“KIH…… Uh, is it the Hamburg Artists' Federation?"

Gu Weijing thought in his mind for a moment.

Only then did he succeed in matching the letter KICH in Wattle's mouth with the abbreviation of the Hamburg Artists Association - "Kunstverein in Hamburg".

According to different regions and historical traditions, the names of art associations in various countries are mostly a long string of tongue twisters, and the official names have often changed throughout history.

For example, in the early days, the official name of the RSA Royal Society of Arts was the Association for the Encouragement of Art, Manufacturing, and Commerce, so it was common to use acronyms directly in conversation.

The Hamburg Artists Association is mentioned much less often and in less common terms than the Royal Arts Association.

So Gu Weijing needed to think for a few seconds before he realized what it meant.

But.

And it's only a few seconds.

"This is the most powerful artist association in Germany, right?"

Germany is one of the traditional European art powers.

It stands to reason that after the merger of Germany, the most influential art organization would be the BVDG (Federation of German Federal Galleries and Art Dealers), the organizer of the Cologne Fine Art Fair, one of the world's top five art fairs.

But you know it by the name.

It is a joint agency of art dealers and the German Cultural Council, and is also responsible for the judicial investigation of counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering of some illegal artworks.

It has little direct relevance to the painters.

Secondly, there is the independent art association of each city.

"Old man Cao Xuan seems to be a member of this association."

He remembered that when Mr. Cao Xuan went to the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts as the head of the department, he followed the local customs and hung up a name in the local art association.

It still seems to be its artistic advisor.

Even if Old Man Cao didn't serve in it, Gu Weijing wouldn't feel so unfamiliar with the name KIH.

It is hard to be a stranger to any student of Western art history at Dulwich, and it is one of the largest and most influential top-level art associations of its kind in Germany and Europe.

Hamburg has left a lasting mark on the history of European art.

The artistic heart of most European countries is their capital.

Amsterdam is to the Netherlands, London is to the United Kingdom, and Vienna is to Austria.

It is the French who are most adept at engaging in regional discrimination.

Although equality and tolerance are the cultural traditions of France in the old revolutionary base areas, they may not discriminate against foreigners, but they like to fight themselves.

Until the twentieth century, Parisian artists looked at provincial artists, and to be precise, all Parisians looked at provincial artists like Stone Age orangutans.

Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas, Maupassant...... In the after-dinner literature of that generation of Parisians, whenever there is a rich and uneducated turtle, he usually has to use sarcastic words for several pages, and repeatedly emphasize that this old man must be a nouveau riche who has come to Paris to open his eyes and see the world, but he is definitely not "an old Parisian who was born and raised in Paris!" ”

The exception is Germany, which does not have an obvious art centre.

If you want to do rock music, you can go to Berlin. In terms of painting art, Hamburg and Munich, one south and one north, are both very good, and the latter may be better in terms of artistic atmosphere, but because it happened to be an important base camp for a certain Führer's artistic propaganda, it has historical baggage.

Hamburg has a long history.

Coincidentally, Hamburg's modern art culture, like its Russian counterparts, also originated in 1812, the year of Napoleon's defeat.

Well, it's not a coincidence.

200 years ago, when the Cossack cavalry brandished their swords and galloped wildly across the snowy fields, the great nobles of Hamburg were on the side that were slashed.

That's right, they're all allies of the French army,

When a whale falls, all things are born.

With the invasion of Germany by the anti-French coalition, Hamburg became one of the thirty-nine autonomous states established by the Congress of Vienna.

In books, historical materialism tells us.

As the old-school feudal royalty and aristocracy were swept away, artistic creativity from civic life flourished. Hamburg soon had its first artists' associations. When the Berlin Artists Association was born, the Hamburg Artists Association had already matured in the weather.

To this day, it is still an important art city in the heart of Europe, as is Vienna.

The leadership of the Hamburg Kunstverein is one of the most influential figures in the art world.

Judge the gold content of a foreign art association.

