William straightened his collar, lifted the electronic watch on his wrist, and glanced at the time.

There are still 26 minutes left before the official start.

Not late.

He pinned the media card of "The Brokerage Critic" to his neckline, turned on the voice recorder on his body, picked up his backpack, and walked through the surging crowd towards the entrance of the New Art Center.

Media and exhibitor guests do not have to queue up for entry, and there is a dedicated VIP lane.

William handed the backpack to the cop with the big black cap, and raised his hands to let the metal detector and the EOD dog sniff him for dangerous items.

Central and Eastern Europe.

The past two years have not been stable, because of the presence of the most senior leaders, everything in this annual meeting is the highest level, and the security procedures are also very strict.

It's just that William subconsciously felt.

The EOD dog with Polizi (German: police) emblazoned on it on its dark vest seemed to look a little wilted for some reason.

The EOD is also a Springer Spaniel.

Earlier, she had just seen a very imposing and magnificent of the same kind walking past next door.

The fur, the dress, the spirit, the hug before and after the trip, there was a special person to hug her, and Gu Pan even bared his teeth at her coldly.

This Springer girl, who has been trained for five years to become a strong player in the canine world, and who has successfully eaten public meals is like Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden, and like a female migrant worker who saw the president of the evil donation smiling contemptuously at her, and was immediately shocked.

gave birth to the feeling of not having the same life as a dog.

Some dogs were born as cows and horses, and some dogs were born in Rome.

It's too damaging to the motivation of part-time jobs.

The dog has the strength to touch the fish, and was supervised by the trainer for several words.

William didn't care.

He mingled with great interest among the fellow reporters waiting in line to pass the customs, listening to the gossip everywhere, and on this important annual meeting, reporters are always the most well-informed group.

"Hey, do you know who someone just saw, saying they just came in from the side ten minutes ago."

Someone was whispering.

"Who, Hearst? Hasn't he come yet? The guy from "Art News" has been squatting in his team for three hours, and has been standing next to the museum since dawn, and he hasn't squatted yet. ”

"Squatting for what? I want to rub the interview, but I don't have a chance. It is impossible for people to give you an exclusive interview on this occasion, but when the meeting is dismissed, you can block the interview area and ask one or two questions, provided that you are lucky enough. ”

There are acquaintances who express contempt for this unprofessional rookie behavior.

"People don't want to mix interviews. Just take a photo with your idol as a fan, and you can mix your face with a familiar face. Show your face more, and you will be able to say two words in the future. Besides, if you mix up Hearst's signature, you might be able to sell it for two or three hundred dollars. ”

"Staying up in the cold wind for half a night, just mix the hotel room money, it's too rolly, it's not worth it, this is not a big exclusive for filming a female celebrity's private meeting with a lover, how much bonus does the boss give him so hard. If this continues, everyone will be there in the future to compete with who can survive and squat, so don't sleep. ”

Some reporters condemned this kind of vicious competition and involution that makes it difficult to engage in the industry.

"You don't have to mix up the room money, if Hirst is in a good mood, you can lick the stick figure he gave you for 30 seconds, and you don't have to work. People may think they can lick it. Doesn't Hearst have a precedent in New York for giving taxi drivers a sketch with an address book sticky note as a fare? The tone of the others yearned.

"I want to peach. If it weren't for the hype, I'd cut my tongue out. Hearst's sketches can be used to change cars on the side of the road. That time was just before the solo exhibition, Gagosian's supporting publicity work. What artist has a sick show for those of us who are journalists......"

"Alas, brother, you haven't said yet, who is that who just entered?"

William took his bag back from the policeman, and when he heard everyone's conversation getting more and more crooked, he couldn't help but lean over and pat the shoulder of the media buddy who spoke first.

"No, you should know."

The media brother patted his head and opened the photos sent in the work group, the photographer in his team has completed the security check, entered the venue, and will share some wonderful photos.

He quickly glided through a whole bunch of pictures of pretty young ladies.

Finally, the fingertips stopped at a wide-angle lens view at the front of the venue.

"Look, do you know that person? The one on the left-center, center-left in the first row. ”

"Shhh

"I'll ......

"No, is it him? I didn't see him on the guest list. ”

"No, you see, he was sitting in the same place as the founder of CBX Gallery, Belgium's largest art dealer. Even the signage in front of the seat hasn't changed. ”

"All kinds of monsters have appeared. I also heard gossip tabloids last year that this guy was in trouble climbing a snowy mountain in Nepal and hung up. ”

"Is the big news of "Oil Painting" about him?"

William frowned slightly, staring at the figure on the far left of the photo on his phone screen.

In the main venue where all the guests were dressed in suits and leather shoes, their hair was fixed to the point that flies would split when they fell.

It's hard not to notice each other.

Because what the other party is looking at is like a little green in the flowers, or a shiny splash on the head...... A forked fly that suddenly fell.

Messy beard, sloppy and curly gray-white hair.

