(Updated, ask for a ticket at the end of the month!) ）

"The old earl had a good relationship with his aunt, who used to take him out when he was a child. He watched as the other party died beside him under the double torture of mind and body. That must have had a great emotional impact on him. ”

The bouquet of white roses in front of Anna swayed slightly in the wind.

Elliot uneasily tapped his toes to the floor.

She is the kind of little girl who has a little bit of a wealthy plot, and has been very fond of romance since she was a child.

Secondary school textbooks refer to this period of history as the "Golden Age," the last prosperous days of good old Europe before the war.

Her mind is often full of Proust's "Reminiscences" style of scenes.

A handsome young officer in riding boots with a saber and a pistol dances to the music of the waltz in the salon at sunset with a young girl in a pleated skirt with a silver brooch pinned to her chest.

But imagination and reality are always different.

When the heirs of the Elena family whispered this story in Elliot's ear.

The dust of history with a rough and bloody smell will blow in the face, and the secretary will be under the hood.

She realized it instantly.

When people recall historical figures, they always habitually bring subjective filters.

In the history books, many monarchs and lords in the name of mercy will treat human life as a mustard. Bishops and monks canonized by the Vatican also sold indulgences and burned witches at the stake on both sides of the Rhine.

Even the great and immortal Tolstoy once repented in his memoirs for the random whipping of servant serfs like wild dogs in his youth.

The feudal era is the feudal era.

Even the Ellena family, the gentleest, most civilized, and most artist-loving of the aristocracy, has done such cruel and inhuman things.

"That lady Carla died like that? Nothing left? Not a single painting? ”

Anna was silent for a few seconds, then shook her head and nodded.

According to the account, Grandma Carla died of tuberculosis after only a few years in captivity. It's hard to say whether it's lucky or unlucky. ”

"If she had held on for a few more years, she might have been able to survive her brother to death, or maybe death would have been a relief for Grandma Carla at that time."

"When I was a student, I read and saw a set of photos of a French police case of illegal imprisonment in the last century. A young lady has been locked up in the attic for sixteen years by her mother, and the beautiful fairy-like girl in the photo has been detained and tortured like a ghost. ”

Anna took off her tweed hat and pinched the brim with her hands.

"I would like to say that the Elena family is not some noble sage, and my ancestors did a lot of right things and irreparably wrong things. So the magazine doesn't have to be tied to the name Elena. ”

"It's just that this magazine started from the moment it was founded. It is only a container for the soul of the artist, not the hands that manipulate the art market. In the old earl's eyes, the editor of the magazine did not really write art criticism, but only acted as a bridge between the good artwork and the audience, so that the painting could tell the world about its own beauty.

At the same time, they will uphold the heart of perseverance, regardless of rich and poor, born and gender, to show the best painters from all corners of the world to collectors all over the world. Help to the next possible painter like Grandma Kara.

Without this persistent quality, the magazine would be dead. All that remains is an empty shell. That's why I'm here today, knowing the outcome of the shareholders' meeting. ”

"For the sake of ...... Hats off to Kara. ”

Anna took off her hat to the bronze statue, then turned sideways to thank the street orchestra that was playing "The Blue Danube" for her not far away.

The girl turned and let the wheelchair go towards the door of the oil painting magazine.

——

Ten minutes later, on the top floor of the magazine, the large conference room.

"Mr. Helaifi, I heard that you managed to convince the foundation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to mobilize $36.55 million to buy one of Monet's "Haystacks" at the Poly Paris Spring Auction at the beginning of the year? That's a lot of money. If my memory is not wrong because of the year. The Metropolitan Museum already has a "haystack" and two "water lilies". ”

"Not bad at all, Sir Brown, rest assured, your memory is as accurate as that of a young lad. I've always thought that Impressionism is the gold that holds its value in the field of art investment, much more stable than Pop Art at a similar price. The opportunity to own a painting of Monet is always precious, not to mention that in 19 years, another "Haystack" sold for $110.6 million. ”

"Alas, I heard that you bought the "Haystack" in a very good state of preservation, and there are traces of later restoration?" Another Asian face in a dark blue suit spoke.

