Almighty painter

Chapter 655 Peer Review
"…In 1950, Josef Albers was invited to join Yale University and led the newly established Department of Art and Design as the head of the department. You may have heard that Albers is the most representative artist of the Bauhaus style. He was the first to integrate Mondrian's painting style into architectural design…"

The man walked through a group of elderly Spanish tourists, and as a friendly tour guide wearing glasses and wearing a hanging microphone chattered about the history of the campus, he stepped onto the white stone brick steps and entered the campus library of the Yale Art Department.

In addition to its rich collections, Yale's School of Art is also world-renowned and may be the best among the eight schools in the Ivy League.

Its oil painting department ranks first in the United States, and its sculpture and graphic design departments are both ranked second.

"Hello, Dr. Gustav."

The fat black clerk at the front desk recognized the white-bearded man who entered the library and greeted him.

The man lowered his head, immersed in his own world, and nodded curtly, mumbling a vague "good morning" in response.

He stood in front of the guide desk for another two seconds, and then he seemed to suddenly remember why he was there.

"Have you received the new issue of Asian Art that the library ordered?"

He asked slowly.

Now is the era of Internet office.

Unlike the 1950s or 1970s, the new generation of scholars are generally more accustomed to reading papers on the Internet and checking the research results of their peers. Some cutting-edge hot papers at the forefront of the trend will be pre-posted on some academic websites that publish preprints. Before they are officially published in journals, they may have gone through several rounds of peer discussions.

The clock in the field of classical art ticks slower than in other disciplines.

When World War I was in full swing, Yale University was still considering building a medieval-style building.

Technology is changing rapidly, colleagues in the School of Physics are studying string theory and quantum mechanics, businessmen are declaring on Twitter that they will head to Mars, looking forward to the life of people a century later. Dr. Gustav is still studying Impressionism, an art movement that was born a century and a half ago.

Art is essentially a discipline of “gazing at the past and communicating with the future”.

If you want, it's natural for the clock to tick twenty or thirty years slower than other people.

In the art industry, people like Cao who are over 90 years old are still active in the front line. Picasso's lover is already 100 years old and held a personal retrospective exhibition two years ago. In other industries, people of this age, even if they are still alive, would have retired to the second line long ago. Being able to teach in a school is already a great thing.

The twenties here are the nineties for others, and their 2023 is still the 1993 for their peers.

Not only is the list of big names at the exhibition filled with old names from the old times.

On campus, scholars like Gustav also have an old-fashioned lifestyle.

While having breakfast, he read a news article in Oil Painting magazine about new research on Impressionism by scholars from Asia.

There was no special order for Asian Art in Gustav's office.

It would take at least two months for this kind of art paper to be included in the online database, and he was itching to wait.

He simply came out of the staff canteen, took a detour and went to the library on campus.

Universities like Yale are not short of money for subscribing to magazines. Even if not all teachers and students will actually come to the library to borrow them, the subscriptions to various academic journals should be very complete.

At least for a documentary journal of the level of "Asian Art", I would definitely subscribe to every issue.

really.

The old-school method is still very reliable today.

“The new issue of Asian Art, which just arrived last Friday.”

The black clerk fiddled with the computer for a while, tore off a piece of note, wrote a bookshelf number on it, and handed it to Gustav.

Gustav gave another perfunctory nod of thanks and disappeared behind the door to the journal section on the first floor of the library.

He pushed up his yellow-and-black glasses, glanced at the note with a picture of the Yale campus mascot, the bulldog, on it, and walked all the way inside, and soon found the bookshelf corresponding to "Asian Art".

The new issue of "Asian Art" is neatly stacked on the top shelf, a total of five copies.

Gustav picked up one at random.

He originally wanted to borrow it and read it in his office, but as soon as he took the magazine down, he saw the cover of this issue of "Asian Art" at a glance.

The Doctor was stunned for a moment.

He recognized it as a dark-toned Impressionist painting.

It's not just about "recognition".

