Almighty painter

Chapter 639 Finalists (Part )

On the screen was an impressionist painting.

Compared with the common mainstream painting styles in modern and contemporary art exhibitions, Impressionism is a bit old-fashioned.

Tonks hadn't seen much.

In the past decade, various modern art schools have flourished in the art market.

There are many new and promising creative methods, and the old painting methods are still strong. Everyone is fighting fiercely, and it is hard to see which painting method or art group will have the tendency to dominate the market.

From 2010 to the s, the most famous and popular art movement was definitely the YBA, the Young British Artists movement led by Hirst. This small group of British painters once became a symbol of the world's avant-garde art.

From the 1990s to the 1960s, the hottest trend in the art world was Pop Art.

Excluding traditional Chinese painting, six or seven of the ten most valuable living artists still come from pop art backgrounds.

Before Pop Art, there was the era of Picasso alone. He represented a school of painting. Although there were people like Duchamp who were also one of the founders of modern art at the same time as Picasso, in general, during the nearly 40 years between the end of World War I and the end of World War II, Picasso still redefined the landscape of the art world with his own efforts. At his peak, Picasso alone could account for six or seven of the ten most expensive works in the world.

And Picasso went further -

The final aftermath of the long nineteenth century represented the sunset of the Belle Époque in old Europe. The last twenty years of the nineteenth century and the first twenty years of the twentieth century were the years when Impressionism was invincible and dominated the art world.

in other words.

For the new generation of art practitioners, the popularity of Impressionism, which became a popular and ubiquitous painting style in salon exhibitions, was something that happened to their grandfathers’ grandfathers.

Fortunately.

Things that are truly beautiful and lasting will always stand the test of time.

This is true for a classic art exhibition and a classic way of painting.

Impressionism is old today, but it does not look archaic.

Although more than a hundred years have passed since 1910, when judges would automatically vote for fashionable Impressionist works as soon as they appeared.

Today, viewers have far more opportunities to see Impressionist paintings in museums and auctions than in biennials.

But in Tonks's heart, it is still one of the most influential painting methods in the world, with its own very stable audience and collector group.

Tonks studied curatorial studies at the art college in college, rather than painting.

In his spare time, he had tried to paint one or two landscape paintings, but they were not works worthy of being displayed in a formal setting.

If those paintings appeared in his biennial, from the perspective of a senior curator, Tonks would have to spit on them until they faded and melted into a ball of shame on the floor... To be more precise, it is more likely that she would spit until she was too lazy to spit on them and just throw them in the trash.

But whenever Tonks found the time to pick up a pen, she would do it without exception.

All the paintings are Impressionist.

Impressionism is the most unique painting style in the world.

It has a natural beauty that attracts everyone, whether they are ordinary audiences, professional judges or art curators, they can all be captured by it equally, just like the earth attracts the moon.

In Tonks's opinion, in the Western painting system, there is very little painting method that can balance the two elements of "technique" and "concept" just as well as Impressionism.

Classical painting emphasizes technique.

Their "pleasing to the eye" attribute is strong.

Classical painting emphasizes lines, colors, and structures. It emphasizes light and shadow, space, brightness, the precision of brushstrokes, and the transition of colors...

Every classical painter is a circumcision artist with scissors in his hand.

The canvas is their orchard.

Their lifelong mission is to use the skills in their hands to decorate this garden more beautifully.

Everyone competes to see who has better flower arrangement skills, and who can trim branches to be more three-dimensional and have a greater sense of layering.

And so on.

Classical paintings inevitably became playthings for the upper class aristocrats.

There is no need to hide it. There is certainly no shortage of respectable people among oil painters who have compassion and mercy, are willing to stand from the perspective of the grassroots people, and speak for society and the working people.

But in fact, the entire feudal era's classical oil painting system, including dance, opera...all has a strong aristocratic background.

"Sponsor-artist", "client-seller", this kind of supply and demand relationship between Party A, a father, and Party B, a son, almost determines the ecological environment of classical art.