"You get what you pay for, and $3,600 is much cheaper than $100 million. Four paintings by Monet, two by Degas, one by Renoir, two by Seurat, one by Mademoiselle Marie, and three by Manet. With this painting included, the current number of collections at the Met is enough to open a small Impressionist monograph. ”

The Metropolitan Museum's chief art advisor, Hlaifi, leaned over his head and asked, "Speaking of which, Professor Riya Sakurai, you are a senior curator and a very good researcher of the Impressionist art style, and your tonal analysis of Pissarro's works in Asian Art is impressive. If I invite you at this moment. I wonder if Professor Sakurai would be interested in working on this exhibition. ”

"Well, maybe the timing isn't right. I'm sorry, but I would like to get the position of Chief Curator of the Japanese Pavilion at the next Venice Biennale, so it's hard to find the time......"

With the arrival of Miss Yelena, all the shareholders of the magazine were already present.

The biggest names in the art world gathered.

Any ambitious art student who walks into this conference room may faint with excitement.

An artist's career needs nobles.

And every shareholder present here is such a noble person.

Professor of Fine Arts, Art Expert, Top Curator...... Some of them also serve as academicians of the Académie Française or as judges of the Turner Watercolor Prize.

Any one of them, put outside, is the kind of guy who can make people soar on the spot with a touch of his fingers and avoid ten years of detours.

The composition of the shareholders of Oil Painting magazine is very fragmented.

Prior to the entry of the Kruger Brothers, the only major shareholders were the Austrian State Publishing Group, the European Art Association and the Yelena family.

And there are many small shareholders.

Almost all of them are famous art masters and art critics.

This shareholding structure has been a feature of Oil Painting magazine in recent years.

A sufficient number of top experts and scholars will hold important positions in normal times. Who has the time to spend so much energy writing for a magazine for no reason?

For the past half century, when Anna's grandfather and aunt ran the institution.

In order to hire a sufficient number of scholars to write or serve as guest commentators.

In some cases, they offered the opportunity to buy a certain stake in the magazine at a relatively low price, attracting world-class experts and scholars to write long-term critical articles for Oil Painting.

In addition to maintaining their independence, they rejected the gallerists' requests for capital injections.

All kinds of high-end artists remain.

The shareholders of "Oil Painting" are almost all complete.

It even includes a senior adviser to the Spanish Ministry of Culture, who is currently a senior adviser to the Spanish Ministry of Culture.

There are rumors that he has a close relationship with a candidate for prime minister, and that he hopes to become the head of the culture department in the next government.

Five hundred years ago, it was the Church that mastered the aesthetics of art in European society.

Three hundred years ago it was a king.

Then for the past century, it was the shareholders of this "Oil Painting" magazine.

If there are terrorists at this time, detonate a bomb in this room.

Then this bomb destroys not only the flesh, but the abstract concept of "artistic aesthetics". Tomorrow morning will trigger a mega-earthquake that will affect the global art world.

The management of Oil Painting magazine has in their hands the supreme right to determine the fineness of gold in the art market, a super gold mine with an annual inflow of more than $10 billion and a rising amount.

However, the profitability of the entire magazine is not high.

Before Kruger Bank considered taking a stake, even the market valuation was only around a conservative 70 million ~ 100 million euros.

Perhaps this can rank among the top 10 in the world in the entire magazine media field.

But the shareholders want more than just some bullshit in the world's top ten, with the resources in their hands, they can easily become one of the most valuable magazines.

Compared with North American "VOGUE", which is similar to the founding year of "Oil Painting", it also has a century-old history of leading fashion magazines.

But it may not even be half of the brand valuation given by the investment banks on Wall Street.

There is still a lot of room for commercial value to be explored.

Compared to their outstanding achievements in the field of art, the Elena family is indeed overly cautious in terms of finances.

The human heart is always greedy.

therefore

From the moment Anna's wheelchair was wheeled into the conference room by Eliot, the atmosphere in the room was extraordinarily strange.

The size of the meeting room is huge.

There are red drapery, thick carpets, and an antique strip walnut table in the middle that divides the room in half.

Comfortable armchairs are placed opposite each other on either side of the bench table.

On one side of the long table sat a group of elderly men with an average age of over fifty-five.

In the opposite row sat two young girls, who were less than 50 years old.

The old men were gray-haired.

The girls are tender and can pinch out the water.

At this time, the scene in the conference room looks incongruous like dead old trees facing two bright hyacinths.

The composition is like some kind of religious painting with a strange allegory.

These art giants who can influence the trend of contemporary art always look at the other side of the table involuntarily when they whisper to each other.

None of them spoke to Anna.

The shareholders' meeting did not go through any early rehearsals.

The seats of all are formed spontaneously.

