Illustrators and serious painters are two professions that are highly similar but not fundamentally the same.

Illustrators are like saliva singers, pursuing an easy-to-understand sinking market, and the highest ideal is to become a popular cultural symbol.

The most profitable illustrator is KAWS, who takes the career route of engaging in trendy brands and making art toys.

Every year, all kinds of co-branded luxury goods are sold in millions of pieces around the world, earning dozens of dollars per piece and a net income of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Among the people who buy KAWS co-branding.

It has a large number of non-trendy art lovers.

They don't even know what pop art is. The connotation of KAWS art symbols is something that nine out of ten cannot understand, but under the coercion of the religious fanatical atmosphere and the social popular environment, it will naturally bring about a circle-breaking effect.

In essence, the top illustrators will want the work to be brainwashed like the Chopsticks Brothers' "Little Apple".

From kindergarten children to square dance aunts, it doesn't matter if you like it or not, you can hum two sentences of "you are my little apple" anyway.

The industry's hardest working bottom sells cheap illustrations online.

The middle and upper echelons earn money from publishers, game companies, and film and animation publishers.

And the top bigwigs earn directly the dividends of mass traffic. Achieve the goal of "everyone in the world gives me a dollar, and I am a rich man".

Serious painters are composers who conduct classical symphonies in the Musikverein, pursuing timeless works that can transcend time.

They hope to start a sect and conquer the history of art with epoch-making works of art.

The market for illustrations is going down, and the market for the agency artists of serious galleries is going up.

The more money you make, the more high-end you are, the easier it is to bend high and low.

You don't need billions of people to know you, you don't need to consider any employer's opinion like an illustrator, you don't need to draw too much work.

There is only one thing to do – to conquer the wealthiest handful of collectors with exceptional artistry.

The trend artist engaged in the fashion brand, and no one knew his name, so he died.

A serious painter who sells tens of millions of dollars of paintings every year is so thunderous in the industry that he has never even heard of it outside the industry, which is really normal.

The great oil painters of the Renaissance often only cared about what the great nobles and high clergy thought, and they were originally the servants of the upper echelons of power.

Great painters usually sell very little and have very high unit prices.

A painter who can sell a record $100 million for just one painting is more compelled than a painter who sells 10 $10 million of work. A painter with an average price of $10 million is more compelled than a painter who sells a 100 million dollar work.

Andy Warhol was able to become the heart of the "mythical" gallery back then, because this guy had a huge number of works, and the average price was comparable to Monet's.

Sometimes, the distinction between the two professions becomes blurred and can be converted into each other.

There is also a "Athletes' March" in classical music, which is something that is about to vomit when it sounds.

Pop Bob Dylan can also win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

But in order to put in Gu for the current development route choice,

He wisely judged that it was not a very necessary choice to overlap the identity of the detective cat and the name Gu Weijing in the spotlight.

If he can win an award at the Singapore Art Exhibition and successfully become a disciple of Mr. Cao Xuan.

He is a proper successor of the top "academic school", a serious painter with good roots.

In the eyes of his potential audience in the future, being an illustrator isn't necessarily a plus.

And more importantly, after the gallery learned the news, it was likely to ask for a share of the money from its own illustration business in the future agency contract.

It doesn't help much.

If nothing else,

Mars Gallery is certainly very prestigious among collectors, but the service group is different, and it is not necessarily possible to get a high-quality contract like "The Little Prince" from a publishing house.

"The gallery is committed to packaging and promoting the artists...... and has the exclusive right to represent all countries and all regions in the world......"

Gu Weijing read the contract.

Seeing this kind of clause is completely expected, Mars Gallery has been in the industry for almost a hundred years, and there is no obvious loophole left.

"What is the right to exclusivity?" Gu Weijing asked.

"Exclusivity, uniqueness, whatever you want to say, after signing a contract, you can't work for other galleries, you can't co-represent with other galleries, you can't consignment papers. Note that it is any other gallery, and you are not allowed to contribute to your own painting and calligraphy shop. As a general rule, you are not allowed to participate in art exhibitions, conferences, or art competitions held by any other gallery. ”

Hanks shrugged, "But if necessary, you can get the prior written consent and authorization of Mars Gallery." There is a way to go to other houses normally, and we don't mind too much. ”

"Is there only a gallery?"

