Almighty painter

Chapter 656 Ripples
When he saw the cover of the journal, Dr. Gustav believed it a little.

Three out of ten.

Perhaps this is what the antique appraisal industry calls "right taste"?

Gustav was able to find many characteristics of early Impressionist works in the brushwork and color of the work, but he could not find any brushwork characteristics that appeared later than the 1920s to serve as a "veto" for the conclusion of the paper.

Give the simplest example.

A classical oil painting created in 1870 certainly could not have the brushwork of the Cubist school, which gradually entered the mainstream art circle after 1908.

This is just like the auspicious scriptures in Persian that appear on some Jingtai stoves from the Ming Dynasty. These are precious traces of the developed commerce and integration of civilizations in the Ming Dynasty.

But no matter how civilizations merge, if there is a poem by Emperor Qianlong or the signature "for microwave oven only" on someone's Jingtai stove, it cannot be something from the Ming Dynasty.

From any angle, the picture conforms to the painting characteristics of the earliest Impressionist painters.

Gustav's intuition told him that this did not look like a modern imitation.

It's not difficult to find someone to copy a 19th century oil painting.

Some imitations are so good that they are indistinguishable from the real ones.

People today are not necessarily inferior to people in the past.

The brushwork techniques of today's oil painting masters are not inferior to those of oil painters a hundred years ago.

But if it is a post-impressionist painting.

It is difficult for painters to notice some subtle feelings during the painting process.

Influenced by the evolution of artistic trends, when contemporary Impressionist painters pick up their pens to paint, the changes in color are often brighter. They prefer to use aerial perspective to express color and pay more attention to the "rhythm" of the lines in their works.

Painters in the 19th century paid more attention to the "natural feel" of the lines in their works.

That stylistic difference between rhythmic and natural.

This is what is called the trace of history.

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism developed rapidly in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Like a cradle, they gave birth to many modern art schools and also brought about many changes in the painting supplies industry.

More and more new painting materials and new pigment media were invented.

A variety of high-quality fine-particle pigments, colorant oils, luminous oils and today's organic synthetic pigments have appeared in painters' studios.

This technological advancement, in turn, subtly transformed the Impressionist painters.

The 150 years between the two sides of the long river of time are separated by the advancement of pigment technology and the development of the entire scientific system of color theory.

It would certainly not be technically difficult for modern painters to use the same painting tools as those used by 19th century painters.

There is not much difference between the two.

But it is easy to roll back technically, but it is difficult to "roll back" with pen temperament.

Some marks of the times appear in your body and will stay with you forever, leaving a special mark on your body without you noticing.

They seem to be fragments of "DNA" gene spirals that are inherited from generation to generation in a certain field of art and constantly mutate.

Even if a contemporary oil painter intends to forge Impressionist works, they may stare at the paintings of Monet, Degas, and Renoir all day long, but they will hardly pay attention to imitating the landscape characteristics of Constable, or deliberately pursuing the special "brushstroke volume" that a few 19th-century painters loved.

You can draw well without paying attention to these things.

These details are what a pedant like him would pay attention to with a "magnifying glass", not what an artist would pay attention to.

Even Gustav himself could not accurately quantify these qualities.

What is the "Constable's landscape characteristics", what is the emphasis on "volume" of brushstrokes, and what is the "sense of rhythm" and "sense of nature" when writing?
There is no scale in the world that can weigh the painter's brushstrokes to an accurate reading of one, two, three, four, five.

and so.

They will always be just a vague feeling, a mysterious intuition.

I can teach by words but I cannot teach by example.

Scholars who pay special attention to these small problems and small feelings, like Dr. Gustave, may have only painted a few paintings in their lives.

He can explain theory to students for three days and three nights, and his arguments are very logical. But if you give him a paintbrush and ask him to paint, he can only stand there and stare blankly.

This is what is known as the "Miss Elena Paradox".

Art scholars, art critics and art creators are two professions that have certain similarities but are completely different in nature.