The atmosphere in which these people whispered to each other, talked to each other, and deliberately isolated the two girls across the table, also spontaneously.

"Alas...... It's a pity. ”

Someone sighed quietly in his heart.

Many of them do not have any personal preconceptions about Miss Anna.

Even in the past, there was a good personal friendship with Anna's aunt.

It's just that today, under the peculiar tacit understanding, they have maintained a deliberate estrangement from Yelena.

Even when the other party's eyes looked at him, he took the initiative to turn his head sideways, completely treating the other party as an invisible ghost.

"Why do you have to come to the show and witness yourself being driven out?" Professor Sakurai, who was sitting diagonally across from Anna, had a sympathetic and unbearable look on his face.

The shareholders' meeting has not yet been formally convened.

It will be completely clear what the result of the vote will be after a while.

"It's too much! These old things are too much! ”

Sitting across the table, Elliot gritted his teeth.

She saw Anna greet the old fellows on the other side one by one, but they ignored them completely.

The secretary hated not being able to smash the hot teacup in his hand on the heads of the old men opposite.

Elliot began to regret that he had not persuaded Miss Elena to bring a legal team, even if he didn't do anything, it would be good to be strong.

Maybe......

In the current scenario, it is a wiser choice to abstain from the shareholders' meeting directly.

"By the way, Miss Elena......"

The female secretary couldn't stand the awkward calm around them at this time, so she removed the Apple Pencil from the tablet.

Elliot slid a few times on the electronic ledger and pulled up the documents he was looking for.

"You asked me to pay attention to the new Represented Artist members of [Saatchi Gallery], [Tokyo Gallery], [Standing Wood Gallery New York], and [Mars Gallery]. I pulled down all the updates to the latest artist lists from these galleries on their websites. But I can only count all the public information, and I don't know if this list will satisfy you. ”

Elliot handed the tablet over.

She was a full-time private secretary hired by Miss Elena, and a few weeks ago she had been instructed by Miss to keep an eye on the list of artists represented by these galleries.

She asked herself to sort out all the new names, preferably with a detailed profile.

This request is strange.

Elliot didn't know what Miss was mysteriously up to.

She didn't ask much.

She's just a person who does things and only cares about how to carry out Anna's orders.

The work itself is not complicated.

As soon as a new artist is signed, Grand Gallery will update the relevant signing news on their official homepage and set up their personal page for the new artist to represent.

A detailed resume is often attached directly to the personal homepage, which increases the collectors' understanding of the artist and makes it easier to sell his paintings in the future.

Elliot just needs to be careful, stare at the web page every day, and copy and paste any new information.

In the conference room, the scene of my own young lady being hung in place and no one cared about it was too sad.

Elliot wanted to change the subject, whatever he wanted.

At the very least, don't let Anna look like she's left unnoticed.

"Oh, any news on that?"

Anna's eyes, who were as quiet as an ice sculpture, lit up.

Her slender eyebrows were slightly raised, and a vivid expression of excitement and curiosity flashed from the girl's face.

Elliot captured this scene and wondered in his heart.

She vaguely felt ......

Compared with the changes involving tens of millions of euros in assets, it seems that this small list makes Miss Anna more concerned.

"Well, except for the Tokyo gallery, there is no change in the list of agents. The remaining three have all represented a new artist this month. ”

"That's right."

Anna took the tablet.

Only three people?

No

Should it be said that there will be three people?

The top InterContinental Galleries have carefully selected each of the artists they represent over a long period of time, and Gagosian Gallery is eager to see no changes to the list for a year to a few years, catching up with the three major galleries that have recently signed new signings.

It seems that the high-rise art market is quite lively this month.

"There is Africa...... There are only three of them, so I'll see for myself. ”

Anna quickly swiped the documents that the secretary had sorted out on the tablet.

The newcomers to the three galleries were individually filed in a single document, along with photographs.

【Gallery: Saatchi Gallery】

[Name: Mariuk John Levich]

[Age: 35]

【Oil Painting Buyer Rating: Two Stars】

The first document is a middle-aged Caucasian man.

In the photo, he has a very artist-like beard, and from the outside, he is not at all close to the information of the detective cat's big sister.

Anna didn't close the document right away, either.

"THE Detective Cat" is just a screen name.

Personal information registered on Fiverr is not necessarily true.

Since he can change his voice to a middle-aged uncle on the Internet, the detective cat may not be a Russian.

