(There will be updates from Xie Meng, details at the end.)
As soon as the expert opens his mouth, he will know whether it is there or not.
Curator Tonks has admired famous paintings and participated in so many art appreciation meetings that he can hardly count them.
To put it bluntly,
Even at professional art seminars or various annual exhibitions at the Taylor Art Museum, there are still people talking nonsense on the podium.
The larger the exhibition, the more so.
Not only are there weird experts who appear out of nowhere, but there are also more congressmen or government officials who appear out of nowhere and like to express their own opinions on works of art.
The senior bureaucrats of the British Empire were very concerned about portraying themselves as art lovers in front of the public and the media.
When holding a meeting, the leader always has to say a few words. There is not much difference in this point between China and foreign countries.
Curator Tonks even picked up on the bullshit.
Generally speaking, if you don't know how to draw and are afraid of making mistakes and being embarrassed, the easiest way is to talk about history.
For example, look at Turner's "The Dismantled HMS Dreadnought" to recall the glorious history of defeating the French at the Battle of Trafalgar. It is a common practice to look at the scenery on the Thames and recall the glory of the Victorian Empire when the sun never set.
Generally speaking, the speeches written by government secretaries follow this routine.
Apart from being a bit dull and boring, basically nothing can go wrong.
It would be a disaster if these bureaucrats got interested and wanted to express themselves without writing.
It would be fine to mistake the prostitutes in luxurious clothes in the pre-Raphaelite moralizing paintings in the exhibition for aristocratic ladies, but vulgar jokes such as being unable to distinguish between gouache and watercolor, and watercolor and oil painting are not unheard of.
There are only a handful of people who can break down the aesthetic composition of a painting as finely as this detective cat, and they are all elites in the field.
If a well-known scholar could say such things, Tonks could accept it, but Detective Cat is just an online illustrator.
And Anna was even more surprised by the angle from which Detective Cat evaluated the painting.
Appreciate works of art,
In fact, most art critics talk more about big and abstract concepts.
The proportion of blank space in the composition of a work, the eye contact between the characters, the natural transition between the lake and the sky, and the spiritual thinking nurtured by the painter's pen, the reflection of different artistic schools in this work...
Detective Cat can cleverly capture the details of the oil painting artist's creation.
She did not ignore even the smallest brushstrokes, and spoke with full details, as if she had witnessed the artist's creative process with her own eyes.
"Typical art criticism ideas of great painters."
An idea popped into Anna's mind.
This is the difference between watching others draw and drawing by yourself.
The most significant difference between a curator and an art critic who is a painter is the details.
Being meticulous and discerning every detail is a privilege only experienced painters have when appreciating paintings.
It’s not that the curators didn’t want to capture and analyze the details of these paintings, but it was too difficult for them.
Especially oil paintings,
Unlike sketches or gouache paintings, oil paints are layered on top of each other, and the layers of color are superimposed on each other. The light that reflects the outside world penetrates the paint from bottom to top, and is constantly absorbed and mixed by various spectra, which forms the visual effect that is finally captured by the audience.
It is not difficult to reverse this process from the final image.
From a broad perspective, Anna can easily tell which scenes were painted first, which content was painted later, and what the painter's overall composition idea was.
But like Detective Cat, even the tiniest changes in warm and cold strokes can be captured.
can only say……
It's not generally difficult.
At least as Detective Cat just described, in this "White Lake Baikal", there are many small details in the fan paintings that even Anna originally ignored.
Listening to Ms. Detective Cat speaking in a gentle tone, she even felt suddenly enlightened.
Anna knew that although she loved art, her talent for painting was objectively limited.
Read the book a hundred times, and its meaning will appear by itself.
This truth is only half true in the field of painting.
Even if you have seen a thousand paintings, appreciated 10,000 famous paintings, and even if you have grown up in art museums, you will not be able to see the underlying details of painting techniques and brushwork.
If you want to truly understand a painting from beginning to end, in addition to appreciating its beauty, you also have to draw it with your own hands.
Detective Cat not only knows oil painting, he is simply a master of it.
