Almighty painter

Chapter 649: The Second Exhibition Painting (Part )
Serious art exhibitions were unfamiliar territory that Detective Cat had never ventured into before.

The publisher's "Writing and Art Award" and the Singapore Biennale seem to select the work that the judges like the most from a pile of candidate works and give it an award or something.

They may seem similar on the outside, but they are completely different on the inside.

Just like the 3x3 World Cup and the Qatar World Cup are both football, both called the "World Cup". From tactics to rules to the audience groups that buy tickets, they are two completely separate systems.

The two awards follow completely different aesthetic concepts and have completely different award philosophies.

Illustrator.

No matter how famous an illustrator is, he or she will have difficulty acclimatizing when he or she tries to attend an art biennial for the first time.

Norman Rockwell, Shepard, Jane Arnold, and even Stan Lee... these people have won great reputations in the fields of commercial illustrations, political propaganda posters, and children's comics, but have almost never won any serious art awards.

To know.

For a long time, Norman Rockwell was regarded as a symbol of the American spirit. He was a close friend of President Roosevelt and the first painter in the entire American history to have a large art gallery named after him. His status was much higher than that of Detective Cat today.

He has never achieved any outstanding results in the Biennale.

Unless you are the undisputed best.

Subjectively, the judges of the Art Biennale do not like to award prizes to these "commercial painters".

It’s like Leo DiCaprio’s acting skills are obviously not bad, but the Oscar judges have been reluctant to vote for a “popular actress” like him for many years in a row.

Members of the society feel that if a movie performs too well at the box office and has too many fans, its "artistic" attributes will be weakened.

The Oscars are the most commercial of all the well-known film art awards.

In places like Cannes, Berlin, and especially in the Venice Art Festival, directors like David Lynch, Woody Allen, and Roman Polanski, the "godfathers of small art gangs," are at the top of the contempt chain and are the ones who can truly dominate...even though some audiences often make sarcastic comments that these people's movies all look like they were made while high on marijuana.

The judging principles for all visual arts awards are similar.

When a work is created, since it has already chosen to lean towards the commercial field to gain more traffic and exposure, it will become more difficult to win awards and gain recognition from picky judges at the artistic level.

It seems unfair to have subjective bias in awarding prizes.

But from the perspective of the overall living conditions of painters, this principle is a manifestation of "fairness" in another sense.

As long as commercial illustrators don't get too ambitious and think about becoming famous with just one painting, and just work honestly, it will not be a problem for them to make a living as a middle-class illustrator, regardless of whether they win awards or not.

Serious painters are often poorer than each other.

If anyone regards the life of the top contracted painters of super galleries such as Gagosian, PACE, and Lisson Gallery, who fly in private jets, drive Ferraris, and buy an island in the Pacific Ocean when they feel like it, as a common survival portrait of serious artists, that is a typical case of only watching the thief eat the meat but not the thief being beaten.

These people were all selected from the tens of thousands of colleagues who had to eat relief bread on the streets, could not afford medical insurance, and used a windbreaker as clothes during the day and a quilt at night.

They either have one-in-a-million-worth of creativity, or they have one-in-a-million-worth of luck.

Kazunari Sakai is now a happy middle-aged fat man with his mouth full of oil from eating yakiniku, and he is chubby and plump.

Back then, he was still the melancholy Oriental Byron who was too hungry to eat, but he was not happy at all. It was only because his wife gave up her dream and worked hard as a clerk in an advertising company to feed him that he did not collapse.

Commercial painters will not starve even if they don't win awards.

And those art students who wear ripped sweaters and drive fifth-hand Toyota Prius have been waiting with red eyes all their lives for the opportunity to go to the Biennale and change their fate.

When most of the old-fashioned art awards were founded, they were more or less intended to compensate "those down-and-out artists who are not valued commercially and cannot find buyers."

The hundreds of dollars or thousands of pounds of bonuses that come with them at the beginning often have a sad meaning of "Honey, use it to buy something to eat, don't starve to death!"