The nobility, the church and wealthy businessmen constituted the painters' entire client base, so the painters only served these people.

They spent their entire lives in the nobles’ “gardens”, decorating gardens for them.

To put it in more fashionable terms.

We are all being "kept", so let's not talk about personal independence.

Painters were a little better off, but the actresses and ballet dancers at the Paris Opera in the 18th and 19th centuries were basically working part-time as tools of their patrons’ enjoyment.

In the old society, turning people into ghosts was never just an empty talk.

Even if artists seem to have a good income and even live a glamorous life.

However, to put it bluntly, even if they don't look like ghosts, they are still just entertainment toys for the upper class.

Old Countess Irena claimed to be the patron, mentor and protector of artists. He loved art so much that he invited painters to his manor every day to attend his salon and hold parties. Whenever he raised his glass, he would boast that although he was a count, they were all his close friends and we were equal.

But when he suddenly heard that his daughter had written to him saying that she was going to be a full-time painter, his first reaction was to be so angry that he almost fainted. He asked his butler to charter a train with his personal valet to rush to Paris overnight to bring her back.

That's why.

You can play around, but don’t go into the adult industry.

At banquets, the nobles appreciated the amazing details in the famous paintings, and compared whose pocket watch hanging on the collar was more complex and more accurate, and whose canary in the cage had more beautiful fur and color.

They are the same deep down.

Modern art emphasizes "concept".

Everyone finally broke through the outer wall of this small garden and began to have a more grand and inclusive artistic perspective. However, they began to raise the threshold of aesthetics blindly, saying that they would use paintings to reflect the times and create works that can arouse widespread public thinking, but they began to engage in some high-concept art that ordinary people could not understand at all.

Some opportunistic painters even completely abandoned the practice of techniques, trying to use weightless brushstrokes to depict concepts that are as heavy as a thousand pounds.

What was finally created was neither touching the sky nor the ground. All that was left was a bunch of empty, bubbly, mumbling clouds between heaven and earth.

Clouds that are not solid enough cannot turn into thunder that resounds through people's hearts.

Even if this cloud occasionally contains lightning that is powerful enough to ignite the sky, it is stuck in the gap between concepts and entities because the carrier is too illusory and too ethereal, struggling desperately but unable to escape.

Impressionism is a painting style that connects classical art and modern art.

It just balances the two elements perfectly.

If there is a scale that can bear the weight of the entire history of Western art, then Impressionism is the fulcrum in the center of the scale.

Whenever Tonks picked up a pen and wanted to draw something for entertainment.

Impressionism saved him from the conceptual bombardment of conceptual art such as Marc, Kandinsky, Constructivism, etc., allowing him to take a breath, but without shrinking into the outdated framework of painting simply for the sake of painting.

From the earth to the heavens.

And descended from heaven to earth.

In the struggle between modern art and classical art, Impressionism made him seem to fly out of a small orchard and pass through layers of choking smoke.

After experiencing the monotony and boredom of artificial scenery, and then the suspension, weightlessness, shrill roars, hysterical screams, and dazzling and frantic ionized luster... and then enduring the dizziness of every nerve cell burning, I suddenly looked up casually and saw a drop of dew sliding down from the petals of an unknown wild flower in the distance.

Looking through the dew, I saw the sun rising from the horizon.

The sky is full of rosy clouds. This is Impressionism.

Tonks had understood that early on.

He would never have become a truly great Impressionist in his lifetime.

He lacked both the ability to capture the abstract, sensual nature of scenery and the outstanding painting skills that were essential to Impressionism.

Tonks could see the sunlight passing through the dew, but she couldn't really "catch" the light on her fingertips.

and so.

His creations will always remain at the level of self-consolation.

This is somewhat similar to Anna.

There is no shortage of people in the industry who choose to become curators or critics because they cannot be good painters, and vice versa.

But Tonks believed.

