The Uber taxi drove onto the embankment of the Yangon River, honked its horn a few times, passed between two stalls selling tropical fruits on the street, and entered the commercial street on the left.
From the passenger seat,
The translator quietly turned his head and looked at the thin-looking blond man with filigree glasses in the back row.
In the next seven days, the other party will be his customer.
Professional business translators are not very popular in Yangon. In an era when the political situation was relatively peaceful, Yangon was actually a very leisurely tourist city.
Southeast Asia is a traditional summer resort during Europe's cold winters.
It may not be as prosperous as Bangkok, and the consumption level is correspondingly one-third or even two-thirds lower.
A large number of old white men who are about to retire will flock to this city via international flights.
They took steamboats along the criss-crossing river network deep into the primitive jungles around Yangon and Mandalay, or were carried around this ancient city by local coolies on sliding poles, sipping a cup of freshly squeezed mango juice through a straw in their hands. ice.
If you are not worried about safety issues,
This is a traditional tourist destination in Southeast Asia where you can get high-quality services at a very cheap price.
The official language here includes English. Not everyone can speak it, but as long as you spend hundreds of thousands of kyats, you can get an "escort translator" girl with a curvy front and back.
Sneak in a few green dollars as a tip.
The female translator during the day will crawl into your quilt at night.
Whether it is Thailand or Myanmar, compared with these Southeast Asian cities, considerate services have been created like city business cards.
Serious business translators like him are expensive, and they can't sleep with him, so they rarely receive personal business.
The translator is very curious,
After being picked up outside Yangon International Airport, the guest neither went to the hotel nor the tourist destination, but directly handed over a small note.
He looked it up on Google Maps.
The address on that little piece of paper seemed to be a little-known small gallery?
"How much longer?"
"Five or six minutes. The store on the map is in the tourist area along the Yangon River. If the location is correct, we will be there soon."
Hanks Marsh nodded from the back seat.
With a bit of vigilance, he passed through the vendors who were still noisy and busy in the dusk all around, and reached for the briefcase on the seat next to him.
A solid and heavy feeling came immediately, as if a cast-iron dumbbell from the gym was stuffed into the leather briefcase.
Hanks gently placed his work bag between his legs and unzipped a corner.
The brand-new green-blue banknotes have the golden lion logo of the Central Bank of Myanmar printed on the top, and the English letters "TEN THOUSAND KYATS" and the Burmese word for 10,000 kyats are printed in ink black fonts on the corners.
The largest denomination of banknotes ever issued by this country.
There are one hundred sheets per stack, and there are a total of twenty-five stacks in this medium-sized portable briefcase, which is equivalent to 25 million kyats.
The first thing Hanks did when he got off the plane was to exchange a large amount of Kyat cash at the foreign currency exchange office at the airport.
After he came out, he actually realized that he should have been cheated.
In Yangon,
The U.S. dollar and the euro are actually hard currencies like gold, and they can circulate normally without specifically converting them into local currencies.
Moreover, in the local black market here, the exchange rate was much more valuable than the official exchange rate, and he exchanged at least several million kyats less.
But it doesn’t matter.
If it's less, just use less. The money in this big briefcase should be enough at critical moments.
There is also a way to maintain a good relationship between gallery managers and represented artists.
The key to giving a gift is to be able to penetrate the other person's psychological bottom line, and not to waste too much money on an unknown little painter.
There's a price that's right for everyone.
Hanks didn't even blink when he gave Professor Sakai a Richard Mille watch that was worth as much as a Porsche 911 on the market, because such an artist could bring more than a dozen things to Mashi Gallery. Tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars can be measured.
However, it would be outrageous to give a piece of Richard Mille to any small painter.
No matter how free the sponsor's stuff is, that's not how it's used.
Cash has always been a tried-and-true way to travel at home, pay for murders, and give bribes and gifts to win people's hearts.
25 million kyats is less than 20,000 U.S. dollars, which is already very heavy in your hands.
This was the signature fee that Hanks had prepared for Gu Weijing, a child who had probably never seen the world before. It was specially made that no electronic payment was required, and it was all in cash.
Many people underestimate the impact that a lot of heavy banknotes have on a person's heart when they are spread out in front of their eyes.