He is about 1.8 meters tall and weighs more than 200 pounds.

Not fat.

Very strong, extremely strong.

He looked a little old, but the bulging muscles of his arms still set off the dusty trench coat as if it was tightly taut on his body.

Even if there is only one vicissitudes of life in the lens.

But his expression looked a little nervous, and there was an overly alert sense in his eyes.

There's even an e-cigarette nozzle hanging around his neck.

William is a reporter for the Financial Front.

I have just been transferred by the editor-in-chief to do follow-up reporting, and I definitely don't know as much about celebrities in the art field as I do in the special field of art journalism.

He made up for some relevant knowledge and the guests who attended the annual meeting.

At this time, it is still difficult to recognize the identity of the other party at a glance like other people.

But how to say it?

The image of this person on the screen still brings a very strong sense of familiarity to William.

On the one hand, it is explained.

This man may have been very, very famous, and he had seen pictures of each other on some occasions.

On the other hand.

The image of this guy...... It's so rich in the atmosphere of the homeless streetmates that are common at night on the streets of New York and on park benches.

Dirty trench coat, beard, long curly hair.

Tramp down-and-out artist standard three-piece set.

If you can fool a few tourists into drawing, you can cheat a few dollars.

Fooling doesn't come.

Paired with a baseball cap with a lowered brim, Nike sneakers for easy escape, and an American street fight for the ancestral reliable and durable M1911 pistol, when the night is dark and windy, you can find an unattended vending machine or a 24-hour fried chicken shop at any time.

White trash (white scrap wood) in the standard so-called slang is also.

But?

What kind of homeless white waste wood can sit uninvited and unhindered in the first row of the venue?

It seems that no one present, including the organizers, felt that there was anything wrong with this scene.

As if he was supposed to be there.

Even the owner of the CBX Gallery, who had taken his seat, did not show any dissatisfaction, and sat directly next to him, talking about something with a smile on his face with this dusty servant homeless man who couldn't tell the exact age for a while.

Oh, my God.

William's knowledge of the evil supplement.

The gallerist, who is worth more than $500 million, is rumored to have a serious cleanliness and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and has been photographed shaking hands with someone and then turning around in the corner to disgust the news photo of him wiping his hands repeatedly.

Fortunately, he didn't wait for a cat to tickle him, racking his brains to figure out who this artist who didn't match other people's painting styles.

He heard the answer be spoken in a tone of awe.

"That's Hunter Bull, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2005 Venice Biennale, not a gold medal, but a lifetime achievement award, the youngest in history."

"Oh my God, it's him, I know him. When he was a teenager, he worked in Picasso's studio, and later switched to Pop Art. Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, the three godfathers of Pop in the United States, ranked third. ”

"At that time, I heard that he suddenly lost interest in the artistic career of Rijin Doujin, wanted to pursue the unity of the higher soul of man and god, threw away his model girlfriend who was about to marry and the super mansion on Long Island, and did not go back to the hermit monastery in Romania to become a monk......"

"The credible report I know of is the search for vampires."

"The cousin of his ex-girlfriend I interviewed, inside intelligence is that he is researching the third type of contact with aliens."

William shook his head.

When the name Bull appeared, he already realized who this homeless guy really was.

Hunter Bull, nicknamed "Elvis" Bull.

He came from a wealthy background, and when he was young, his parents sent him to Picasso's studio as an apprentice, which could have been a highlight on his resume at best.

Picasso is known as the pioneer of modern art.

There are not many of his disciples and students, and there are even more people who have been influenced by him, and some of them are quite unsatisfactory, and they can only ask for an ordinary livelihood as a middle-level artist in the name of "Picasso's apprentice".

It is said that Bull was not a hard-working student in the studio.

Then again.

Picasso was so talented that before the age of 15 he was hailed as a Spanish art prodigy, and he was granted admission to study at the Royal Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, where many masters gathered.

But Comrade Bi has not been a well-behaved and lovely student since he was a child.

70s of the last century.

In his twilight years, Picasso may have seen in Bull the days when he and his classmates skipped class to go to the Four Cats Café for coffee.

In his later years, he spent a few days in the studio, but it seems that Picasso showed a feeling for Bull as a child.

Throughout the life of the master, Picasso has never been the kind of good gentleman who likes to bring up the younger generations.

He showed a considerable amount of patience and attention with Bull.

It may be a tabloid fabrication, but it may not be true.

Reportedly.

Picasso once touched Boole's head and said to onlookers, "You know, he's going to be the Elvis Presley of the artists, he's going to be the next person to live to see his work in the Louvre." ”

(Note: Rock star, Elvis Presley).

This sentence is like a proverb from heaven made by the muse in the dark, through the mouth of an aged art master like a candle in the wind.

entangled this child for the next fifty years and half of his life.

He started with cubism and abstraction, and a few years later, just when everyone thought he would move towards the Surrealist style of painting, he turned to Neo-Dadaism, which some scholars at the time called "degenerate".

