"This is a contract, and if you have any problems with legal terms, I have also hired a professional business translator for you."

Hanks retrieved a printed contract from the outer compartment of the briefcase. asked for a black signature pen, added a few numbers at the key point on the spot, and handed it to the old man Gu Tongxiang.

"Please take a look at it, you can see it slowly."

"I don't think it's a big problem to take a 75% cut of the sales of the work, and a $10,000 annual creation stipend."

Gu Tongxiang glanced twice.

There is no big objection to the content of these two benefits, and it is natural for the store to bully customers. To be honest, this percentage is not excessive.

The only thing that made the old man a little worried was: "The twenty-year contract period will be too long." ”

The artist's career is much longer than that of an athlete, and twenty years basically covers Gu Weijing's entire youth.

It is equivalent to most of the golden period of the other party's career, and they are all bound to the ship of Mars Gallery.

Gu Tongxiang doesn't think there's anything wrong with being able to cooperate with Mars Gallery for 20 years.

However, with the old man's experience, he knows that everything has a negative side.

If the cooperation is unpleasant.

With such a long contract, if you want to jump ship halfway, you have to pay liquidated damages that you can't make up if you sell Gu's calligraphy and painting shop now.

It's not nice to say.

As soon as this kind of contract was signed, his grandson Gu Weijing really became the tenant daughter of the landlord Lao Cai Huang Shiren's family.

Whether she will become a white-haired girl depends on the mood of the gallery.

The interpersonal relationship of the big gallery is intertwined and more complicated, and if you offend a relationship that you shouldn't mess with, you will hide it for more than ten years, I really think that other galleries can't do it.

"You don't have to worry, the painter community is the most important asset of our Gallery Maas, and our interests are highly aligned. Twenty years seems like a long time, because at your grandson's age, we don't rush to the market, and we might have arranged for him to intern in the studio of a great painter like Deke Allen during his college years, and he will gradually start to enter the collectors' eye. ”

Deke Allen is a watercolorist and oil painter, winner of the 2017 International Watercolor Award and the Barcelona Watercolor Award by the AWS Association, and the Gold Medal winner at the 2019 Antwerp Art Biennale.

Last year, sales totaled more than $5 million, accounting for more than one-tenth of Mars Gallery's annual revenue.

Although the status is still a little far from that of Professor Kazunari Sakai, he is also an international first-line painter and one of the most important high-quality assets of the gallery today.

Hanks didn't lie.

The exposure resources that a large gallery can grasp in all aspects hangs a small gallery.

From entering the studios of great painters to holding solo exhibitions, Mars Gallery can do it all, and the only premise is that he is good enough to be worthy of the gallery.

And if the new signings are not good enough or below expectations - such guys don't need to think about their feelings.

"You guys can think about it, it's 6:53 p.m. ......"

Hanks lifted his sleeve and looked at his watch, "I'm flying to the National Art Gallery in Abu Dhabi, where the Mars Gallery will have a solo exhibition next month, and I don't want to spend too much time in Myanmar." So, if you can save time, sign a contract before midnight tonight. ”

He vigorously lifted the briefcase and placed it on the table.

"I'm willing to pay you a signing fee."

This is a half-truth.

Holding countdowns and temptations to blackmail people is not the patent of fat people, Professor Sakai Issei can play, and he Hanks can naturally play too.

When the agent returned to the hotel that night, he gradually calmed down.

It is true that this Gu Weijing child is talented, but there are too many variables in the art market, and he often only cares about what he can see and touch.

In fact, the biggest highlight of Gu Weijing's current works is age.

People in a small place in Yangon, unlike Miss Katsuko Sakai, have no connections and no resources.

The level of his brush and ink is nothing more than the level of ordinary professional painters, and the fusion painting is novel, but it is too similar to Lang Shining, and if it is too similar, it will lack its own novelty.

Hanks couldn't be sure if Gu Weijing would be able to maintain the rapid growth of the current technique in the future.

This can only be said about probability, and the saying that under thirty is the golden age of rapid maturity of painters is just a big data statistic.

When it comes to individuals, it's not a golden rule.

Some painters are more talented when they are younger.

It's been a few hours, and there are a lot of injuries that may not be good.

As for the innovation of painting methods, I want to draw new ideas on the basis of the previous predecessors. To put it simply, it may just be a pat on the head, and it is difficult to say that it is normal to be stuck for ten or twenty years.

De Saro, Monet, Picasso all explored for more than three to five years before they began to try to find their own way.

Gu Weijing is a wild young genius that Uncle Sakai inadvertently discovered.

Medium-sized galleries do not have the cultivation resources of Mars, and the galleries that are larger than Mars Gallery, even if Uncle Sakai recommends him to the other party, may not be very attentive.

Therefore, he, as the buyer, is eligible to make conditions.

Hanks unzipped his briefcase, and bundles of blue and blue bills were naked in front of everyone in the study, with a seductive charm.

"Sign! We can sign it now! ”

Auntie finally couldn't help it.

She slammed her palms on the table, and the lid of the teacup next to her jumped.

With such good conditions, my aunt didn't understand what the old man was still serving there.

