Almighty painter

Chapter 651: Quiet, Empty, and Mysterious

Gu Weijing was sitting by the window in the small studio on the second floor.

It was past noon when he received the message from Mr. Sloth.

After the sun rose, the temperature began to rise at a speed visible to the naked eye, but the rain had not stopped yet, and it was still falling from time to time.

The sunlight baked a small part of the concrete floor outside the window, turning it white and dry, and then new rain wet it, and then the rain evaporated, taking away the temperature of the air again.

In this prolonged stalemate between the sun and rain clouds, there is no sign of a winner at the moment.

It just made the water vapor outside the window seem heavier, more wispy and hazy, like a huge foggy forest.

Hayao Miyazaki's film soundtracks are playing in the room.

Hayao Miyazaki's films always have an elegant, fresh and natural aura, like flowing clouds painted on a smooth mirror with a brush, with a very impressionist flavor.

When you look closely, there is always that indescribable feeling of mystery, coldness, and faint emptiness.

The mood he portrayed with bright colors is almost compassionate yet extremely tenacious.

A cool fragrance mixed with natural and quiet fragrance.

The background music in the studio was chosen by Katsuko Sakai.

The work she is currently painting is also an impressionist work in forest tones - "Quiet, Empty, Mysterious"

The name seems to have the abstract feeling of avant-garde paintings. At first glance, it sounds like the extraction and accumulation of some pure artistic elements on paper.

However, compared with this "high-concept" name.

The paintings drawn by Katsuko are not abstract at all.

The dark green forest surrounds the picture. The sunlight seeps in from the tall trees and vines that reach all the way to the clouds, making the canvas half bright and half dark, as if it were in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

The dense forest is primitive and quiet, as if tigers, crocodiles and even brown bears will slowly crawl out from the gaps between the swaying trees at any time and stare at you with scrutinizing eyes. It also seems that there is nothing here except the trees, no birds, beasts, or even insects.

It's not a forest.

Instead, it is a huge, empty, forest green palace.

A corner of the pond is revealed among the branches and leaves on the side of the picture.

It looked like a section of a huge jade stone. There was not even a ripple on the water caused by the wind, and even the reflected sunlight seemed to be invisible.

From a forest with dense mottled leaves and tangled vines to a mirror-like pond, the picture style changes rapidly here.

The brushstrokes range from extremely complex to extremely simple.

Transform from bumpy to smooth.

The transition of this picture is so rapid that it seems as if the picture suddenly collapsed from three dimensions to two dimensions, forming a sense of spatial loss and emptiness in temperament.

From the swaying forest to the empty lake, there is only one real intersection between the two.

A woman sat on a branch by a pond, her toes gently tapping the surface of the lake.

She is exactly at the visual dividing point of the painting, with half of her body exposed to the sun and the other half hidden in the shadow.

Her bare toes lightly touched the water, creating the only ripple on the lake.

Her profile looks charming at first glance, but cool and cold when you look closely. The two temperaments intersect in her, just like the light and shadow shining on her, the simplicity and complexity of the surrounding environment, reflecting different colors on her body.

The woman's entire body seemed to be embedded in the background between the leaves and the lake.

Dark green trees and mirror-like platinum lake light.

Flesh pink people.

The perspective of this painting is like a lost traveler taking a glimpse of the stunning lake through the swaying shadows of trees in the distance.

So because of the angle, the figure was half-hidden between the trees and the water, and it was hard to see clearly. I could only vaguely feel that her clothes also went from very simple to very complicated.

The woman's head, face, calves, neck, and even half of her shoulders were completely naked.

The flesh-red texture curves completely overwhelm the surrounding trees and lake embellishments. It is a touch of gold and red in the silk painting, attracting all the attention around.

The side face, hair, slender calves, round shoulders, delicate collarbones... The brushstrokes of the painting are full and extremely rich in volume, without missing out on the shaping of any detail of the human body.

Use the smoothness of the brushstrokes to counter the mottled appearance of the forest, and use the mass of the brushstrokes to neutralize the emptiness of the lake.