Soon, they were replaced by a more widely known name – Pop Art.

Throughout the twentieth century, there were two revolutionary ways of painting in the West that could be linked to gold.

Cubism.

Pop Art.

Racial Issues, Affirmative Action...... Needless to say, there are some special "painting outlets" in the field of contemporary European and American art.

Painters who step on the wind in these areas will be more likely to win awards and receive attention.

This is normal, art has the function of reflecting hot issues in society.

But if a person can step on two of the biggest artistic outlets in the past 100 years, then he is almost destined to become the most eye-catching superstar in the history of art.

The last two decades of the twentieth century were marked by a period of crazy rise in Hunter Bull's value.

Thirty years after Picasso's prophecy.

In 2005.

An early representative of Pop Art, the screen-printed work "Elvis Presley Triad", based on a film photograph, sold for a whopping $80 million at Sotheby's in New York, setting a new record for similar paintings.

In the same year, the unit price of Hunter Bull's solo works exceeded $17.3 million.

It was the second largest living painter in human history, just $1.2 million shy of Hearst's record of $18.5 million.

But he managed to win the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Biennale, which Hearst had longed for for years without results, at the age of 42.

It happened to be the age when Elvis Presley, the second-best-selling rock star in human history, died.

It seems to be some kind of strange reincarnation of fate.

Historically, Elvis Presley has been plagued by emotional problems for a long time, going insane, and having an unstable mental state. Elvis Presley's agent recalled that he once gave all his friends a Mercedes sedan with the latest model at the time, as well as ...... A loaded revolver of an intimidating nature.

The artist, who was predicted by Picasso as a child that his career would shine like Elvis's, also had the same psychological problems.

All right.

Psychological problems do not accurately summarize Hunter Bull's situation.

It's normal for artists to have some psychotic maniacs and babbling sticks.

Yet such a talented and maverick figure as this Mr. Bull.

Seldom appear.

Those who are madder than him are not as successful as him, and those who are almost as successful as him are far less crazy than them.

The big artists all had some quirks, Yayoi Kusama, Edvard Munch, Van Gogh, these people even really diagnosed with mental problems and were hospitalized.

But he's out of the realm of quirks.

directly sublimated the matter of "going crazy" to the point of abstraction.

He loves extreme sports, and once imagined jumping from a height of 10,000 meters alone without a parachute, without protection and without a coach, and finally landed in a huge cushioned net the size of a football stadium supported by a bracket. He also wandered aimlessly around street corners dressed as a homeless man, and a kind gentleman, presumably out of humanitarian consideration, invited him to eat a hot dog, and he wrote a huge check in return.

It's pretty much pretty sure this isn't a marketing joke.

Because there were no cameras or paparazzi reporters reporting on the incident, even the zealous gentleman himself thought it was a humorous joke, thanks to which he threw the check into the shoebox in the cupboard and did not throw it away.

It wasn't until three years later, when I browsed an interview with The New York Times, that I found that the photo of the artist interviewed on the headline was a little familiar.

I went to the bank and tried to exchange it.

The check was found to be genuine.

Although the 180-day personal check deadline had already passed, in accordance with U.S. law, the sky-high check worth $1 million was successfully redeemed after contacting and obtaining the consent of Bull's attorney.

The summer the news came out.

People all over the East Coast of the United States are often happy to be idle, inviting the homeless people who wander the streets to eat hot dogs, hoping that the other person is a hidden super-rich.

Bull's madness has also become part of his charming trait, attracting a large number of fans and followers around the world.

Sociologists study it as some kind of social event, believing that this is a phenomenon that he is sought after, and it is a group babble in the context of high-pressure, fast-paced urban life.

He fully satisfies all the stereotypes and imaginary expectations of the role of the "artist".

The media has the impression that the high point and end of Boole's career occurred in the same year as 2005.

He didn't suffer the cold reception and bubble bursting of the market like Hearst, nor was he Metoo removed by the sex scandal or anything, but the abrupt halt of Bull's career was of a "physical" nature.

Just when everyone is about to accept the artist's grotesque behavior and feel accustomed to it.

He played an unprecedented big life.

The great painter who is standing at the pinnacle of glory, he ...... Straight to the madness of myself.

One day, Hunter Bull, who was preparing for his wedding, drove from his home on Long Island to a Manhattan supermarket to buy the pull-out flowers that singles would use when they lined up.

Before he went out, he told the housekeeper that he would come in about an hour and refused to be accompanied by a bodyguard.

And then.

And he was gone.

People found the Ferrari F430 sedan he drove out that day in the parking lot of Madison Avenue, and found a message from Boole to his Brazilian girlfriend with a lady's lipstick on the windshield of the car window -

[Jane, I have thought about it for a long time, and marriage has frightened me, like a bird of freedom falling into the dust. I want to spend a few months thinking about something, something more profound about our world. 】

(End of chapter)