She whispered in her heart at first, suspecting that it was a new routine of the Northern Myanmar Scam Park to invite actors to engage in kidnapping.

Now that she saw a whole briefcase of bills in front of her, her aunt finally had no doubts.

The pies that fell from the sky fell on the head,

Not signing is not a person.

"How about signing it every ten years?" Gu Tongxiang was still hesitating and hesitating.

"Twenty years."

Hanks' face was firm, and there was no room for maneuver in his tone, "There's nothing to talk about on this, you can think about it first." ”

"And even if you agree to this condition, before signing the contract, I have an additional request, your family is a gallery, is there a studio where Mr. Gu Weijing usually paints?"

He wanted to look at a few more of Gu Weijing's works.

For those recommended by Professor Kazunari Sakai, there is not much risk of fraud.

Hanks still wanted to confirm in advance that the work that impressed him particularly was indeed painted by Gu Weijing.

Gu Weijing's works are similar to those of his grandfather, Gu Tongxiang, in his paintings.

If you encounter something like a grandfather bringing a pen to his grandson to paint, it will be a lot of fun.

Gu Tongxiang had no objection.

"Wait a minute, I'll take you to our family's studio, where there should be a few paintings of my grandson." Gu Tongxiang nodded.

Just walked out of the study door,

The aunt couldn't help but bite her ears with the anxious nagging that came to the old man's ear: "Dad, what do you think, there will be no such shop in this village after this village." Listen, 10,000 dollars a year, you don't have to do anything, people spend money to raise your grandson for you. ”

"And not to mention that there are so many signing fees to be paid. Gu Lin and Gu Weijing are going to graduate this year, and there are many places to spend money on studying abroad. Dad, let me tell you, my daughter can't be poor, what if the girl doesn't have enough living expenses and is deceived by a foreign man. ”

The middle-aged woman continued to babble on the side.

"It's not like you don't have to take money for nothing...... You just don't understand. This money is a drop in the bucket for Mars Gallery, and people want to use it to buy the option for the next 20 years. Gu Tongxiang glanced at it, looked at the daughter-in-law who was about to be hooked by the big briefcase, and said helplessly.

"Choice, if someone is willing to sign me, I can't wait to sign for one hundred and eighty years! Really, Xiao Lin should have been allowed to learn to paint in the first place, and this industry is so popular now. ”

The aunt was dissatisfied with her father-in-law's indecision.

"Okay, let's wait for Weijing to come back, you go downstairs and call Weijing again, and urge you." Gu Tongxiang sent his daughter-in-law away.

The small studio attached to Gu's Book Gallery is a small hall of forty square meters at the back of the gallery store on the first floor, with thick polyester curtains drawn.

Long-term exposure to strong ultraviolet rays will denature or crack the pigment on the surface of the oil painting, so the oil painting cannot be exposed to the sun and can only be stored indoors in the backlight.

All of Gu Weijing's finished paintings, except for a few for the Scholastic Group, are usually placed at the base of the wall in the small studio at home and dried against the wall as long as they are completed.

If you want to keep it for a long time.

After it is completely dry, brush the varnish film that protects the paint of the picture, frame it into the frame or roll it into the storage tube, and if you don't think it's necessary, you can shovel it for reuse.

"That's it."

Hanks flipped over a small easel against the wall in his studio, and the first thing he saw was the one he had seen on Professor Sakai's phone a few days earlier.

At that time, the photograph was only a base map, and now this sketch has been completely completed.

Look at the real original painting directly on the spot,

Immediately, Hanks felt a very different feeling.

"The lines are elegant, the pen and ink are refreshing, and it is really good." He nodded inwardly, but a general expression appeared on his face.

He looked at it for a moment, then pulled out a small, black square box that looked like a card machine lens from his pocket.

3R-MSA600S Calligraphy and Painting Art Identification Portable Microscope produced by Additech.

A hawthorn biscuit-like gadget that costs $2,000 a piece on Amazon.

This thing is usually signed by the same artist in other works, and it is used to check each other to determine the authenticity of the painting.

Support 5x, 30x, 200x zoom.

Hanks clipped the microscope to the phone case and connected the small tail under it to the phone charging port through the typeC port.

He pulls up the image of the camera, pulls it in front of the canvas, and looks at it little by little.

Then in front of Gu Tongxiang, he asked the translator to put the three paintings of the old man he picked out in the gallery downstairs next to him and looked at them as well.

"It shouldn't be a ghostwriter."

Hanks nodded secretly.

Ordinary appreciation paintings do not work with a microscope.

He was just determining the pen habits of Gu Weijing and Gu Tongxiang.

There is a handwriting appraisal for handwriting, and there is also an appraisal of the painter's brushwork.

The lines of the characters' eyes are outlined, and the color blocks in the corners and corners are counterclockwise with the brush...... There is now some scholarly view that these small details are more certain of a painting's authorship than a signature.

When Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi", which was auctioned for $500 million, to determine whether it was a Leonardo da Vinci painting, experts at the British Gallery used a similar method to identify the handwriting of "Madonna of Benova" and "The Mink Girl", two authentic works of Leonardo da Vinci that have been inherited in an orderly manner throughout history.