Gustav is different from Uncle Sakai. He is a scholar who specializes in art research and majored in art history in college.

in other words.

He is a professional painter and theoretical researcher.

Therefore, when it comes to appreciating paintings, he is more experienced than Kazunari Sakai.

Although the printing quality of the cover of "Asian Art" does not reach the clarity of electronic scans or professional art albums.

Gustav still saw a lot at a glance.

His undergraduate and master's theses were on the history of French art in the 19th century.

After graduating with a doctorate, my main research direction in recent years has been the influence of Impressionism on contemporary art.

Gustav was too familiar with the Impressionist painting style.

When he was young, there were so many things that tempted him, but it was Impressionism that finally captured him.

Dr. Gustav once couldn't help thinking that if he had not been attracted by the Impressionist brushwork and aesthetics, he would have been like a hummingbird that crashed into a huge spider web, bumping left and right but getting more and more entangled, stuck in a dead end, and wasting most of his life in universities, art exhibitions, and libraries.

He may have become a pilot like the protagonist in Out of Africa, flying a propeller plane with a silver instrument panel, chasing wild donkeys and rhinos across the Kenyan jungle. Or he may have been like many of his classmates in the art department of American universities many years ago, when he was 28 or 29, or 35 or 36.

Died from one or more of alcohol, leaves, and AIDS.

If you want to study a serious subject to the extreme, what is needed is day after day of hard work in the piles of old papers, extraordinary patience, and enthusiasm that can withstand the erosion of long years.

Truth is the ultimate reward for boredom and loneliness.

Art may be the major with the lowest "academic threshold" among all disciplines.

There are academics and amateur scientists in the scientific community.

There are academic philosophers and folk philosophers in the philosophical community.

Whether it is folk scientist or folk philosopher, in the general social evaluation, it is actually difficult to consider them as good words.

If you encounter a folk scientist in the scientific research circle who has proved that "1+1=2" or "invented a perpetual motion machine", then all you can do is... give him an awkward but polite smile.

However, since ancient times, artists have been divided into two schools: academic artists and wild fox Zen artists.

Although those who practice wild fox Zen may not be as wild as ordinary people imagine.

Similar to Renoir, a representative figure of "folk painters", the so-called "folk painter" refers to the fact that Impressionism was not recognized by the academic painters who occupied the mainstream discourse power in the painting world at that time. It does not mean that they did not receive professional subject education.

Although Renoir was an apprentice in a porcelain shop and did not attend art school or art college like many painters, he did study painting under Charles Gleyre, an academic master at the Paris Academy of Fine Arts. From today's perspective, he can be considered to have a famous teacher.

But at least the artist industry——

Apprentices, stockbrokers, dough kneading masters in bakeries... these ordinary people without professional backgrounds also have the opportunity to reach the top.

If you are lucky enough, you may even win an award at the Biennale and reach the peak of your life.

There are many such examples in history.

Regrettably.

Art creators can come from non-professional backgrounds, but art scholars cannot.

Art is not as rigorous and objective as mathematics. The correctness of all conclusions can be verified through numbers and formulas.

Art research is a subject that relies heavily on "feeling", but the feeling is not a random feeling, but a professional quality accumulated through years of academic training and a vast amount of knowledge.

This kind of quality is the difference between professional treasure appraisers in the antique industry and the bigwigs in the national treasure gang, and it is also the difference between professional art papers and bragging at the wine table.

Dr. Gustav has devoted thirty years to research in the field of Impressionism.

In Huo Yuanjia's words, "I have thirty years of experience in this one look. What can you use to block it? Can you block it?"

Ordinary paintings are definitely irresistible.

Even if she didn't take off all her clothes, she would at least remove her skirt halfway so that people could see right down to her bones at a glance.

Almost instantly, Gustav realized that the painting on the cover was a very, very early Impressionist work, and different from any famous Impressionist he had seen before.

It is an "old oil painting" by a "new painter".

The doctor based his judgment on the temperament of the painting, in a similar way to when paleontologists discover a new fossil, they often judge the age of the species based on its evolutionary characteristics.

