The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 144 - 101: Field Study

(There will be an alliance appreciation at the end.)

You can tell if someone knows what they’re talking about as soon as an expert speaks.

Curator Tangkis has admired countless famous paintings and attended so many art appreciation events that they are nearly impossible to count.

Frankly speaking,

even at professional art symposiums and Taylor Art Gallery’s various annual exhibitions, there are people spouting nonsense on the platform.

The larger the exhibition, the more so.

Not only are there strange experts emerging from who knows where, but also more parliamentarians or government officials, all eager to share their opinions on artworks.

High-ranking officials in the Great Britain are quite concerned about presenting themselves as art lovers in front of the public and the media.

At meetings, leaders always have to say a few words, north to south, ancient to modern, inside the country or abroad—it’s the same everywhere.

Curator Tangkis has even developed insights just from listening to people blather.

Generally speaking, if you’re not familiar with art and afraid of making mistakes, the simplest way is to talk about history.

For example, while facing Turner’s "Dismantled Dreadnought Battleship," recalling the glorious history of defeating the French in the Battle of Trafalgar. Or reflecting on the glory of the Sun Never Sets Empire in the Victoria era while viewing landscape paintings of the Thames River—these are standard practices.

The speeches written by those government officials’ secretaries usually follow this pattern.

Besides being somewhat dull, they generally don’t make major mistakes.

If these officials get excited and want to improvise, it’s a disaster.

Treating the luxuriously dressed prostitutes in Pre-Raphaelite moralistic paintings as noble ladies is considered good; confusing gouache with watercolor, or watercolor with oil painting—such low-level jokes have been made.

To be able to deconstruct the aesthetic composition of a painting as meticulously as this Detective Cat, it’s rare, and all are elite within the industry.

If a renowned scholar had said such things, Tangkis could understand, but Detective Cat is just an online illustrator.

Anna was even more surprised by Detective Cat’s perspective on this painting.

When appreciating artworks,

most art critics tend to discuss large and abstract concepts.

The blank space ratio in a composition, the eye contact between figures, the natural transition between lights and colors on a lake, and the spiritual contemplation nurtured by the painter—the manifestations of various art schools in this work...

Detective Cat, on the other hand, cleverly captures the creative details of the oil painting’s author.

She doesn’t overlook even the tiniest brushstrokes, narrating with rich detail, as if she had seen the painter’s creative process firsthand.

"A typical great painter’s approach to art criticism."

A thought popped into Anna’s mind.

This is the difference between watching others paint and painting oneself.

The most significant difference between curators and art critics who are themselves painters is the attention to detail.

Attentive and observant to the minutest details, this is a privilege only veteran painters have when appreciating paintings.

It’s not that curators don’t want to analyze these painting details, but for them, it can be quite challenging.

Especially with oil paintings,

which differ from sketches or gouache paintings, as the oil paint layers over each other, colors stacking upon colors, reflecting external light and penetrating from below through the paint layers, constantly being absorbed and mixed by various spectrums until forming the final visual effect captured by the audience.

Reversing this process from the final image is not entirely impossible.

Identifying which sceneries were painted first, which contents later, and grasping the painter’s overall composition idea, Anna could easily do that too.

But to capture even the smallest changes in cold and warm brushstrokes like Detective Cat does—

it’s just...

incredibly challenging.

At least, in Detective Cat’s recent descriptions of this "White Lake Baikal," many small details in the submitted fan artwork were things Anna had originally overlooked.

Listening to Lady Detective Cat narrating softly, she even felt a sense of sudden enlightenment.

Anna knows that although she loves art, her actual painting talent is limited.

If you read a book a hundred times, its meaning will reveal itself,

but this reasoning only half applies in the field of painting.

Some painting techniques and underlying details in brushwork—even if you’ve seen a thousand paintings, appreciated ten thousand famous works, even if you grew up immersed in art galleries—you won’t see them unless you’re a painter.

To truly thoroughly understand a painting from start to finish, besides appreciating beauty, one must also have painted it by hand.

Detective Cat doesn’t just understand oil painting; she is practically an expert in the field.

Why such a talented painter insists on constantly using painting knives—wouldn’t creating serious oil paintings be better?

"Bravo! Brilliantly explained, such fantastic and detailed analysis, both I and our podcast platform audience should be thoroughly enjoying it."

Anna expressed her praise and admiration without hesitation.

"Especially your views on the contrast of warm and cool color points, the way colors highlight each other—it really leaves an impression. I assume you’re quite knowledgeable about Impressionism."

She asked Tangkis: "Mr. Curator, is there anything you would like to add to what Detective Cat has said?"

"Uh..."

The curator blinked and glanced at his prepared speech.

The light and shadow changes of Impressionism... hmm, that’s been mentioned.

The details of the contrast between the lake surface and the sky... hmm, Detective Cat talked about that too.

...

Frankly, there are only so many points to discuss about a painting.

In this classical salon-style podcast, the normal approach should be a conversational exploration.