounded by stars were finally not here, and it was very quiet in front of the display case. In addition to Tonks, there was a dark fat boy standing in front of the display case, playing Snake on his mobile phone.

He greeted the other party.

The other person looked at him, hesitated a little, nodded and said hello.

Tonks noticed that he had a slight thumping in his English, and that his skin was slightly darker.

He guessed that the other person should be Mexican.

The ethnic composition of the upper class in the United States is quite distinct; Latinos, Mexicans, and Arabs are all relatively marginalized groups that are excluded.

Looking at the other person, Tonks thought that she had met a poor student like herself who couldn't get into the circle and only had the nerve to come over to look at the paintings when there was no one around.

Suddenly, there was a sense of intimacy between two losers.

The two of them stood together in front of the bulletproof display case for a few minutes. The fat boy's snake was killed. Then he put away his phone, looked up at Picasso's abstract brushstrokes, and suddenly asked him.

"Can ordinary people really see such a distorted figure?"

From the perspective of serious art appreciation, what "Woman with a Watch" should express is "the geometric reconstruction of female characteristic elements, the use of bright color contrast to express the love and obsession with the lover. The image of the watch symbolizes Picasso's thinking about time..." and a lot of Bulabula.

But that day.

Tonks showed off her champagne a little too much, but she also felt that she was just there for the cocktail party, so she didn't put on airs.

Under the stimulation of alcohol.

His British sense of humor was rarely activated.

"Normally, it's definitely not noticeable, but if you drink five glasses of champagne, it starts to distort."

Tonks burped.

"If you take advantage of the free opportunity and drink so much of my wine, you can paint as abstract as you want."

He winked at the old Mexican next to him.

Probably he never thought that he would hear such words, and the little black fat boy next to him was amused by him.

The other party stretched out his hand and pressed the plus sign on the bidding machine in front of the "Woman with Watch" display case.

Tonks didn't care much when she saw this.

If you can't afford to buy a painting, why don't you let others COS the rich man in your mind? This kind of pretending opportunity is so rare. If it weren't for the fact that she was a little embarrassed, Tonks would also want to click on the electronic screen of the bid machine and imagine herself being a dashing and heroic figure in the art market.

"You're interesting."

The fat boy smiled at him.

I swiped the bidding bracelet for the cocktail party at the sensing area next to it and selected OK in the prompt that popped up on the screen.

Then he turned and left.

Tonks stared blankly at the other person's leaving back, thinking that there was something wrong with the way this world was opened.

just……

The other party swiped the bracelet and clicked confirm?
The other party swiped the bracelet and clicked confirm?
He actually swiped the bracelet and clicked confirm?

Push notification of new messages on the phone——

"Picasso's Woman with a Watch, current bid: $103"

"Bidder: Anonymous Buyer No. 216"

"That fat Mexican guy who played Snake just spent 103 million dollars right in front of me? He looked more relaxed than me buying a new phone at an Apple store???"

Tonks looked at the message on her phone, which fell apart in the wind.

tease me?
after many years.

Tonks just heard some inside information.

Rumor has it that the mysterious third-generation heir of the Mexican telecommunications company, who was well protected that night, was in New York for his coming-of-age ceremony, so he had nothing to do and showed up at the Hilton Hotel that night.

Tonks had vaguely heard of the family behind the company.

The richest family in Mexico has assets conservatively estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. They are involved in both politics and business in Mexico and have connections everywhere. It is said that even every newly elected president has to curry favor with them.

until today.

Tonks didn't even know the other person's real name, and couldn't find any corresponding photos in the media.

But every time I think of it.

As he stood at the booth, he brushed shoulders with the heirs of families that had once been ranked in the top 20 on the Forbes list.

Tonks felt that the other person's every move was so natural and relaxed.

So fat and arrogant.

The rolled tongue accent is so cool.

Even when the snake failed to be controlled and crashed headfirst into the phone screen, it still looked so cool!
Considering his wealth, spending $100 million to buy a Picasso was easier than him going to the Apple store and hesitating to buy a new top-of-the-line mobile phone.

It feels like you're paddling on the Arctic ice.

You think the sky is high and the sea is vast, and everything is peaceful.

The world is so quiet that it seems as if you are the only one there.

Suddenly, a whale as huge as an iceberg leaps out of the water beside you, causing huge waves in the ocean, and you are shocked beyond your control.

The giant whale sank again and disappeared under the Arctic Ocean thousands of meters deep.

It was as if I had just seen it.

It's all just a dream.

The heir to Telemexico that he met was such a whale.

Mr. Chen mentioned by CDX's art director at this moment is also another one.

Tonks knew that the other party was a super VIP client of CDX Gallery, and had vaguely heard of his exploits at the Biennale several times.

Every time it’s a real big deal.

High and hard.

Hearing this, Director Tonks' smiling teeth quickly recovered to six and a half, and then gradually increased to eight and twelve.

And there is a tendency to develop towards the level of laughing out loud.

If CDX can get a super client of this magnitude interested in this year's Lion City Biennale, then the other party's request will not be unacceptable.

The higher you go.

The more you understand the terrifying power of these whale collectors.

Every drop of water from a whale splashing down into a small pond is a huge amount of money.

The interest of such a wealthy man is much more important than the opportunity for a dozen ordinary painters to participate in the exhibition.

He hung up the phone.

He walked back to the office with a smile on his face, turned on the computer while thinking about his worries, and entered the submission review page.

(End of this chapter)