For example, the fins of some fish gradually evolved into endoskeleton and became part of the limbs of tetrapods during the long process of biological evolution. In some other fish, their fins became dorsal suction cups that small fish used to attach to large fish such as sharks and blue whales and coexist with them.

And if.

One day, a fossil of a fish was discovered. Its fins showed characteristics of evolving into suction cups, but they did not completely turn into suction cups.

Then we can preliminarily judge that the era in which it lived was probably a transitional period between the two previous and later creatures.

The painting on the cover of "Asian Art" has such obvious "evolutionary" characteristics.

From the painting technique, the effect of the entire picture, the subtle and vivid transition between colors, the bright and fast brushstrokes... it can be judged that this is a very mature Impressionist painting.

this point is very important.

It only makes sense to first determine whether it is impressionism and then discuss whether the author's views are correct.

For example, some of Turner's works like to depict "light and air".

His paintings were even called "steam watercolors" by critics at the time because of the foggy and chaotic feeling.

However, it did not form a mature, new, and independent way of painting. It can only be said that Turner's aesthetic philosophy had a certain influence on the formation of Impressionism fifty years later. Turner's own works can still only be classified as academic or romantic.

When Dr. Gustav read the news in Oil Painting in the cafeteria, he speculated that the two Asian scholars might have dug up an old oil painting that "looked like Impressionism" from somewhere and began to write the paper impatiently, preparing to create a big gimmick.

Or even worse than skirting the line and making far-fetched claims, this is simply a fake painting fabricated for the purpose of writing a paper.

Gustav took a quick glance.

He ruled out the first guess.

no problem.

This is indeed a proper Impressionist painting. From any angle, its painting method conforms to the Impressionist standards, and the brushwork and color creation are highly mature.

Simultaneously.

This painting also bears some of the brushwork characteristics of other popular painting styles in the early nineteenth century.

For example, the transition of color saturation between the foreground and the middle ground has a little bit of the shadow of the landscape painter Constable, and the sense of volume and architecture in the works is very similar to the characteristics of Manet's early brushwork...

Before seeing this painting, Gustav was only willing to believe three-tenths of the conclusions of the paper - the remaining ninety-seven percent were doubts.

The idea is too novel and too unconvincing.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Impressionist painters were a very rare breed.

Professional female painters are even rarer than Impressionist painters.

It is so rare that not only professional female painters, but even "not so professional" female artists can go down in history.

Elizabeth Siddal,
She was just an ordinary woman from the lower class, and the darling of all Pre-Raphaelite painters who lived twenty years before the Impressionists.

She liked to learn painting from painters while serving as a model for them, and eventually married Rossetti, an important Pre-Raphaelite painter.

In 1850, Elizabeth would not have been considered a professional painter.

But today, she has been dubbed the "uncrowned queen of the Pre-Raphaelites" and the "pioneer of female artists."

Oil paintings signed by Elizabeth Siddal appear at auctions in Europe and are worth at least 700,000 pounds. Just for the historical significance, they can be sold at extremely high prices. Hollywood has even released a feature film with her as the protagonist.

Impressionist pioneer + female painter pioneer - the combination of these two names is like combustion plus accelerant, which can push a person's value to the sky.

Not to mention 2023.

Even in 1923 and 1873, her presence would have been as eye-catching as a flower among green leaves.

Perhaps more than a century ago, she would not be accepted by society and would be criticized for being "improper".

However, pointing fingers is itself a form of attention.

Some female painters in small, unknown studios may indeed be overlooked by history.

But Impressionism is the founder of modern art and can be regarded as the most important school of painting in the history of Western oil painting. In terms of overall influence, even Picasso cannot compete with it.

Every early member of the Impressionist movement has been scrutinized through a magnifying glass by later scholars.

Unless there was a powerful social force that erased the existence of this "Carol" from the art world, causing everyone who knew her at the time to choose to keep silent.

otherwise.

It is almost impossible that the existence of such a painter will be forgotten by history.

(End of this chapter)