"Only galleries? What else is there......" Hanks suddenly thought with some vigilance, "It's not allowed to go to the auction company without permission!" There are appendices behind the specific details of the contract. ”

"If you want to be Hearst, it's a little far away." His pouting was half joking, half warning. "You want to secretly open an auction yourself, and you don't have a serious auction guild to undertake it."

Regarding the restriction of auctions, it is a treaty that Mars Gallery urgently added after 08 years.

In the past half-century, the term "exclusive agent" in the original contract for painters in the industry has often and only restricted artists from working with competing galleries and other distributors.

There are no restrictions except for galleries.

This is the only way for a painter to monetize his artwork in the social sense.

Just pinch this source.

As a rule, a painter cannot go directly to an auction company, and an auction company is not allowed to work with the artist himself, bypassing the gallery and the primary distributor.

This is the unspoken rule of the industry, no one will do this, bad rules, and it is not in line with the healthy development of the industry.

Even top galleries like Mars, PACE, Gagosian.

The contents of the contracts are all very similar.

It wasn't until 2008 that Hearst bypassed his gallery at the time, Gagosian, and directly persuaded Sotheby's executives to hold an unprecedented auction of "no middlemen to make the difference", and the works were sold for more than 200 million pounds.

This violation of market rules shocked almost the entire art world.

The industry's evaluation of Hearst's matter is mixed, and the comments on the behind-the-scenes news of this transaction have been circulating for more than a decade, and there are many opinions.

There is a very marketable argument that this auction was one of the important triggers for Hearst to announce their breakup with Gagosian who had worked together for many years.

Immediately after the incident, Mars Gallery added an "anti-Hirst" clause to his template contract.

Why doesn't the gallery take away all the artists' future commercial endorsements, IP peripherals, and even future trend design commercial ownership and all possible peripheral rights and interests with a fluttering sentence in the contract?

It's not the gallerists who are kind-hearted.

It's because it's not the Middle Ages, and it's not a deed of sale, there are relevant laws.

It is difficult to say whether this kind of general-purpose overlord clause will be ineffective and uncontrollable because of the use of vague clauses in the contract law to control the final interpretation or obvious unfairness.

The small amount of money that the painter secretly earns is not looked up to.

Painters who can secretly make a lot of money naturally invite a luxury lawyer group.

At that time, some of these treaties will be litigated.

Calder, Jeff Koons Gallery, and Henry Matisse Foundation v. Warren are all similar antecedents.

Some get results after lengthy litigation, and more often in the face of rising lawyers, both parties to the lawsuit can no longer play, and an out-of-court settlement agreement is reached.

A large gallery like the Mars Gallery is more willing to list what a painter can and cannot do, responsibilities and rights before signing.

"Madam, this is too high, I really can't give such a contract......" Hanks didn't take Gu Weijing's inquiry too seriously, and turned his head to face Mrs. Sakai.

"It's better to put our offer here, and you can go back and think about it yourself in the evening and find someone who can call the shots to talk." Mrs. Sakai suggested.

Hanks thought about it, and simply didn't struggle.

He came today with the expectation of "looking for an ignorant old farmer in the countryside of Yangon to buy a cheap ownerless little donkey".

Hanks also only brought the money to buy the mud-legged donkey cubs.

When he found out that the little donkey was riding Miss Sakai, and the buttocks were covered with the fire marks of Professor Sakai and Lin Tao, two great artists.

Regardless of whether the deal is concluded,

This is no longer something that Hanks, an ordinary hunter agent, can make, he really needs to call his superiors.

Gu Weijing flipped through the appendix behind the dozens of contracts.

He took a cursory look at it.

The requirements are very detailed, such as auctions, tax filings, and even small things such as the gallery bearing the exhibition fee and the painter paying an additional 5% of the sales share if they can attend high-end sales exhibitions such as international art fairs in the future.

However, there are no restrictions on cooperation with publishers.

There is no precedent in the industry for serious artists in galleries to make money from illustrations of drawings and paintings for publishing houses.

Theoretically, according to the restrictions of this contract, his future projects like "The Little Prince" should not be subject to the need for a commission......

It should be like this, right?

Gu Weijing originally wanted to ask Hanks about illustration clearly.

He was afraid that he would be self-defeating, and he didn't have the corresponding conditions. As soon as I mentioned it myself, people added it when they went back.

Anyway, it looks like I can't sign it today.

Gu Weijing felt that this kind of thing, he should also discuss it with Mr. Sloth here.