The Impressionist painting style, combined with a truly spiritual painter, will always produce paintings that are as warm and lively as the sun dancing in the dew.

For example, this painting is called "Girl Reading Poetry to a Cat".

It is not the most thoughtful or artistically creative work on display.

Among the audition works left, its technique can only be considered acceptable, and is certainly not the best.

It is one of the few works that Tonks would be willing to turn her head to stay on for a few seconds whenever she glanced at the screen out of the corner of her eye. If this painting was being displayed on the projector,

He could always feel the lingering warmth coming from this work.

The warmth of spring sunshine.

Not bright, not dazzling, not glaring.

Fresh and natural.

Of course.

The painting style of this painting is also very unique, even bold.

When you look at pictures on this kind of electronic screen, you can't see them 100% realistically.

Tonks noticed that the painting had strong contrasts in colour, with warm and cool tones frequently transitioning between the light and dark sides of the scene, and a lot of use of the complementary colours of red and green.

This surface has a frosted texture that diffuses light...maybe a little bit of beeswax is added.

The excessive processing of color edges does not look like the strokes drawn with a brush. Doesn’t it seem like it was smeared with paint applied by fingers?
even.

Tonks also discovered that some of the petals on the white flower trees in the work contained the texture of an oil painting knife.

The use of oil painting knives in painting is not a special feature.

As for erasers, everyone uses them to some extent, and it is not surprising to incorporate the texture of an oil painting knife into the work.

But this knife technique is quite good!
The shapes created by the painting knife on the picture are not very complicated.

The difficulty was that Tonks hardly noticed any uncontrolled trembling or any jerky edges from the blade squeezing the paint.

One or two places are nothing.

I read the whole painting from beginning to end, but I didn't see a single spot.

This kind of detail control is a bit too good.

Tonks guessed.

Just to practice how to process knife marks with an oil painting knife without any mistakes, I should have drawn at least twenty paintings... well, twenty-five.

"There are indeed many 'dark horse' works in the audition group this year, and this painting is one of them."

Tonks nodded.

If he were to judge, this painting "Girl Reading Poetry to a Cat" might even have the potential to win an award.

Its techniques and concepts are not the best, but its overall temperament is the best.

He is not even inferior to the famous painters signed by well-known galleries.

The painting is as its name suggests.

"Girl Reading Poems to Cats".

At first glance, I only felt the warm sunshine and the warm spring breeze.

The more I watch, the more I feel that there is a strong sense of human life here.

Tonks pressed the remote.

He originally wanted to review this work directly, and scanned the work information sheet attached to it.

"Sakai Takakura, Sakai Takakura, Japanese?"

"I seem to have seen this name before!"

Tonks frowned again and repeated the name on the screen several times.

This name always gave him a sense of familiarity.

It's not a well-known name, but it seems like I've definitely heard it somewhere.

"Well, strange."

Tonks hesitated for a moment, but he still took out his phone and entered the name of the submitting artist on the information form into the search box.

Don't wait to press search.

The browser automatically associates a lot of related links.

Tonks ordered one at random.

The most relevant column on Google is Katsuko Sakai's personal Instagram homepage, while the second most relevant column is the Wikipedia entry.

"Does she have a personal entry?"

Tonks glanced at the character relationship column on the entry and saw a fat man who was well-known.

"Oh, oh, oh, it's this guy's daughter. She's old enough to make her official debut."

Tonks couldn't help but pout.

He said, how could there be so many dark horses emerging?

Tonks closed the page on her phone and clicked the option to approve the manuscript.

Then he thought for a moment more.

The review was not continued.

"Please help me find Kazunari Sakai's phone number. If you don't know it, go ask the Ota Art Gallery. They will definitely have it. Give it to me right now. I need it."

Tonks reached out, pressed the call button on the desk, and spoke to the secretary.

She is the daughter of Kazunari Sakai.

It's worth building a relationship and seeing if the other party has any requirements.

(End of this chapter)