Chapter 1 (Preface) "Into the Night"
Ye Guo hasn't been to an art fair for many years, but this one must be seen.
Take the Gangtong bus to cross the border and take more than a dozen subway stops. Today is the last day of the art fair, and it was already afternoon when she arrived, so it was not enough to see every booth, after all, she had a booth that she had to go to, a painting that she had to see.
Before walking into the hall, Ye Guo decided to find a leaf.
It's some kind of superstition, putting a leaf in your pocket is like having a good luck companion. She found an oval-shaped leaf with an irregular withered edge rolled up in a crack in the floor tiles, picked it up and put it in her bag.
There are local galleries in Hong Kong, Europe, and the Americas, and Ye Guo did not stay at any booth, looking for a gallery registered in New York, United States, and this time it will exhibit a painting called "Into the Night".
It was placed in the middle of the booth, and there was an Asian male staff member presenting the background of the painting.
"From Du Fu's "Spring Night Rain", if everyone knows..."
Good rain knows the season, when spring happens. Dive into the night with the wind, moisturizing things silently.
Ye Guo memorized it in a textbook.
The style of this painting is relatively common, using oil painting to express the artistic conception of Chinese painting, sunset dusk, hazy drizzle, leaving sunset embers on the edge of the horizon, a lake, a person... It is the most common view, and the special feature is the color, the sky is pale yellow to rose, but the sunset is blue.
In addition to the special color, the technique is also very exquisite, but Ye Guo feels that the brushstrokes are too fine and will reduce the expressiveness, just like the university teacher said, good painting is sloppy three parts.
She is qualified to say this, and she also knows that this painting has nothing to do with "Joyful Rain on a Spring Night", because she has painted an almost identical painting.
"Into the Night" is more than 90% similar to her final "Twilight in the Green".
After the completion of "Twilight in the Green" that year, Ye Guo made a series and hung it in the training school he co-founded at that time, but it was later taken away. She knew about the existence of such a "Into the Night" because a teacher from the Academy of Fine Arts who had been in contact with her told her that there was a United States painter whose works were very similar to hers.
The United States painter, also a Chinese named Chen Ruiqian, is a crossover fashion designer from New York. His father was a Chinese painter in the United States, and Into the Night was his first series in the art world.
Ye Guo sent an email to the email address of the designer's personal website, attaching a scanned copy of the graduation design work at that time... But she never received a reply.
In addition to the art fair, Chen Ruiqian's paintings were also featured in the autumn art auction in New York the year before last, and entered the secondary market sooner than expected.
The painting, which bears a strong resemblance to another work in the "Twilight in the Green" series, fetched $41,500, giving the designer's crossover work a new price tag on the secondary market.
Someone at the scene was interested and asked if there was a picture in reality.
The staff replied, "It came from his dream." "
"A green space next to a zoo." Ye Guo couldn't help but interject.
This green space is a place she liked when she was a child, although she often went to the zoo for the reason of sketching, but she would always play in the zoo until it closed, and was blasted out of the door by the security uncle but she was still unsatisfied, so she went to the green space to stay for a while, painting or simply doing nothing until dark, just in a daze.
Looking out from a certain position in the green space, it is the picture in the painting, but unfortunately this landscape is now invisible, the distant space is obscured by the tall buildings rising from the ground, and her childhood is gone.
The staff obviously heard Ye Guo's words and said with a smile: "Miss, this is just an amazing coincidence. "
When the museum was about to close, the museum announced the closing time in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, and Ye Guo walked out of the venue. The plan is that she will take a bus back to Shenzhen tonight and then leave from there. But she had mixed feelings and decided to have some snacks before leaving.
She chose a small tea restaurant and asked for a pineapple bun and a bowl of wings.
She'd eaten pineapple buns before, but she'd never tried a bowl of wings. The waiter brought a small bowl of soup that smelled very fragrant, and a bowl of vinegar. She drank half a bowl in one go, feeling surprisingly delicious, and her mood calmed down for the most part.
This snack is called bowl fin fin, there is no shark fin, the vermicelli is used instead of shark fin, the starch is adjusted into a paste to imitate the broth, and the vinegar is mixed into Zhejiang to make a popular snack in Hong Kong, which is also a cute imitation.
As she checked out, she felt the leaf in her pocket, which had split into three petals from the squeezing, and was clinging to the veins.
It doesn't really bring good luck. Ye Guo thought. Is it really good luck that the painting has been plagiarized and there is nothing that can be done?
If it weren't for the teacher's notice, she would still be living her old life, just painting as a craft or hobby. There is bland happiness in the bland, but this comfort is wrapped in emptiness, like a soft pink balloon, which makes people feel that life is meaningless.
Maybe life is meaningless. Ye Guo thought again.
Beautiful words are like beautiful and cheap balloons, but life is really unbearable, and life is so contradictory.
So what's next? She asked herself.
There are not many photos of Designer Chen on the Internet, and the few that are quite impressive.
He has gentle eyebrows and eyes, like a hermaphrodite, his bare face and shape can see that life is superior, he likes simple white T-shirts and black pants, long black hair thrown on one shoulder, soft Taiwan accent, and excellent upbringing. Although he was born in the central and western parts of Chinese mainland, he also has a lot of experience. He left China at the age of 10 and went to Europe with his father, then to United States, to study fashion design in New York, then to work in Europe, and finally to return to United States.
Ye Guo's painting came out of her ex-boyfriend's hand, she was sure.
At that time, her graduation was hanging in the classroom of entrepreneurship, and her ex-boyfriend took it along with the money in the bank, leaving behind a dozen students and rent arrears that had not been paid for several months.
For this reason, Ye Guo sent a message to her ex-boyfriend, but the message never returned.
She had consulted the legal process and could appoint a lawyer to handle it, but she would have to pay a fee that she couldn't afford at the moment. Her paintings have never been shown on public platforms, the scenery comes from reality, and she has only made some creative ideas, and she is not fully sure that she will win the case.
It's also true that I am unwilling, especially I feel that "Into the Night" is not as good as the original painting. When a painter loses the desire to explore, the painting will lose its interest, beauty is worthless, and the simple pursuit of technology is the cowardice of the top student, and the competition with AI will eventually lose the work.
It's just that this crossover designer doesn't understand, or doesn't care, after all, fame and fortune have long been there.
But Ye Guo, who has nothing, still clearly remembers what his painting looks like and how it feels when he paints it. In the middle of the night, as if someone grabbed her hand, she chased another layer of color with one layer, and she could feel the resistance and rebound of the cloth when she put down the brush, which is a joy that only painters have.
Whenever she thought of it, her palms were hot and her heart was sore. It's something you don't feel like in your daily work.
In the past few years, she has been working 9 to 5 three-dimensional work, drawing illustrations part-time, paying quickly, with low prices, and a digital board can be completed in one night. Draw any style.,Popular can continue to paint the series according to the style.,It's full of old books to eat..
She knew that she shouldn't waste time, but she didn't think about taking a step, after all, the economy did not allow it at this time, and there was no such person in the circle.
"Now I'm here, forget it." Ye Guo said to himself.