However, after reading two pages of Maliuk's personal information, the girl shook her head in disappointment.

"The temperament doesn't match, this guy has been in the art gallery for many years."

This guy graduated from the Repin Academy of Fine Arts, majoring in watercolors, and had already signed a contract with a medium-sized gallery in Eastern Europe, which was poached by the Saatchi Gallery this year.

Maliuk's situation is normal, and Intercontinental Gallery has a high vision.

Unless there is a reliable referrer or a supernova that has been a sensation at a biennale.

They rarely sign amateurs from the bottom of the art market.

Most of them are from small galleries and medium-sized galleries with joint agency agreements, poaching some mid-level painters who have already established a certain reputation.

And the Detective Cat Lady is in the minority.

Whether it is from the message in the words or the feeling brought to Anna in the words.

In her heart, she thinks that this big sister is more like a young newcomer who has never signed a serious gallery.

Miss Elena moved to the next document.

The "new" painter at the Standing Wood Gallery in New York is in a similar situation to Maliuc, a forty-one-year-old French female painter.

The age and gender are right.

Algeria was once the most important French colony in Africa.

It stands to reason that she is the most likely detective cat.

Miss Elena only drew for a few seconds and scanned the file, then simply turned it off.

This is an avant-garde artist, and her masterpiece is not even a painting, but a formalin-soaked swordfish specimen in an aquarium.

Anna doesn't believe that the other party can have the outstanding skills of a detective cat.

What's more.

Before joining Standing Wood Gallery in New York this month, he was a three-star painter on the buyer's guide of Oil Painting magazine, and after joining, he was directly adjusted to three and a half stars.

The specimen of the sailfish alone was bought by a Lebanese businessman for 170,000 euros.

This kind of artist can't go up and draw a ten-dollar illustration online.

"There's only one left."

Anna opened the last document with trepidation.

So a bald old face with a smile like a meat bun on his face came into the girl's eyes.

【Gallery: Mars Gallery】

[Name: Gu Tongxiang]

[Age: 68]

【Oil Painting Buyer Rating: 1 Star】

"Gu Tongxiang?"

Anna pondered the unfamiliar name.

The girl browsed the old man's personal information.

His creative resume is very thin, and it seems that the Mars Gallery has racked its brains to make a little bluff of the background information of this elderly acting artist.

Regrettably,

Although this Mr. Gu Tongxiang is more than 20 years older than the first two on the list, his creative background is pitiful.

There are no important works or awards, and I have not been signed by a serious gallery before.

Didn't even go to college.

He is a rare painter of the wild fox Zen type in modern times.

He lives in Yangon, Myanmar, a land that was once considered the poorest in the world by the United Nations.

“…… He has been engaged in painting and art management in the market for many years, and has rich experience as a young painter, and has his own profound and unique views on Asian art trends......

Looking at the resume information that Mars Gallery painstakingly compiled for this Mr. Gu.

Anna wanted to laugh a little.

This is a signing painter and not a signing agent, when can being engaged in the field of art management for many years be regarded as the advantage of creative style?

In the second half of the sentence, to change the expression of low emotional intelligence, it is even more clear that although the old man I signed is an unknown "little", he is old!

Of course, a man who is almost seventy years old has more experience than a thirty-year-old painter.

Miss Elena understands the style of these galleries.

This is obviously the old gentleman's past information, and there is really nothing to put on the table, so he has to write this kind of empty copywriting.

Anna also noticed.

The recommendation pages of this Gu Tongxiang in the buyer's guide of "Oil Painting" magazine are all newly built, and there is only one news of "Mars Gallery Acting Painter", and the transaction price of the purchased painting is also 0.

This means that even the editorial department of "Oil Painting" has never known or paid attention to this old man before.

The evaluation of a one-star painter has not been rated for three days.

The star rating of the buyer's guide of Oil Painting magazine adopts the dual scoring system of "market objectivity + editorial subjectivity".

Those who can be signed by Mars Gallery have the endorsement of the century-old reputation of the super gallery, and the minimum starting point is one star. If he can be signed by Gagoxuan, he will even start with three and a half stars.

Gu Tongxiang was purely stained with the light of Mars before he was noticed by "Oil Painting".

"It is really not easy for this old gentleman to be picked by Ma Shi in the poor countryside, I don't know what is brilliant."

Anna pulls the page down.

A picture of a peony jumped into her eyes, and she couldn't help blinking her eyes again.

(End of chapter)