If Gustav really picked up a paintbrush, he would at best be able to draw Peppa Pig... maybe even less than that.

It took Leonardo da Vinci three years to practice drawing an egg. The technical difficulty of drawing Peppa Pig is at least higher than that of drawing an egg.

but.

Then again.

These feelings can’t be faked just because they’re real.

The best, and perhaps only, "golden rule" for determining the historical age of a painting is to find the corresponding painting record in historical documents of the same period.

It is the only irrefutable evidence that cannot be questioned or overturned.

In addition to historical documents, if there is huge profit involved, all of the characteristics mentioned above by Gustav for judging the age of the picture can be restored later; it is just a matter of cost.

Judging the authenticity and age of a fine oil painting is inherently difficult, and there are many complicated issues involved.

otherwise.

Brother Hao’s huge money laundering business can no longer be carried out.

The "Salvator Mundi" sold for $500 million at the British Museum would not have caused such a big academic controversy. There are more than one or two papers surrounding the issue of whether the painting is an authentic work of Leonardo da Vinci.

There are a lot of documentaries and academic seminars.

The British Museum has also published several popular books on related topics in an attempt to prove to the public the "purity of the bloodline" of the painting.

That's it, it needs to be torn apart.

and so.

Gustav looked at the photo on the cover. Even if his feeling was right, he only dared to believe it 30%.

Think before and after.

The doctor simply didn't go back to his office.

He took another quick look at the cover of Asian Art, then leaned against the bookshelf behind him and opened the magazine and started flipping through it.

Gustav didn't even have to look for it in the catalog.

The first page of the main text is the paper by Gu Weijing and Sakai Katsuko -

“The Female Artists Carol Forgotten by Time: The Color Entanglement and Visual Dimension of Dark Tone Impressionist Works.”

The title of the paper and the general content of the introduction have been summarized in the news section of Oil Painting magazine.

Gustav's attention was mainly focused on the author's name on the paper.

"Gu Weijing and Sakai Katsuko? Tama Art University..."

Kazunari Sakai sent the Buddha to the west.

When the final paper was published, he even gave up the position of the paper correspondence author to the children, and Gu Weijing and Sakai Katsuko became co-correspondents. He only retained the signature of his office on the correspondence unit.

An old scholar like Gustav, who stayed away from the spotlight in the library, obviously did not have the keen insight of curator Tonks.

Tonks only needed to glance at the last name "Sakai" to feel her way down and pull Sakai Issei's big ass out of the ground.

He just felt that these two people were quite strange.

The circle of art scholars is so small. Impressionism is a prominent school of thought in the painting world, but there are actually only so many scholars who specialize in Impressionism. Even if you have never met at an academic conference, you have more or less heard of each other's names.

Gustav thought for a long time but still couldn't figure out who these two people were.

"A newcomer in the industry? Japan is indeed a major country in Impressionist research."

The doctor didn't care and just read on quickly.

"…In early Impressionist works, most painters would emphasize the light and shadow effects reflected on the water surface and the use of quick short lines. In this painting, this feature was pioneeringly used by the painter Carroll to depict the rain clouds in the sky…"

"...In the comparison of old photos, we can see that there are statues and reliefs on both sides of this old Anglican church. This feature is also reflected in the oil painting. But in this photo taken in 1902, we can see that the relief on the right has been destroyed by war..."

"…The following is an excerpt from the original text of a missionary's diary, December 1876, 12, only one week away from Christmas…She has impressive golden-red hair…"

……

Art papers are not as complicated to read as science papers, which are filled with various charts and data calculations.

Scholars like Gustav have received professional academic training, and the internal jargon and jargon in their papers, such as "color entanglement", "visual dimension", and "one-dimensional wonder", will not cause any difficulty in understanding them.

They read art essays just like they read essays in The New Yorker.

A doctoral dissertation of hundreds of thousands of words may take several days or even weeks to complete.

Articles in this type of journal can often be read through in just a few minutes, with a few pages of the paper being read entirely.

