Almighty painter

Chapter 638 Finalists (Part )

"I need to review manuscripts. Please don't disturb me in the next few hours."

Tonks sat in a chair.

Thought for a moment.

He pressed the call button again and said to the secretary in the office suite, "Please make me a pot of black tea."

After giving these instructions.

Tonks then leaned back in her chair comfortably and began to operate the computer screen.

It's a computer screen.

In fact, Tonks had a large projection screen installed in his office.

The electronic materials of the audition works that have passed the second round of review will be played in a loop at a speed of 30 seconds per piece.

Similar to TV screensaver background.

Implement elimination system.

Tonks has been reviewing manuscripts like this these days.

During breaks at work, after making phone calls or inspecting the booth from outside, I would take a look at the large projection screen whenever I had time.

Keep the ones you like.

If you feel there are any obvious problems with the work, or if it definitely does not meet the requirements of this year's Lion City Biennale, just delete it.

He learned this skill when he was an intern assistant for his mentor in an exhibition.

When Tonks was young, the Internet was not so developed.

When artists submit works to biennials, they often mail large physical photographs in envelopes.

There are also some old-school exhibitions that are designed to fully display the full expressiveness of the work.

When it comes to the second round of auditions, the exhibitors will be notified and it is best to directly provide the original works of the exhibitors.

At the request of their supervisors, these intern assistants will staple each contributor's "Work Information Sheet" to the back of the photo or stick it to the back of the picture frame with masking tape.

Then put the picture frame on the table, stick the photos on the whiteboard with magnets, find an empty warehouse, and arrange all the works in a long dragon.

The tutor has nothing to do.

I would go walk around in circles in the warehouse.

Every curator has different habits when commenting on works.

Some people will dance and gesticulate, trying to have a "spiritual communication" with the works on the easel, while some people will carry a big notebook with them and write a lot of weird symbols that no one can understand. Some curators who are scholars and critics retain the habit of being big trolls. When selecting works, they will find faults in every way, talk endlessly, and spit all over the place, wishing they could use their saliva as bullets, and spray their sarcastic comments across the boundaries of time and space directly into the faces of the submitting artists, drowning them, so that they don't get annoyed by the works.

……

The mentors are often silent.

When the other person is thinking, he or she will be immersed in his or her own world and hardly speak.

He would put his hands behind his back, turn around and stare at the work, walking back and forth on the floor, and sometimes just turn around when he had nothing to do.

If someone who didn't know the inside story saw this scene late at night, it would be much more terrifying than seeing Tonks posing with her arms open, thinking she was the king of the world.

It's like the famous scholar of Wei and Jin Dynasties who didn't mix the Five-Stone Powder properly, and took too many drugs, and he was almost hysterical.

Tonks thought.

The mentor's full aura at that moment really looked like a king patrolling his territory... or a bald griffin hovering in the air, selecting prey on the ground.

Tonks, holding a bunch of stickers she bought from a stationery store, followed behind like a little tail, observing his words and expressions.

If the mentor, who is a curator, nods to a painting, it means that he is satisfied with it.

He ran over and put a small green sticker on it, which meant that it had successfully been shortlisted for the main exhibition area.

If the instructor frowned and shook his head and sighed at a certain drawing, Tonks would put a small red sticker on it, which meant that the work was unfortunately eliminated.

If the instructor's eyes fall on a certain work, he will hesitate for a long time.

Finally, he walked away without saying a word.

Tonks would run over holding the sticker, and with a "pop", a blue label would be stuck on it.

This means that this work is temporarily in the pending area.

“The difference between curators and other people at art exhibitions lies in their perspective. Statistically, the average time a visitor spends in front of a work of art is no more than fifteen seconds. A large biennial has 500 works of art, and if they spend 15 seconds looking at each work, that adds up to more than two hours. Many people only spend this much time visiting an exhibition.”

“This also includes the time for walking around, taking photos, chatting, socializing, and drinking coffee in the lounge area. 15 seconds is enough for a trained adult in an English-speaking country to read 200 words per minute without any pressure. This time is not even enough for them to finish reading the explanation card of the work below. If there are exhibits with artists from the Middle East and Africa with long names or complicated names of works, then 15 seconds may only be enough for people to figure out what the exhibit in front of them is called.”

“So this means that for most of the exhibition’s existence, the impression a painting leaves on the viewer is bound to be a fleeting glimpse. Even the judges are not able to escape the trap of superficial inspection and not seeking to understand the details.”

"First, their time is also very valuable. Second, many young people like you who have just entered the industry often make a mistake. It is naive to think that all judges will be enthusiastic and passionate and devote all their energy to the exhibition."

After reviewing the manuscript, the tutor taught the young students like this.

"Mika, when you have more experience and reach my age, you will understand that professional judges are no different from ordinary audiences. Some have professional backgrounds, while others do not. They are invited simply because they are 'celebrities'. Some come with a passion for work, while others really just come with their wives and children to take a vacation and cast their votes."