Why does such a painter insist on holding on to the drawing knife and painting? Isn't it good to engage in serious oil painting?
"Bravo! What a great story. Such wonderful and detailed analysis should be enjoyed by both me and the viewers on the podcast platform."
Anna Hao expressed her praise and appreciation without hesitation.
"Especially your views on the contrast between warm and cold color points and how colors stand out from each other are really impressive. I guess you must know a lot about Impressionism."
She asked Tonks: "Mr. Curator, do you have anything to add to what you said about Detective Cat?"
"Well……"
Mr. Curator blinked and glanced at the speech he had prepared.
The changes in light and shadow of Impressionism...well, the other party has said it.
The details of the contrast between the lake and the sky...well, Detective Cat also said it.
…
To put it bluntly, a painting can only tell so much.
The normal mode of this classic salon-style podcast should be for everyone to chat and discuss together.
It's like cross talk, you say something and I say something.
Each person expresses an opinion, and the host adjusts the atmosphere. They talk about a painting for about ten minutes. Each person talks about two or three opinions, and it ends with laughter.
This is like playing Feihualing and reciting poems starting with a specific word. There are only so many poems that meet the requirements. The first person to appear has memorized ten or eight lines, and it will be difficult for the people behind.
But Gu Weijing has no experience, and Anna is happy to give Ms. Detective Cat a chance to express herself.
So he analyzed almost the entire painting in detail and talked about all the points he could think of.
Director Tonks was hesitant at this time.
It would be too much to say that Gu Weijing's previous analysis made the curator so ashamed that he is now speechless and has nothing to say.
For a senior curator like Mr. Tonks who has been immersed in painting appreciation for half his life, he can always come up with new ideas if he just wants to talk.
But the curator is also arrogant, okay?
He is a truly international curator.
It would be an exaggeration to say that the world's artistic landscape was moved by him, but it is a fact that there are many world-class artists among the people talking and laughing.
If Tonks discusses something that has already been discussed by others, it would be a bit misleading.
He thought for a moment.
"What a wonderful statement, Ms. Detective Cat."
"Then I have a question. Do you think this painting has no flaws?" Curator Tonks dug a hole quietly.
He realized that the detective cat had been talking about some details and had overlooked a more fundamental shortcoming of the painting.
This is also a mistake often made by many painters who do not have enough experience.
"What are the possible shortcomings in the creation of this painting? What I can see is that the brush strokes are too hard, there are too many details on the lake that affect attention, making the picture look messy, and the style of the brush..."
Gu Weijing recalled the brushwork style of this painting on the light screen in his mind.
The oil painting techniques of professional level three are great, but they are far from perfect.
"Wait a minute, none of the questions you mentioned are wrong, but they are not big mistakes."
Curator Tonks shook her head and interrupted Gu Weijing's conclusion.
"These views are too ingenious. If judged by the standards of a truly excellent work of art, this painting actually has a more fatal flaw, which you did not point out."
Mr. Curator touched his chin.
"Humph, he is an illustrator after all."
Director Tonks regained his sense of superiority as a senior curator.
Detective Cat may indeed have some research on pictures, but after working too much as a "taxi driver" for his employer, he is somewhat lacking in the more fundamental aesthetic ability of art.
"Mr. Curator, the shortcomings you are talking about are the appeal of the pictures, right?"
Anna understood what Director Tonks meant, and at this time she intervened in order to avoid the embarrassment of Detective Cat.
Whether it is called the appeal of the picture or the emotion of the painting, it is the extent to which a painter integrates his own emotions into the picture.
To explain it in more straightforward terms, it is whether this painting is moving enough.
Painters with good techniques and a strong sense of spatial structure are more likely to make their works expressive.
But this is only relative.
Whether a painting is expressive depends on whether the painter has the passion for painting and a sufficient understanding of the content of the painting.
At this time, illustrators have a natural disadvantage because what they draw is not their own inspiration.
The illustrator is just a tool for your employer.