It took Gustav less than five minutes to scan the entire paper from beginning to end.

"First, we found the location where the painter took the pictures through the oil paintings, and then we determined the approximate time of the creation through the historical photos of the location. Finally, we located the specific painter through the manuscript of the missionary's sermon diary?"

He grasped the main point of the article easily.

To put it simply, all the contents of the entire paper can be included in this sentence.

But if we talk about it in a complicated way.

The article contained much more information than Gustav had expected.

The deduction process is one link after another, and each step of the conjecture is supported by circumstantial evidence as much as possible. Although there is no crucial evidence that can be the final word, in the field of "art archaeology", this step can be said to be convincing enough.

A hundred years ago, when Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world on the Turkish peninsula that he had found the lost "ancient city of Troy", the only evidence Schliemann had in his hands was a few lines of poetry from the poet Homer's "Odyssey".

Da da da.

The Doctor tapped his fingers on the back cover of the journal.

There are still those two possibilities.

Otherwise it is a hoax and one or more of the paintings, photographs, old churches, and missionary diaries are fake.

Shoot the arrow first, then draw the target.

Naturally, the painting looks like it hits the bull's eye.

There have been many cases of cheating in papers discovered in Japan over the years.

If not.

One or two pieces of indirect evidence may not be strong enough to prove the case, but when all these pieces of evidence are put together, then -

"This is very interesting." Gustav raised his chin.

If this were an anime like Conan, then at this moment, a sharp light would have begun to flash behind the doctor's yellow-brown colored glasses lenses.

He turned to the beginning of the article again and read it from the beginning.

This time, the doctor no longer just skimmed through the paper, but read it carefully word by word, and also looked carefully at every photo attached to the paper.

Twenty minutes later.

Dr. Gustav closed the journal with a swish, turned around, and walked towards the library hall, dragging his leather shoes.

He sat down next to an unused monitor in the hall, pulled out his keyboard, and logged into his email. He stretched out two fingers and typed the email address attached to the paper letter by letter.

"Dear Gu Weijing, Ms./Mr. Sakai Katsuko:"

“I am very happy to write to you. I am Dr. Gustave Hollande from the Yale School of Art. I have just read your paper published in Asian Art and benefited a lot from it. Your research is impressive. However, I have a few questions and I wonder if I can answer them…”

Gustav enthusiastically tapped the keyboard with two fingers, like a drummer in a band, and his fingers were about to produce sparks.

The length of the paper is limited, so you can only read the general content.

If anyone wants to know the writing details of the paper, or wants to deeply participate in the research and see some first-hand original materials used in writing the paper, they still need to contact the author separately.

……

Spain.

At the Royal Higher School of Fine Arts in Madrid, a young student assistant in a plaid shirt is wearing headphones and casually flipping through the newly arrived papers and journals in the office.

He read two lines at random.

Suddenly he took off his headphones and stood up: "Teacher, teacher, maybe you are interested in reading this paper..."

……

Paris, Musee d'Orsay.

Office of the Researcher in the Department of Art History, Theory and Collections.

The slightly plump female researcher in a black suit put a macaron sandwich into her mouth while typing on the laptop in front of her.

"...Looking forward to your reply."

I thought about it.

She typed again: "In addition, I hope to have the honor to invite Mr. Gu and Ms. Sakai to the Musée d'Orsay in France. We would be very happy if you could bring the original work of "Old Church on a Thunderstorm Day" mentioned in the paper. If it is not convenient, we also warmly welcome you to come for exchanges and visits. I wish you happiness and success in life!"

"—Naomi Williams, senior researcher at the Musee d'Orsay."

The female researcher pressed the send button with satisfaction.

……

Gu Weijing and Sakai Katsuko had never published such high-end papers before.

they do not know.

With the publication of "Asian Art", their paper was like a stone thrown into the field of art research.

Now, what hits the water surface may be just a few small pieces of gravel before the huge rock falls.

however.

The ripples on the lake have spread out one after another.

(End of this chapter)