The Versatile Master Artist

Chapter 88 - 80: Human World’s Clamor and the Threshold for Participating in the United States Art Exhibition

(Note: There was no Singapore Biennale in 2017. I specifically chose an interval year between two editions, delayed it by a year, and the number of editions is also completely incorrect, just to indicate that the content is entirely fictional.)

After Grandpa hung up the phone, Gu Weijing returned to his bedroom.

Gu’s Calligraphy and Painting Shop is the ancestral property of the Gu Family, holding an extraordinary significance for Gu Weijing.

But now he has more pressing matters at hand.

Gu Weijing opened his computer and typed the entry "Singapore Art Biennale award-winning works over the years."

The computer automatically jumped to the homepage of the Lion City Art Exhibition.

At the top was the introduction to the art exhibition.

The Lion City Art Biennale is a new and emerging art exhibition in Asia in recent years, with a relatively short history.

Its first edition was held after the millennium.

During the last period of Mr. Li’s governance, this founder of Singapore, whose life was full of ups and downs, turned his attention to high-tech industries and tourism culture.

Historically, Lion City was just an ordinary port city, becoming a stopover and transit point for numerous boatmen, laborers, and sea fortune seekers during the 19th-century South Seas wave, lacking obvious advantages compared to many historical cities in East Asia.

Singapore needed to create its own tourism identity card.

Hence, the Lion City Art Biennale, the Asia International Arts Festival, art fairs, the F1 Singapore Grand Prix, and other large international events were successively held here.

Now it’s already the seventh edition of the art biennale, which was originally scheduled to be held a year ago, but due to changes in curators, it has been postponed to this year’s later part.

Every year, the biennale’s curatorial committee selects a specific theme, and all works must revolve around this theme.

This year, the Singapore Art Biennale has six curators—one local art critic from Singapore and one art critic from each of the five continents.

Perhaps in response to Singapore’s tourism plans, the curators decided to change the originally chosen theme "An atlas of Mirrios" to "hustle and bustle," translated to "Human World’s Clamor."

For an art exhibition, this can be considered a theme where a hundred flowers bloom.

As long as you have inspiration, you can basically paint however you wish.

This is good news for all artists wanting to participate in the exhibition.

Gu Weijing remembered that a few years ago, a theme for a famous European art biennale was chosen as "female artists," which caused some controversy.

From the industry’s perspective, there’s nothing wrong with this.

Although now it’s not a few hundred years ago or even decades ago when women were only considered secondary roles as human models, vases, or tools to inspire male artists’ creative inspiration.

But indeed, in the oil painting industry, even to this day, female artists still receive far fewer opportunities than their male counterparts.

So much so that some art critics proposed that people submit using neutral names for exhibitions or art competitions.

Gu Weijing doesn’t feel, like many others, that this theme belongs to the realm of over-correction.

But objectively speaking, art exhibitions with themes like this, even if they don’t restrict male artists from submitting, indeed appear quite unfriendly to male artists.

After all, even if the curators and the jury don’t understand what political correctness is, selecting too many male artists would, just like how the greatest literary work born on African soil was written by a Danish white noblewoman, the book ironically titled "Out of Africa," seem too much like dark humor.

Fortunately, this theme is unbiased, putting everyone on an equal starting line.

The biennale collects entries freely from all over the world.

Gu Weijing had already applied for the registration form two weeks ago.

He moved the mouse to the column of artworks from past editions and casually selected a piece from the 2012 theme "Life" in the electronic catalog of past entries.

He initiated the Identification Skill.

[Oil Painting: "Sea Whale Song"]

[Sketching Technique: Lv.4 Tier One Professional (2678/5000)]

[Oil Painting Technique: Lv.3 Semi-Professional (964/1000)]

[Emotion: Nonchalant]

...

[Oil Painting: "Person Carrying a Shoulder Pole"]

[Sketching Technique: Lv.4 Tier One Professional (512/5000)]

[Oil Painting Technique: Lv.4 Tier One Professional (1130/5000)]

[Emotion: Nonchalant]

"This ’Person Carrying a Shoulder Pole’ won third place in the student group."

Gu Weijing first clicked into the electronic catalog of the student (amateur) group. After casually casting two skills, he had a rough judgment of the level of the amateur group.

During his evaluation of the oil paintings, he found that unlike Chinese Painting, it also displayed experience points for sketching technique levels.

This was not unexpected for Gu Weijing.

The sketch is hailed as the foundation of all modern Western art styles, whether it’s oil painting or watercolor painting, all are based on lines and color.

Anything related to lines is inseparable from the sketch as a base.

Every great oil painter—it is every one—has put significant effort into sketching.

Even painters of the Wild Beast School.

Just the name of this style indicates that the painting methods of the Wild Beast School are wild enough.

They don’t like rigid lines and are keen on using bright and bold colors, often squeezing paint straight from the tube to create strong visual effects with direct, unrestrained brushwork.

But the founder, Matisse, was excellent at sketching.

He even held a dedicated sketching exhibition.