Today, winning an award itself means that the creator is about to achieve huge commercial success. All those competing for the award are top painters. Compared with the huge influence and value increase brought by the award, the current situation where hundreds or thousands of pounds in prize money have become completely insignificant. Instead, this is a change that occurred in later developments and was not included in the historical records of the creators.

“The illustrations for ‘Cats’ are the kind of purely commercial and traffic-oriented works that the judges don’t like.”

Anna knew the answer very well.

No complicated calculations are required.

Put this question before any editor of an oil painting magazine or any art critic who does analysis related to the Biennale, and they will all get the same answer in less than a second.

It's as obvious as red lipstick on a white shirt.

Artists who started out as illustrators; commercial illustrations created in collaboration with marketing companies; spin-offs from children's musicals...none of these things were what the Biennale's jury liked.

If there is two years, one year, or even three months of preparation time, Anna will give Detective Cat other suggestions for the exhibition. She believes that she will be able to find an exhibition that not only fits the exhibition style of this Singapore Biennale, but also meets the aesthetic preferences of the jury and fully highlights the creative direction of Detective Cat's best knife painting.

But this time the preparation time is only one and a half months.

So Anna has to choose between marketing resources and pleasing the judges.

One and a half months.

It is almost impossible to come up with any high-concept painting ideas. Instead of handing in a weird answer sheet, it is better to directly choose an illustration with the musical "Cats" as the endorsement.

There is no way around it.

"They just wanted a pure realistic style... Even if it was a knife painting like The Little Prince, it might be more advantageous."

There has always been a view in the field of Biennales:

There is no point in pursuing realism in the field of painting.

Paintings depict the world through a purely objective perspective and record the properties of light and shadow. This came to an end when the camera was invented in 1839. All realistic painting schools in modern art are detours in the development of art. Only the painting method that focuses on capturing the subjective and emotional expression of the painter is the only smooth road for contemporary art.

This view is of course a bit extreme.

But it is an undeniable fact that the works exhibited in biennials and art festivals today are either traditional painting methods of classical forms such as Impressionism and Neoclassicism, or each one is more abstract than the last. Paintings that use "realism" and "truth" as their selling points have become very rare.

They are independent of mainstream painting styles and have a sense of being independent.

The realistic painting style requires extremely high technical skills.

Take watercolor, for example.

The focus of realistic watercolor is on the absolute restoration of objective objects.

To paint a naturally curved, slender blade of grass, one may need to consider different brush strokes on the veins, stems, and leaves, different glosses, different color combinations, as well as the diffusion and blending of pigments on the wet paper. The difficulty is self-evident.

When every art student learns to paint, the first thing they come into contact with is realism.

Anyway, as long as the painting method focuses on expressing the objective form of an object, it can be called realism. How it can be expressed, whether a beauty can be painted like Zhang Fei, or Zhang Fei can be painted like a willow tree, is another matter.

If one wants to push this painting method to its limit and truly draw a real space and a real soul on a flat piece of paper, then it may be the painting method that requires the highest proficiency in penmanship and has the most complex brushwork.

Miss Elena herself was the kind of person who had no talent for painting, and she was not so good at making people unable to tell whether the person in the picture was Lin Daiyu or the fierce Zhang Fei, but Anna herself understood——

No matter how hard she tries, her paintings always look like "paintings". No lively qualities can be captured in her works, and this is the problem, which dooms her to be just a mediocre painter.

For commercial illustrations, a realistic-looking drawing may be sufficient.

But it is the lively qualities in the paintings that are truly able to impress the Biennale judges.

and so.

Anna also understands best the difficulty of using the realistic illustrations of "Cats" as an exhibit for the Singapore Biennale.

"The Muse Project Foundation announced the first list of 21 painters shortlisted for the project's A-level grant. These painters have made outstanding achievements in art festivals or major art exhibitions in the past year. They will share a total of $200 million in creative grants. Sir Brown announced -"

"..."

Anna felt a little upset when she thought about the art exhibition.

She simply scanned the rest of the sections and saw that they were all about some famous painters who were going to hold solo exhibitions, or some academic art research results.

Anna didn't continue reading and put the "Oil Painting" magazine back on the small coffee table.

She didn't notice.

On the last page of the art section, in the weekly "Research News" section, there is a tofu-sized area where the magazine is publishing an academic research news from Asia.