The amount of willpower required to reject a check with a series of zeros written on it is completely different from the amount of willpower required to reject a wad of physical cash in front of you.
Tangible wealth has a huge impact.
Seeing so much money right in front of them makes most people's legs weak.
If this place wasn't unsafe for robbery, and so much cash was too heavy, he would have thought of using 1,000 kyat and 5,000 kyat banknotes that are more commonly used by locals.
Tens of thousands of banknotes were spread out like a sea, and the other party would definitely be so happy that they couldn't find the north.
"Hehehe, Brother Gu, you will be mine soon!" Hanks happily worked out the details of the contract in his mind.
"I don't know if this guy knows how to do it. Can we just sign him for fifteen years?" The blond young man smacked his mouth.
From top to bottom, Mashi Gallery has signed a total of 196 artists.
From an interest perspective, while the external interests of galleries and their agent painters are almost identical, there are also various internal intrigues.
Gallery owners look at artists like an old farmer looks at the crops in the field, or a team leader looks at the donkeys of the production team.
There is essentially no difference between them signing new players and Premier League football teams operating youth training teams.
It’s just that EU regulations stipulate that athletes under 16 can only sign once a year, and athletes under 18 can only sign once every three years. This protects young people from being ignorant and ignorant and selling themselves into black clubs for the rest of their lives.
There are no such regulations in the art industry, and the water is very deep. There are a lot of formal and informal ones, and there are also many pheasant galleries with cats and dogs.
Regardless of the size of the gallery, when facing newcomers who are in the "low price period" of their career,
The principles I pursue are that life is mine and death is mine. If you can sign for five years, don’t sign for three. If you can sign for ten, don’t sign for five. It’s best to just sign for life.
Artists are less willing to hang their careers on a crooked tree for a long time.
Water flows to lower places, and people move to higher places.
What if there is a better opportunity in the future?
Therefore, every artist in the industry has a different contract period and completely different content conditions.
The common contract period for small galleries is three years, but first-tier galleries like Ma Shi Gallery, which is at the top of the industry pyramid, can usually sign contracts of five or even more than seven years as long as they negotiate well.
Like this guy named Gu Weijing, a completely green newcomer, from being trained to becoming famous, to blossoming and bearing fruit.
It would be boring if it was a short contract.
Hanks' trip was directly aimed at signing a long-term contract of more than ten years.
The production team of Mashi Gallery can't just raise the little donkey until it's plump and fat, and then turn around and work for other production teams.
"It should be no problem. A 70% commission ratio, a creative allowance of US$40,000 per year, a salary increase of about 3 to 5 points, and a signing fee of 25 million kyats. It is really generous. , Huh, if you don’t want to give Professor Sakai the face of the introducer, it would be enough to give you a Type 4 contract..."
Hanks smiled and zipped up his briefcase, imagining in his heart how excited the other party would be with tears in his eyes after receiving the offer from Mashi Gallery.
Most of the little-known people who receive invitations from top galleries have this reaction.
After learning the relevant information about Gu Weijing from Professor Kazunari Sakai that day, Hanks hesitated for a long time at Narita International Airport, and finally flew directly to Myanmar without any hurry.
Anyway, in a place like Yangon, it is usually out of sight of other competitors.
Hanks spent two days researching what kind of contract he should give.
Mashi Gallery's regular contracts can be divided into four types of contracts.
The third and fourth categories are both for painters who have no market reputation.
After this type of painter is signed by Mashi Gallery, if it sounds good, they will be called "emerging artists" in marketing. If it sounds bad, it means that without a gallery, you are nothing.
The commission for the four types of contracts is generally over 85%. Or if they are unwilling to share the consignment, the gallery will buy out their oil paintings for about US$1,500 a piece.
It sounds like the gallery is a vicious vampire.
In fact, maybe the commission ratio of nine out of ten is really harsh, but this is the confidence of first-tier galleries.
Facing such towering trees,
Ordinary low-level painters just lean under the big trees to enjoy the coolness... little ants are not even qualified to be described as "vines wrapped around the big trees".
Think about those idol trainees who earn hundreds of dollars a month from entertainment companies, and you will understand.
There are also people who are not qualified to be sucked blood.
