1 Chapter 1 Art Exhibition
National Art Museum.
A Hundred Years of Artistic Achievement Painting Exhibition.
The exhibition was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, and it brought together a large number of works by the former masters of Chinese oil painting. The students of Tianmei had long been eyeing it like hungry vultures, and on the first day, when the exhibition opened, they each rushed into the museum with their drawing boards and started copying their favorite works.
Wu Guanzhong, Quan Shanshui, Zhu Naizheng, and Chen Danqing ...
In front of each masterpiece, students were trying to find the biggest secret between the colors and lines.
Although these works have been described in various picture books with a deeper meaning that even the painter himself may not understand, as soon as you face these works you will find that the picture books and the paintings are simply two things.
Gao Fan stood in front of a painting of the painter 'anonymous', and could no longer move.
Anonymous means that the artist is unknown.
In the more detailed description, it is written that 'from an old house collection in the city, should be made around 1920, the painting style with a clear cubist style, a large number of lines and colour blocks depict a terrible hell scene.
Because of this description, the painting was titled 'The Gates of Hell'.
The painting was forty centimetres high and thirty-seven centimetres tall, roughly a square. It was a 'small painting', but when Gao Fan looked at the album before, he thought it should be large.
This illusion meant that this anonymous painter had mastered 'space'.
These mysteries of line, space, light, and colour, hidden among the great millions of things, were already masterpieces when they fell under the painter's brush and could blend into one.
Gao Fan put down the drawing board and began to copy this painting.
The only thing you need is the courage to copy at the exhibition hall, because there will be countless people pointing at your painting, and soon there was an old man and a girl standing behind Gao Fan.
The old man was wearing a satin Tang suit, while the girl was in a pair of jeans and T-shirt, one looked pretentious, while the other was youthful and beautiful.
"Little pheasant ah, you must first learn to appreciate the painting. just look at the pair in front of you, its name is ridiculous, Picasso was painting Cubism in 1920. That's right, but the painting outlines the character's meticulous style. It's obviously a later forgery and there are fools here to copy, isn't it ridiculous?
The old man's words were obviously a sarcastic comment to Gao Fan.
Gao Fan, on the other hand, turned his drawing board at a slight angle, turned his back to the old man, and began to underline with a pencil by himself.
"Why is having a brush style is equal to being fake?" The girl asked curiously.
"Cubism only took shape in France around 1910, our 1920 is the Northern Ocean period, There is no record to prove that there were masters who could learn Chinese and Western cultures. This painting is mostly cubism, but small parts are integrated into meticulous style. if it really was the works of that time, it wouldn't have been unknown in the history."
The old man's discussion soon drew an audience that was counting on the old man, who obviously possessed great artistic knowledge, to speak more.
But seeing the crowd, the old man was reluctant to speak again, and stood behind Gao Fan, staring sharply at him as he outlined the lines, squeezed the paint, mixed the colors, did the toning, and color ...
An oil painting required long or short time to paint, like da Vinci's anatomical' painting method, for painting a tree to write a thesis there, Van Gogh like a passionate creator, paints two hundred paintings in hundred days.
And of course, copying is a little faster, especially copying cubism, since, it's the line structure and colour blocks, are just painted on top.
The old man watched Gao Fan's rapid painting, while frowning tightly, and was about to speak, but was pulled away by the girl next to him.
Gao Fan glanced behind him and saw that the two people in the way had finally left, He didn't care, and continued to paint.
About an hour later, the painting that Gao Fan painted had already seen the general outline, and there were several people around him, all the onlookers looked at the painting Gao Fan was working on, and then looked at the "Gates of Hell" he was copying, and they all looked confused.
Because the painting was completely different.
The "Gates of Hell" painting is an abyss-like scene, with a smooth ochre-colored cliff under a dark red sky, with dozens of even smaller humans climbing on the smooth cliff, but with nowhere to go, calling for help, while further down, there is an even darker abyss ...
The visual impact of this painting is very strong, standing in front of this painting, soon the viewer will feel a horrible desolate wave of emotions, the more you try to distinguish the abyssal cliff face and the desperate situation of those people, the more you will feel a chill down your spine, more than one person after a few minutes of careful observation, shivered and said 'a little scary'.
Being able to convey emotions and empathize with the viewer is the standard of masterpiece art, so as the old man said such a painter cannot be anonymous.
And what Gao Fan painted was a human face made of color blocks, this face was calling in despair, the neck was twisted to an exaggerated degree, The despair and panic in his eyes are the same as the mood conveyed by the gates of hell... But it's still different.
"Uh ... a bit disgusting."
A middle-aged woman looked at the ''Gates of Hell'' for a few minutes, and then looked at Gao Fan's copy for a few minutes before shuddering and making this criticism.
Gao Fan, on the other hand, was satisfied to see a number in front of his eyes, which only he could see, jump from '78/100' to '79/100'.
Gao Fan had gazed at this number three months ago.
At that time, the semester had just started, and he had a high fever. After the fever, a number appeared in front of his eyes. At that time, the number was '0/100'.
With the help of medical means and psychological tests, after repeatedly judging that he was not mentally challenged, Gao Fan found out that he could increase this number by lowering the rational value of the people around him.
The so-called rational value, that is, Sanity, Gao Fan simply called it SAN value.
Gao Fan obtained his first SAN value through a static sketch called "Boiled Banana" (Don't Search).
Then he received his second batch of SAN value through "Double Disc Suckers" (don't search).
The Fledgling Beak of the Seven-colored Man-Bird (please cherish your sanity) got him a SAN value of over 40.
When his fourth pair of curiosity-oriented works, "Exploding Cockroach", was not yet born, he was almost exterminated by his classmates in the same studio.
For this reason, Gao Fan had to give up this shortcut and started to obtain the SAN value through more relatively normal works.
For example, this pair of "Hell's Gate" in front of him, the first time Gao Fan saw it from the exhibition hall catalog, he keenly checked that it had the potential to make people drop their SAN value, it was a pair of ... well, crazy works and the despair rendered in it was visible everywhere.
But SAN values that are not lowered by Gao fan's own hands will not be collected, so he is standing here at the moment with his drawing board, believing that when his copying project is completed, it will be the season of harvest for him.
"Not like that."
"Not like at all."
"No idea what's he's painting."
...
The chatter of the onlookers could not mess with Gao Fan's mind, but soon a sense of oppression reappeared behind him, and Gao Fan turned his head and saw the old man with wrinkled eyebrows and his beautiful granddaughter again.
"The face you painted is so... desperate." The girl took a look at Gao Fan's nearly finished work and felt that this despair had 'tainted' her happy mood.
SAN+1, 80/100.
Gao Fan looked at the old man again, expecting the old man to contribute another SAN value for him.
But instead, the old man looked at Gao Fan's work, then at the pair of Gates of Hell, and suddenly said, "You copied a person on the cliff in this painting?"
"You have really good eyesight, old man." Gao Fan sighed in admiration.