The industry's requirements for illustrations are mainly to draw beautifully and meet the employer's requirements, but they don't care much about whether there is enough passion for the picture creation itself.
Even among the seven illustrations that Mr. Hyperion asked Anna to appreciate, only the paintings of Jane Arnold, the undisputed number one in the illustration world, can make the audience feel warm.
The sketch of Ms. Detective Cat can only be considered serious.
But then again, the other people's paintings are not as simple and unpretentious as Detective Cat.
Even the painting by the famous artist De Jong Vandoorne was incomprehensible to Anna.
"The mood of this painting is not good, but it is not bad either... Ms. Detective Cat, you are an illustrator, so it is normal for you not to be that sensitive."
Anna comforted.
Anna was very surprised that Detective Cat had such a deep understanding of oil paintings.
She knows that for a painter, wanting to express one's emotions is much more difficult than simply practicing skills.
Picasso also has some paintings that look perfunctory.
Basically, if the scene is coherent enough and the brushwork is careful enough, it can be considered a good painting.
Most of the normal works of a professional painter in his life are also in this emotional range.
It’s normal for the detective cat to not see the problem.
"If there is any emotional shortcoming pointed out by... Curator Tonks, it is..."
Anna was just about to take over the painting title when she heard the detective cat speak.
"This painting is just not 'cold' enough, right?"
Gu Weijing thought for a moment.
In the process of dismantling the painting through the light curtain in his mind, he really felt that the painting was unusual in terms of emotion besides technique.
On the system panel, it only received the rating of "Simple Work". The biggest problem is that this painting is not cold enough.
Looking at the white snow, my heart is chilled to the bone - this is the highest pursuit of a painting depicting winter.
The art of calligraphy and painting appraisal can see the entire Paris from "The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette" and hear the rumbling thunderstorm from "The Old Church on a Thunderstorm Day".
This painting is called "White Lake Baikal". The title of the painting contains the word "white", which naturally represents the lake frozen by heavy snow.
But Gu Weijing could not feel the coldness in the image during the appraisal.
Rather, it looks like a piece of paper simply covered with white paint.
"Did you see it? Why didn't you say it just now?"
Curator Tonks held back the words she had prepared and sniffed a few times.
"The lack of empathy with the scenery, I think it was probably the artist who painted it in front of the photos in the studio."
Gu Weijing expressed his reasoning: "But I don't think there is any problem with this. There is nothing we can do about it. We can't really go to the freezing Lake Baikal to paint."
The Impressionists put more emphasis on capturing the fleeting light and shadow in real nature and on-site sketching.
This admiration is also relative,
Just like those painters who paint religious paintings, it is impossible to really see God. Asking people to paint Lake Baikal in the freezing weather is obviously a bit difficult.
"Who says it can't be done?"
Tonks hummed inwardly.
What’s the point of going to the shores of Lake Baikal for some sightseeing?
It was inappropriate for him to say this. This was a public program, and if it was told to the general audience, it would be somewhat arrogant.
But that was what Tonks was thinking.
For the great artist studios that Mr. Curator has daily access to, traveling to various places to collect works is part of his job.
Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to take a Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker to the North Pole, spending millions of dollars to buy an island in the Pacific to live in seclusion, and hiring two dozen Nepali Sherpa laborers if you want to see the snow-capped mountains. Lifted to Mount Everest.
They abound.
As long as technology can reach it, these great artists will be willing to go up to the moon waving their banknotes.
This is not a joke.
The first batch of commercial passengers in Space
Compared with these big things, going to the shores of Lake Baikal to collect scenery is really just a walk in the small park in front of your home.
"Okay, that's it for this painting, let's talk about the next painting..."
The last part where he wanted to express his opinion was also filled in by Detective Cat.
At this time, Tonks completely lost interest in continuing to talk about the painting "White Lake Baikal", and he took the initiative to change the topic.
"Let me share my thoughts on this watercolor painting..."
This time there was no need for Mr. Sloth's invitation, and Tonks took the lead in chatting honestly.
Thanks to the great leader, Xie Meng will release the update tonight or tomorrow.
(End of chapter)