“Can you expect a person whose mind is full of waves, beaches, surfing, skiing and hot springs to immerse himself in a work of art with all his heart and soul, and try to establish a soul connection with the artist? No, of course not. The fast-paced mode of the Biennale is almost destined. Whoever catches the audience’s eyes within a few seconds will gain a natural advantage.”

"But we... as a good curator, we can't just use this as the criterion for selecting works for the exhibition. In my opinion, the best criterion should be elegance."

At that time, Tonks could not quite understand what her mentor was saying.

Whoever can catch the audience's attention will certainly be given better resources and higher attention.

Is it during the curation?

Instead of choosing works that can catch the audience's eyes, does he choose works that can't even catch the audience's eyes?
The logic here is really weird.

What the art world lacks the least is self-righteous, narcissistic lunatics. Generally speaking, such people will never be successful, and they have nothing to do with elegance.

The mentor probably saw the confusion on Tonks' face and smiled without saying anything.

Many, many years passed.

Nowadays.

Tonks himself has become a senior curator with considerable reputation in the industry, and he began to independently host and plan his own exhibitions.

Tonks gradually realized the true meaning of her teacher's words.

It's not a mistake as long as it catches the audience's attention.

Beautiful works of art will naturally speak for themselves.

In a highly commercialized setting like the Biennale, many artists are self-absorbed and pretentious.

But purely self-absorbed, pretentious works are not welcome.

If you want the audience to see something in your painting, the prerequisite is that the audience is willing to look at your painting.

It doesn't even have the power to make the audience stop and admire in front of the booth involuntarily. Others are too lazy to even take a look, let alone talk about its thoughts and philosophy.

It's just like picking flowers in a mirror or catching the moon in water, talking about something out of reach.

Being able to catch the audience's eyes is the most basic requirement for an excellent visual art work.

Let’s talk about “seeing” first, then talk about other things.

However, if we only pursue the appeal of a work at first sight, this can also cause problems.

Then the content of an art exhibition will inevitably lean towards pure visual bombardment of headlines, curiosity, and high concepts.

Attracting attention and competing for traffic will become the most important purpose when a work is created, rather than a natural attribute of a sufficiently good work.

Let me give you an inappropriate analogy.

The difference is like the difference between a copy of Playboy and a copy of War and Peace on a display stand.

At the first moment, most people's eyes will involuntarily fall on erotic magazines such as Playboy.

But if the timeline is extended.

Review in units of one week, two weeks, one month, one year, five years, or even ten years.

Then.

Books like "War and Peace" always succeed in turning defeat into survival after a certain critical point in time.

After a brief surge of hormones, there will come a day when people will become bored with the repetitive and boring erotica.

Only works with sufficient emotional connotations can last forever.

This is what is called "elegance".

It does not refer to the endless accumulation of debauchery and extravagance of nineteenth-century aristocrats and scholars at salon dinners under seventeenth-century crystal chandeliers, drinking eighteenth-century cellar wines.

It is a kind of calmness that comes after the accumulation of time.

The content of the work itself can be "ungraceful", it can be like "Faun's Son", full of darkness and tyranny, it can be like "Starry Sky", which is fantastic and magnificent, or it can be like "Barge Haulers on the Volga", which is full of sympathy for the lower classes and accusations against the so-called "elegant" aristocrats.

The key is to be able to beat time.

Let future generations of every era look back and feel the excitement in the painter's heart the moment he put pen to paper.

Timeless and yet always new.

For visitors to an art exhibition, their fate with an art exhibition is only the short two or three hours they spend in the exhibition hall, or at most half a day. For the judges of the art exhibition and many members of the organizing committee, their work is limited to ranking the works and explaining their reasons for recommending them.

Voting is complete.

Their work has come to an end.

Even for the artists participating in the exhibition, winning or not winning an award are just two possible results.

Whether it is standing in the center of the stage, under the flashing spotlight, receiving the glittering golden trophy from the organizing committee, or leaving with a heart full of complaints and regrets.

The moment the exhibition closed, everything came to an end.

Only curators should look at art exhibitions differently——

Each work is an independent individual.

The hundreds of works on display have gone through a life cycle from the time they were created to the time they were destroyed, collected, and placed in museums or private collections.

Most of the time, when people mention them, they are discussing a single work, the aesthetics of the painting, and the artistic concept of the painting.

It's just a short week or two.

These hundreds of works exist as a condensed whole, like amber covered with gum, or a fly bottle filled with magnificent insects.

This amber and this fly bottle are the art biennial and all that a curator has.

A lot of biennials.

Although it is the top biennial and it is full of great masters.

But as soon as the exhibition closed, the amber cracked and the flytrap shattered.

The little bugs flew away all over the sky, like fireflies in summer disappearing into the dawn of sunrise.

No one remembers this exhibition anymore.

Some exhibitions also freeze the space forever and become a dazzling gem in the history of art.

The longer they are polished by time, the smoother and more brilliant they become.