The easiest way is to look at the official website, whether there is enough weight of art masters in their membership list, and you can simply judge one or two.

The color of the Artists Association is too watery.

Even if any great painter is a native, he will not be happy to put his name on the membership, and he will dislike and lower his style.

It is easy to affect the value of personal branding.

Opposite.

If an art association is very influential enough to bring great benefits to the career of a painter, then everyone wants to put a name in it with a sharpened head, and be proud to be a fellow or an academician of it.

The Académie Française and the Royal Society of Arts are all examples of this.

It's all the Artists Association.

The atmosphere of the grass platform team of the Yangon Calligraphy and Painting Association is obvious.

Not to mention the official website, there is not even a wiki entry, at first glance it looks like some kind of foolish pheasant association, so I can only invite a painter like Gu Weijing's grandfather Gu Tongxiang to be a consultant of the association.

At the beginning of the year, the Shwedagon Pagoda project was full of masters.

I came, but I didn't hear of anyone who was happy to run their calligraphy and painting association and work part-time as a foreign member. Old man Wu was still wondering if he could hold a ceremony and take the initiative to pretend to be a few honorary members to improve the gold content of the association.

What if you come back with a few handshakes and hang them on the wall of the store?

It's also good to make customers think that they don't know what they are aware of.

As a result, the Yangon Tourism Bureau thought that people would refuse directly, and they would lose their national body, so they directly slapped back the old man Wu who wanted to be a demon.

And the Hamburg Art Association.

Then you can directly invite a super painter like Cao Xuan, whose works are sold at auction for more than 10 million US dollars, to be hired as an official consultant of the association.

The influence of the members is great, and the influence that the association can exert is logically rising.

It is not the same concept as the permanent director of the Yangon Artists Association, who steals public oranges all day long, reimburses private car fuel cards, and is satisfied with traveling with public funds every year.

These well-known European American associations are very powerful.

Traditionally.

From the very beginning, the governing structure of associations often included the power of the municipal magistrate and the mayor himself.

The local mega-wealthy business tycoon, the old-school collector, served as a patron.

The most respected and well-known artists or curators, as well as the directors of the Grand Art Museum, serve as the presidents and jointly determine the development direction of the association.

A solid triangular support of power-art-wealth has been formed.

Perhaps not as well as every generation of the leaders and patrons of the Royal Society of Arts who were the kings or queens of Britain.

But they all have wealth in their hands, and the power to make people famous in the real sense.

These associations are not just an art association, they have their own historical art exhibitions, their own foundations, regular large-scale association art exhibitions, and the right to hold separate solo exhibitions for the outstanding members of the association.

Solo Exhibition!

For 99.99% of the world's art practitioners, it is a word that is too high for them to touch.

That pheasant show doesn't count.

A serious solo exhibition requires a large team and funds dedicated to the service of the painter himself, and each solo exhibition is a gilding and improvement of the resume.

In the contract signed by Mars Gallery and Gu Weijing, the ultimate reward for Katsuko's mother was to open a solo exhibition in Abu Dhabi.

The Hamburg Artists Association has the financial resources and influence to open solo exhibitions for its outstanding members.

Furthermore.

They also have good and long-term cooperation with major European museums, as well as documenta, which is as influential and well-known as the Venice Biennale.

That is, it is nominally a non-profit art organization, and there is no strong contract to twist their members together for their own use.

Otherwise.

Mars Gallery, Lisson, Gagosian and other gallery giants, in front of these art associations, are only small galleries of the younger generations.

"Deao is a close relative."

"After the Second World War, the third president of the magazine "Oil Painting" made a bet with the art association in Hamburg at the time, and it was a very generous promise, to be precise, in order to lift the spirits of the artists of the time. You know, the post-war land was in need of something like that. ”

Munich was the artistic stronghold of the German army's cultural and artistic propaganda during the war.

As a famous unsuccessful art student, the mustache has been burning with a "different passion" for art all his life.

Naturally, a certain Führer would not let go of Hamburg, another major art town, but only slightly better than Munich, which can hardly wash away the evil undertones.