Just ask any young painter if they would rather be paid the industry standard 50%-50 share ratio in a third-tier gallery or if they would rather be paid a basic salary at Ma Shi Gallery. Nine and a half out of ten would choose white without hesitation. Even if you want to work part-time, you have to jump on a big ship like Mashi.
The range of commissions for the higher third-category contracts is very wide.
It ranges from 60% to 85%, and the buyout price of the buyout system has also increased significantly, reaching four to five thousand US dollars for a work, and even as high as tens of thousands of US dollars.
It is a contract that can only be obtained by emerging painters who have made a name for themselves or art students with high potential.
The extremely high potential here often refers to the most outstanding handful of outstanding graduates from well-known art academies.
Similarly, during their student years, painters who have participated in graduation excellence exhibitions, various group exhibitions, and student groups in certain city biennials will only have their self-recommended applications that may be noticed by galleries.
The hundreds of other self-recommendations sent to Mashi Gallery every year are simply thrown into the trash can.
The cruel fact is that in the eyes of the first-tier giant galleries, there is no need to even spend time opening the CDs containing the portfolios of art students, which may contain hundreds of hours of hard work.
This is true even if some of them even graduated from super prestigious schools such as the Repin Academy of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
To become an artist and make a living from serious art, even if you just want to be an artist at the lowest level, will always be the privilege of only a very small number of people.
Category III contracts are the lifetime ceiling for ordinary painters. The difference between them and Category IV contracts can also be seen from the unit price of the buyout system. Not only is the amount doubled or tripled.
The four-category contract gallery is willing to give a base price of about 1,500 dollars. It’s not that it can’t negotiate a lower price, it’s just because it’s not respectable.
Large galleries do not want to create the impression in the eyes of the paparazzi media that they have bought a bunch of junk and then sold it to collectors at a high price.
For the purchase price of several hundred dollars, Ma Shi Gallery found it embarrassing.
And with a unit price of four to five thousand US dollars, you may not be able to find such expensive works that can be sold in small galleries in ordinary communities.
The three types of painters are still classified as emerging artists here at Ma Shi Gallery.
Looking at the entire art industry, we can already live a relatively decent life.
At least the income is much higher than the average level in developed countries.
The second-category and first-category contracts are large contracts for mature artist groups with a certain international reputation.
The total number of painters in the world who can get such contracts will not exceed 1,000.
Counting all the peripheral industries around the world, among the tens of millions of people working in the art industry, it can be said to be truly one of a million.
Just sign a second-category contract and the output will be higher.
After painting for a year or two, you can live in a villa and drive a Ferrari.
This is not just the decision that Hanks can make alone, boss Mas III needs to make the decision himself.
There are also some special contracts further up, such as the contracts of big names like Kazunari Sakai, which are discussed one by one and one case at a time.
Money may no longer be the key, from organizing exhibitions around the world, to cooperating with some top national art galleries for personal exhibitions, to creating surrounding commercial IP culture, and whether to hold joint auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's.
Every detail had to be worked out specifically, and it was very extensive.
If you are not a practitioner within the industry, it is difficult to imagine how difficult it is for those truly top artists to take care of themselves.
Damien Hirst's most popular era.
Gagosian Gallery established a team of more than 160 people including marketing, curators, legal lawyers, assistant brokers, yoga therapists, etc., to provide 24-hour services to Hirst alone.
Katsuko Sakai received a young artist contract from Tokyo Gallery + BTAP, which is also a tailor-made special contract.
Of course, just because Sakai Katsuko is qualified to have Tokyo Gallery give her a special contract does not mean that Gu Weijing has it. Sakai Katsuko is Sakai Kazunari’s daughter and has been in the sight of Asian art media since she was ten years old. , but this guy from Yangon is just a jerk.
Same people but different fates.
The fifteen-year contract does feel a bit like a contract of betrayal, but the contract conditions themselves are still very sincere.
As everyone said, it was Professor Sakai who introduced him. Hanks was embarrassed to bully him because he had never seen the world, so he already gave him a very kind price.
Otherwise, a four-category contract will definitely make the other party burst into tears.
It's just that what Hanks wants to do is a long-term deal.
Painters are not slaves. If they form a good relationship, they will be easier to get along with if they become famous in the future.
(End of chapter)