Compared with the bright brushwork here, the surrounding scenery becomes a plain silk.

But the part below the clavicle and above the calf.

The body is covered in extremely complex colors.

The floating green, the glittering blue, the tender red of flowers, the dark blue in the shadows of the lake...

The sunlight surrounded her outstretched arms like a crystal bracelet.

It was blurry and hard to see clearly.

So there are two illusions.

The protagonist in the painting seems to be wearing an extremely luxurious half-shoulder palace dress, and it seems as if she is "wearing" the surrounding lake and mountain scenery on her body without any decoration.

I don’t know which one is real or if they are all illusions.

If the audience is willing to use their imagination enough... they can even imagine the misty water vapor surrounding her as the ethereal light wings spread out by a butterfly fairy.

The sunlight passed through the hookah, and it was unclear whether it was dispersed by the water droplets or the woman's delicate skin.

It turned into colorful light.

Throughout the ages, drawing girls has always been a key project in the field of painting.

There are definitely several times more famous paintings featuring beautiful young ladies than those featuring handsome young men.

However, if one overemphasizes the shaping of the model's body and the expression of the flesh's color, then the work will more or less have erotic and vulgar connotations.

Not to mention Tang Bohu’s erotic paintings.

Rubens, Manet, the early Jean Minot and the later Renoir, SIR William Flint, the president of the Royal Watercolor Society of England who was knighted by George VI for his realistic watercolor paintings of women, and of course all the members of the Rococo School. Yes, all of them. For the Rococo School, which is inherently sensual, there is no need to even add the word "almost".

One of these people counts.

Taking into account the different historical backgrounds, whether their works can be regarded as vulgar works of art, and whether what they do can be regarded as naked physical exploitation of female models, just like the commercial films of Hollywood and the downtown dance theaters in the 40s and 50s... This issue needs to be discussed.

But be reasonable.

Even if art has an inclusive heart, it is unfair to classify the works in the Louvre as pornographic and vulgar.

But is there a "masculine solid" perspective that always exists in these paintings?
Objectively speaking.

There is no doubt that these painters have their own greatness, but it is actually difficult to say "no" on this issue.

It is not necessarily a problem of the painters' own personal morality.

But it is difficult for people to escape the limitations of the era. The artistic temperament of the entire era is like that.

In that era, there were usually only two types of women depicted by painters in the entire Western society.

Otherwise, they are the noble ladies and daughters of the royal families, and the rest are almost all ballerinas, opera actresses, beautiful part-time clerks, and a large number of body workers... These people can be collectively classified into one group -

“Upper class consumer goods.”

Of course.

Western male painters are also consumer products of the upper class.

Painters, poets, playwrights, one by one, led by "role models" such as Boucher and Fragonard, launched a heroic charge against the ladies and daughters of the upper class in Paris.

The Eight Immortals cross the sea, each showing their special abilities.

It is time to go to the salon to tell jokes, so do it; it is time to check when the Countess's husband went on a business trip, so do it; it is time to study how to climb the ladder like Yu Lian (note) to get into the boudoir of the Marquis's daughter, so do it.

Everyone has a bright future.

(Note: The protagonist of "The Red and the Black" climbed up a ladder and slipped into the window left by the noble lady, thus changing his fate and entering the upper class.)
Anyway, each of them has a special skill, and they run faster than the other, ready to beat all the other playboys to death on the beach.

Winning the favor of noble ladies or making a splash in certain salons were the most important ways to enter the upper class in the art world of that era.

Maybe even the only one.

The salons of some famous hostesses in Paris are set up like signing in for work, with a weekly schedule.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings are for painters to hold salons, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday are the playwrights' turns to punch in for work, and Sundays are reserved for fashionable poets.

They walked into the manor with their heads held high, carrying newly written poems in their pockets.

Even if artists do not have the good fortune of Boucher, who won the appreciation of Madame Pompadour and instantly became the top star and the hottest star in the entire French upper class, they will at least be like Balzac, who had the grand ambition of "I am so awesome, I can definitely hook up with a rich woman" when he entered the social circle at a young age.

but.