In the current official propaganda, KICH had no choice but to fall under the control of the German military regime during the war.

He persecuted a large number of famous artists of the time.

That's a very nice way to put it.

It's not nice to say.

At that time, the leadership of KICH, who had always maintained close ties with the mustache, was an important artistic helper to Goebbels, who plundered and collected more than hundreds of thousands of "degenerate artworks" from various countries.

After more than 70 years of retribution.

Until a few years ago, when the tax authorities raided a private apartment in Munich for the president's son, they seized 1,400 famous paintings that had been looted during the war.

"After being beaten, it was necessary to stand upright, and the local art of post-war Germany carried a great burden. Ms. Miller, the new president of KICH, invited the director of Oil Painting, who played an important role in the rehabilitation of artists who were placed under residential surveillance during World War II and sheltered and persecuted, to give a lecture in Hamburg. ”

"As we all know, the more annoying the mustache is, the more persecuted the opponent, the better the reputation after the war."

"The chairman was thrown into prison three times, twice considered for execution as a political prisoner, and even his family in exile in Switzerland was on the Gestapo's assassination list at one point. Can you imagine how such a person would be welcomed after the war? ”

"I can guess some." Gu Weijing nodded.

"Biographers say he's the Churchill of the art world. The old gentleman used to be the director of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, and the mustache did not even have the qualifications to step into the school, and the other party liked to talk about art all his life. ”

Gu Weijing remembered a joke he had read on an online forum.

"Some people say that as long as he is alive, when the mustache talks about the connection between German art and the Germanic ethnicity, and pretends to be a cultural person, whenever he thinks of that face, he will remember that he is actually just an unsuccessful art student who has not even gone to university. When he scolded Fang Xuan on the battlefield in Europe, the artistic heart of inferiority still made Adolf feel stinging. ”

Perhaps he could have made the whole of Europe bow down and throw all the artists who did not obey him into concentration camps and special Gestapo prisons, but the whole of Europe also knew that in 1907 and 1908 he was ruthlessly rejected by a school that he was not qualified to study in it. That's the past and regrets that Adolf will never be able to change. ”

"Perhaps, think about what the chairman has done, compared to Churchill in the art world. I think it's more like Schindler in the art world. Of course, "Schindler's List" will not be released for another half century. In the spring and autumn of 1946, the old chairman was far more well-known than Schindler himself, and he was much more glamorous. ”

Wattle smiled.

"Listen to my grandfather. In the forties and fifties of the last century, the old gentleman's reputation almost reached the peak of the art world. Especially in Germany, because of his disgraceful history, every art association wanted to invite him to give a lecture – 'as if from a saint' he could buy something to atone for his sins. ”

The sketch teacher gestured with both hands to count the indulgences.

This is not an exaggerated analogy, if he is a priest or a bishop, after his death, the Holy See will really discuss canonizing him or something. When he came to Hamburg to give a presentation, he and President Miller had some differences of opinion at the seminar. ”

"The chairman believes that classical art is immortal. Impressionism is just another inheritance and interpretation of the aesthetics of classicism. Painters still have to return to brush and ink techniques. ”

And President Miller of KICH is a proponent of another school of classical art theory. She believes that since the birth of the camera, the technique has been refined and developed...... It can't be said that it's useless, but it's not as important as it used to be. Beyond the conventional form of creation, it is the development direction of future art, such as Picasso, who was already second to none at that time, is a very powerful evidence. ”

The two argued and ended up making a bet. Bet on whether there will be the next watercolorist of realistic art. ”

"President Miller brought out a watercolor painting of the Berlin Royal Palace, a masterpiece by Menzel."

"There's an old saying in the German collecting world. Every man of strength should collect a piece of Menzel's work and put it in the living room. ”

"The Royal Palace of Berlin is the most important personal collection of President Müller, and it is a representative work of realistic art. At that time, it was worth about 4 million Reichsmarks, the price of a Rolls-Royce. ”

(End of chapter)