……

"Dear Madam. The two Wellington steaks you ordered, Chef Gordon said that if you would like to sign and take a photo on the wall in front of the restaurant, you will be given a free meal. ”

The waiter, dressed in white uniform, presented a steak wrapped in fried golden egg pastry on a white porcelain plate and whispered to the table.

"Everywhere you go, you're so eye-catching, little Anna." Osborne quipped with a sip of sparkling champagne.

London is traditionally known as the capital of dark cuisine, but it has the highest density of Michelin and Black Pearl fine-dining restaurants in the world.

Restaurant Gordon Ramsay is one of the most famous.

Its owner, Scottish hell chef Gordon Ramche, once ranked in the top 10 in the UK's most charismatic man poll, and the total number of TikTok Twitter followers exceeded 50 million.

The restaurant is even more white.

Anna swept through the nearby porch plastered with signboards of signed photos, including superstars like Tom Cruise and Cristiano Ronaldo.

"Isn't Mr. Ramch's restaurant just inviting public figures with more than one million followers to sign autographs?"

"Your videos have been viewed more than 300 million times, and Mr. Chef believes that if you are an impressive beauty, as long as you are willing to open an account, it will be a matter of a few million followers."

Rotten men are not as prodigal as French or Italians, but it is still a piece of cake to be able to be a person who waits for a student in this kind of restaurant, and to flatter people casually.

"If it's convenient for you, Madam, Mr. Chef would like to invite you to participate in the recording of his next Douyin cooking class."

"Whenever I'm interested in learning to cook, I'll call Mr. Ramsay and sign it." Anna shook her head politely and dismissed the waiter.

"Hmm...... Don't think about it? ”

Osborne looked at the waiter's back and shook his head with some regret, "The signature Wellington steak here costs 89 pounds, but unfortunately no one has come to ask for an autograph from a middle-aged uncle like me." ”

"I'm in for a treat, Uncle Osborne." Anna smiled and said, "Thank you for your help. ”

She flew to London to meet Osborne.

She promised Detective Ms. Cat that she would be able to handle the change of the cover painting.

In fact, there are many obstacles in the operation, which is far from being described by the word "difficult".

On the side of the "Little Prince" project team, there is no motivation to change the manuscript from top to bottom.

After Anna sent a few emails, she saw that the effect was not great, so she simply flew here from Austria and personally approached President Osborne face to face.

It took her a lot of work to get things done this afternoon.

"Well, I'm going to have peace of mind for this meal. Anna, you don't know how troublesome this is. The entire project team complained that we were going to catch up with the Easter promotion schedule, and the time was very tight, and the early publicity and distribution had already begun. The production lines of the printing plant are all pre-booked. In fact, reformatting is still a trivial matter, and the printing teacher is going crazy. ”

Osborne smiled, "I blocked him in the office last night and asked the other party to revise the draft over and over again, and then the poor guy was a little hysterical, and I had no doubt that he wanted to eat me alive." ”

The printing cost of an art album is several times higher than that of an ordinary publication.

In addition to the cost of the paper itself, it is expensive to pay for the school color.

The two most common printing methods in the industry are monochrome printing or CMYK four-color printing. Monochrome printing is the cheapest way to print a book in pure black.

And four-color printing,

C stands for Cyan, M stands for Magenta, Y stands for Yellow, K stands for Black, and all other colors are mixed with these four base pigments, and more than 99% of the color books that can be seen on the market are CMYK four-color printing mode.

But the expressiveness of the brushstrokes of a good artist goes beyond the scope of four simple colors.

There will be problems of gray not being gray enough, blue not blue enough, and purple not being purple enough.

Monochrome pigments are affected by different storage conditions, storage cycles, ambient temperature and other factors, and there will be color differences in printing, not only the original paintings of the painter are different. In high-volume printing, there will also be slight color differences when two different books are pulled out from different batches.

The problem of color difference is not serious, and many artwork albums are all done with CMYK four-color printing in order to lower costs.

However, if the publisher is more demanding and has a sufficient budget, then there are better options for mimeographing with special inks and special production lines for specially drafted manuscripts.

Not only albums, but also currency printing will be done in a similar way, but printing in large quantities can dilute the cost.

In "Wushuang", the "color-changing ink" that Fa Ge got is a kind of special ink.

In addition to the ink, it is also necessary to have a printing color calibration teacher to make manual fine adjustments, so that the final product can bring almost the same effect as the printed document.

(End of chapter)