For example, the Paris Salon in 1898 that made Rodin famous. The unprecedented Venice Biennale in 1948, where Picasso personally attended. And the 1978th Venice Biennale in , “From Nature to Art, From Art to Nature”…

The academic community talks about these exhibitions with great relish, and it seems that there are so many topics that they can never be exhausted.

The exhibition was open for only two weeks.

Related research papers have been written for fifty years.

Young scholars and their fathers are writing analytical articles for their grandparents' art exhibitions, and their next generation may also enjoy doing so.

An ordinary biennial has a very short duration.

Only one week.

It was only two hours from the time the visitors walked into the exhibition hall door to the time they left through the exit.

A classic Biennale has a short existence but a long life.

Maybe twenty years, maybe a century.

To create such a Biennale, in addition to instantly attracting attention with a stunning look, it must also withstand the scrutiny of history.

Curators cannot imagine the artistic aesthetics of people thirty years from now.

All they can do is put the works next to them and look at them over and over again.

Watch it while working, while taking a break, while drinking coffee, while making a phone call, while standing in front of the work, while taking a walk... Try to use different moods, different perspectives, and different angles to find resonance with the work, and explore the greatest common divisor between the work and different types of audience groups.

If you are already very familiar with a work of art, but still never get tired of it and like to stare at it over and over again.

Then.

This may be the submission that deserves to be put on the main booth.

Because of the impact of the epidemic.

During the audition stage of this year's Singapore Biennale, all submissions were changed to electronic form.

Tonks couldn't fill up the warehouse with submitted works, so she would just take a walk around inside.

That's why he installed a large laser projection screen in his curator's office.

Exclude those with big gallery backgrounds, those who were invited to exhibit, and those who have been eliminated.

Today, the projection screen is still showing the works of about 300 painters who have submitted their works.

Each work.

He had watched it several times and was familiar with it.

Tonks decided to use this period of time to draw up a final list of shortlisted painters.

"Well, let's keep about 55 of them... Well, CDX needs a special booth. Well, let's calculate the space for 50 seats. Should we leave some more margin in case there are similar things? seats, maybe—"

Tonks rubbed her chin.

The final decision was to keep 45 of the participating painters, which should be a reasonable number.

With a final qualifying rate of 7:1, it depends on who has the ability in the end.

“No features.”

Tonks picked up the tea brought by the secretary, took a sip, then casually pressed the remote control and threw the oil painting that was playing on the screen into the trash can in the recycling station.

It’s the final stage of the auditions.

Now that so much time has passed, there are no weak works left for Tonks to display on the big screen in front of her.

If he had used a calligraphy and painting appraisal technique on the painting he had just deleted, the oil painting would have been at the professional second-level level.

The line structure is also drawn very accurately, and the painter's sketching level is estimated to be about the same as the second professional level.

They all have the technical skills to beat Gu Tongxiang up.

Such works would have no problem being shortlisted in previous years, and in some minor years, they might even win a small prize.

It's a pity that it happened this year.

The Singapore Biennale has received unprecedented attention.

It and this autumn's F1 Singapore Grand Prix are two national business cards that the Lion City government has spent a lot of money to create for its international image. It can be said that they are the most watched events in the art world at the turn of summer and autumn.

Its influence is comparable to that of established international biennales such as the Sydney Biennale.

The competitive pressure is also unprecedented.

There's nothing wrong with this painting, but there's nothing special about it either.

A well-balanced structure, well-balanced lines, well-balanced colors, a well-balanced theme... If I have to say, the only highlight is the technique.

Regrettably.

There is no shortage of good painters at this year's Lion City Biennale.

The double Lv.5 level of skills was not enough to lead him out of the encirclement.

"The structure is a mess. What is this painting about? A broken paint tray?"

"The concept is somewhat interesting, but the brushwork is too poor. You can paint innocently, but not silly. Going the route of modern art is not a reason to give up brushwork skills."

"This painting... well, it's just so-so. The technique is indeed good, but there is no emotion, and it is as dry as if it was printed by a robot. If you want absolute precision, you might as well find a printer. Well... I'll give it a pending status for now and see if there are any vacancies."

"Is this composition, is he high or not? If he is high, I suggest he clear his mind. If he is not taking medicine, I suggest he go to a psychiatrist to prescribe some medicine!"

……

Tonks's teacher was a very silent person when looking at paintings.

Tonks was different.

He is not a curator who was originally a critic, but perhaps because he was scolded by critics and developed a rebellious mentality, when he was reviewing artwork submissions by himself, he also liked to make eloquent comments.

Not just thinking about it in your mind.

Speaking out your opinions and letting them be heard can also be considered a secondary confirmation and reflection on the trial results.

I have made up my mind to finalize the list of exhibitors today.

Tonks's pace began to increase noticeably, pausing only for a moment on each piece to decide the fate of the artist.

Most of it is thrown into the trash.

A few were thrown into the "pending area".

Only a minority of the minority could make Tonks spray less heavily, or even reveal a satisfied look, and still choose to keep it.

"Artist: Katsuko Sakai"

Title: Girl Reading Poems to Cats

suddenly.

An oil painting appeared on the screen.

(End of this chapter)