Of course

Whether this microscopic identification method is convincing enough is still very controversial to this day.

Hanks found that this painting and Gu Tongxiang's work have a strong similarity in the large brushwork, and the two were originally grandchildren, which is also normal.

Fortunately, in the small brush habits, there are still a lot of different places, and it should not be a one-person painting.

"Let Gu Weijing go home and draw two strokes in front of your eyes. Styling or something, you look at his lines, shapes, and color skills, don't you just get it? ”

Gu Tongxiang watched Hanks busy on the side and couldn't help but say.

"Don't delay, it's idle anyway." Hanks spoke, not looking up.

After identifying the brushwork habits, he continued to appreciate the details of the painting.

Hanks works like a discerning miller in a cattle market who judges whether the little donkey's cubs are healthy and strong.

In the future, his sailboat, pension, and money to go skiing in Switzerland to soak models all depend on the hard work of this little brother.

Hanks was very dedicated.

The flexibility of the knee joints of Europeans determines that it is difficult for many people to squat for a long time, and Hanks is not too dirty, so he directly knelt on one knee on the cement floor in front of the easel, and carefully scored Gu Weijing.

"The structure of the picture is not lacking in novelty under the premise of keeping the visual perception stable. The magnificent atmosphere has the style of a general, which is good. The direction of this sunlight is interesting, huh...... Madonna in the shadows, on purpose? Quite bold. ”

"The oriental temperament contained in the line modeling is different from the traditional sketch, but it can also be seen that he has good control over the line, which can be praised!"

"The color treatment is average, neither good nor bad. The visual focus changes flexibly, and the mixed colors of the high and low light are too flawed, and the overall color is still called solid......"

"Whether it's drawing, oil painting or oriental art techniques, it's very good, and I can't find obvious shortcomings."

With the sweep of the gaze.

All kinds of information in Hanks's mind naturally came to mind, and he scored them one by one in the table in his mind.

"Uh...... Between $3,000 and $4,000. ”

Hanks whispered to himself in his heart.

Relying on his experience in the industry, he judged that this painting erased all other information, and only relied on its own beauty, hanging a price tag of about $3,500 and placing it in an ordinary community gallery in Europe, even if there were no additional exposure channels, there should always be enthusiasts who bought it at this price.

Three thousand to four thousand dollars is the price in a small gallery.

If it is easy to operate through the channel of Mars Gallery, he Hanks is not capable of selling for five figures.

"My grandson is not bad at drawing." Gu Tongxiang was proud.

"Of course it's not bad here, otherwise I wouldn't have flown here. But in the Mars Gallery, even if it is nothing, the pen and ink are still green, too green. ”

Hanks has his own little abacus, so he won't follow Old Man Gu's words.

"He's a kid."

"The value of art has nothing to do with his age, and with his current level, he can't sell it for a price at all. Mars Gallery still has a long way to go if it really wants to bring Gu Weijing to the market. Besides, his painting style is completely modeled after the court paintings of the Qing Dynasty, which itself determines that the audience will not ...... Wait！ what's that?”

Hanks was halfway through his sentence when he suddenly let out a low exclamation and his eyes widened.

He originally didn't want to be too optimistic about Gu Weijing in front of Gu Tongxiang.

But in the middle of Hanks's words, he suddenly cried out unconsciously.

In order to prevent dust from falling and rubbing against the corners of people's clothes, all the works that are drying in the studio are placed on the wall with their backs to the wall.

As he spoke, the agent casually flipped through an easel next to him, but saw a work that was completely beyond his expectations.

That's—

A ...... in dark tones Impressionist paintings?

The history of art since the 19th century is regarded as a film, and the story of the Impressionist painters is the main theme of the film.

It is known as the beginning and origin of modern art.

Since the Industrial Revolution, various schools of art have emerged one after another, and Impressionism is not the earliest in the absolute time sense, and there are two predecessors before it: Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite.

After it, realism, secessionism, aestheticism, and symbolism emerged one after another.

However, compared with Impressionism, these currents are only the gurgling streams of empty mountains and valleys, while Impressionism is the turbulent waves that have truly swept the history of art.

Throughout the history of Western art, only Picasso's Cubism may be able to wrestle hands in terms of influence. Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama's Pop Art may make more money, but its historical status is still much worse.

Many scholars believe that if it were not for the Impressionists, which fused objective reality and color sensibility, and depicted the strong and subtle changes of light and shadow, perhaps the art of painting would have been completely defeated or even completely replaced by the newly born photographic art in that period.

Hanks has seen countless impressive Impressionist paintings, but he still can't find a single image of the work that is as special as what he sees.

Black rain, flowing thunder, rolling colored candlelight.

Van Gogh also painted works on the theme of night, whether it is "Cafe" or "Starry Night", all of them seem to be very "bright" works, but such a dark base color work in front of him is completely missing.

Oddly enough,

With such cold paint, the picture does not look melancholy at all.

The whole painting is done with short impressionist brushstrokes, with the exception of the bright candlelight, which condenses the whole picture like an anchor.

Hanks almost fell to his knees.

(End of chapter)