That's another matter.

Oscar Wilde said that everything in the world is related to sex.

Only sex, sex itself is only related to power.

The real upper class consumes painters, poets, socialites and other "semi-upper class".

The semi-upper class, in turn, consumes the pretty girls of the working class.

men and women.

Clear hierarchy.

The female models in the paintings of many painters are not individuals, their only significance is to be carriers of eroticism.

Degas, who was born into a wealthy family, often liked to hang out backstage at the French Ballet whenever he had nothing to do. He painted many works on related subjects throughout his life.

As early as that year, it was criticized by the critics.

Collecting folk songs! What kind of folk songs are he collecting? Don’t think we don’t know what he’s doing. Art? Bullshit! When he went backstage at the ballet, was he thinking about painting?

You bastard, check your conscience and ask yourself, does he dare to say that when he walked into the dance studio and saw the beautiful girls with slim figures stretching their legs and shoulders, with the sun shining on their calves, his first reaction was the solemnity and sacredness of art?

This is just like when contemporary liberal arts college students ask their parents to buy laptops with 4080 graphics cards when they go to college, and they insist that they do so "in order to study hard all night and strive to improve their personal ideological and moral character."

It's all a trick.

It's obvious that Dega is preparing to pick up girls and have fun with his lover!

"Stinking rogue!"

But this work by Katsuko Sakai does not have this problem.

It is bright but not seductive.

Gorgeous without being revealing.

Her sexiness comes from her beauty and her natural, deep and mysterious temperament, rather than her large, naked curves.

Look at her.

It's like seeing an elf princess with wings in the forest.

The water in the pond gurgles, the clear spring gurgles, the water in the pond gurgles, the beautiful girl, the water in the pond gurgles... It is a bright Impressionist painting, but it has the solemnity and elegance of the old-fashioned Ukiyo-e style of ladies' paintings.

and so.

Katsuko Sakai gave her painting two other names.

In addition to the tentatively scheduled "Quiet, Empty, and Mysterious", there is also "Tree Shadows, Pool Water, and Girl", which directly concretizes the three abstract images of "quiet", "empty", and "mysterious" respectively.

Also known as.

The name "Quiet, Empty, and Mysterious" abstracts the three concrete images of "tree shadows", "pool water" and "girl".

Katsuko Sakai also prepared a simpler and more intuitive name - "Forest Princess".

She plans to choose any of these three names as the final official name of the exhibition at the Singapore Biennale.

correct.

This painting is the second work that Katsuko Sakai prepared for the Singapore Biennale after "Girl Reading Poems to Cats".

The curator system of the art festival determines that the art festival can be called "very humane" if you put it nicely, or "a grass-roots team" if you put it bluntly.

There is plenty of room for flexible adjustments.

As long as the curator is willing, many things can be negotiated.

From the location of the booth to the number of exhibited works.

Never mind the Singapore Biennale.

Historically, the world-renowned super exhibitions like the Venice Art Festival, Berlin and Cannes were actually quite amateurish.

A lot of the rules are just a joke.

The deadline for exhibitions has passed, but suddenly some heavyweight work is announced to be included in the competition unit; the president of some society claims that the principle of the exhibition is not to award the same writer twice, but breaks the rule the next year; the exhibition lists have been announced, but some directors keep jumping back and forth, saying they will withdraw and then come back... These seemingly ridiculous things have happened over and over again.

The year Coppola took "Apocalypse Now" to Cannes, sometimes the producer didn't let him go, and sometimes the director wanted to go himself. Even the version shown at the festival was an unfinished "semi-finished product" and the editing was different from the version finally released in theaters.

The top director and the top exhibition turned out to be a farce.

The only principle is to have no principle.

Or.

To sum up all the rules for participating in the exhibition, there is only one thing: if you are famous enough and your work is important enough, then all matters can be discussed with the curator.

(End of this chapter)