"The forgotten female painter, is it a gimmick or the truth? Will art history be rewritten? The official website of the famous academic journal "Asian Art" updated a heavy research newsletter in the "NEWS AND VIEWS" news guide module last Saturday:

In the biannual journal published this week, the article "The Female Artist Carol Forgotten by Time: The Color Entanglement and Visual Dimension of Dark Tone Impressionist Works" published by young Asian scholars "Gu Weijing" and "Sakai Katsuko" (Gu Weijing and Sakai Katsuko are both the first authors of this paper) appeared in the journal..."
-
There was a gentle knock on the door of the room.

"Miss Elliot is on her way, accompanied by Lord Brown. They will arrive at the manor in 20 minutes."

Anna sat in front of the mirror and raised her feet to make it easier for her maid to put stockings on her legs.

The head butler walked out of the room and talked to the butler who was waiting outside for a while, then came back and bent down to whisper in her ear.

"I understand. Take them to the lawn and I'll meet them there."

Anna said calmly.

During breakfast, the butler placed a schedule memo on the coffee table, which had already indicated the meeting time that Sir Brown had scheduled in the morning.

She knew what the other party was here for.

The removal of the sculpture of the magazine's founder, the old count, from the front of the Oil Painting headquarters building is a foregone conclusion.

The adult world is full of helplessness and mutual compromise.

While Sir Brown tactfully invited Anna to return to the magazine and published an apology statement in the newspaper, he was still trying desperately to downplay the traces of Elena's family in the magazine and promote his "Muse Project".

The former was his compromise.

The latter is his attitude.

There cannot be two popes in the world.

Pope Gregory VII, who once forced the European king Henry IV to stand in the snow for three days and three nights to show his respect and apologize, said arrogantly that the Pope's power came from the believers and the omnipotent God, not from the king.

The power of the Pope of Art should also come from the great Muse, rather than a single family.

Sir Brown didn't mind temporarily giving Anna the power to decide the artistic direction of the magazine.

He believed that Anna would only be a transitional character.

Therefore, using Miss Anna's personal imprint to replace the traditional imprint left by the Elena family in the magazine is Sir Brown's strategy, and it is also the final bottom line that cannot be changed among the concessions made by Sir Brown.

By the way.

From this point of view, Anna now needs to be exposed in every formal occasion to increase her "presence", so going to the art fair in New York is a more rational choice.

Sir Brown came today to discuss the relocation of the sculpture.

Anna didn't refuse.

Secretary Elliott could not always organize residents to walk in front of Sir Brown to protest, and she also had to make corresponding concessions.

What needs to be faced must be faced.

Anna wasn't scared, she was just a little annoyed.

"Miss, do you want to wear this blue headdress or this small gauze crown?" The maid fixed Anna's hair and showed her the two headdresses in her hand.

"Put them all on the table, and we'll talk later. You all go out now, I want to be alone for a while..."

Anna shook her head.

The maid put the headdress aside and left with the butler.

According to the family motto of Elena's family.

Whenever she was feeling anxious or uncertain, or faced with a choice that she didn't know what to do or decide, she would go to the Melk Abbey and pray silently under the mural of "Athena Riding the Lion Chariot".

Bathe in the gaze of God and wait for the almighty Father to give you courage and faith.

To be honest.

Miss Irena was not a very devout Catholic.

Old-school aristocratic families in Europe often like to demonstrate their moral superiority over common people by "devoutly serving God."

Anna rarely even went to church to attend services.

Her only reason for going to church was often to visit Grandma Karazu.

now.

When Anna was upset, she was not very willing to drive to visit Melk Abbey. She had a work that could give her more courage and strength than "Athena Riding the Lion Chariot".

That painting of "The Queen" by Detective Cat Big Sister.

She hoped that she could truly become the brave and strong person described by the other person.

Anna took out a special mobile phone from the bedside table. She wanted to open the photo album, but she noticed a new message on the phone that was sent a few hours ago.

"I'm almost done with the illustrations for the exhibition. I've sent the electronic version to your email. Can you please see if there are any questions?"

(End of this chapter)