William adjusted his collar, raised the electronic watch on his wrist, and looked at the time.
There are still 26 minutes until the official start.
Not late.
He pinned his media badge as a media critic on his collar, turned on the recorder on his body, picked up his backpack, walked through the turbulent flow of people, and walked towards the entrance of the New Art Center.
Media and exhibition guests do not need to line up to enter, as there are dedicated VIP channels.
William handed the backpack to the policeman wearing a black cap, raised his hands, and let the metal detector and the explosive disposal dog sitting aside sniff him for any dangerous items.
Central and Eastern Europe.
The past two years have not been stable. Because of the attendance of the most senior leaders, everything at this annual meeting was top-notch, and the security procedures were also very strict.
It was just William’s subconscious feeling.
The EOD dog with the word "Police" in German "oizi" printed on the dark vest seemed to be looking a little wilted for some reason.
The EOD dog is also a Springer Spaniel.
Earlier, she had just seen an extremely elegant and graceful creature of its kind walking past next door.
That fur, that dress, that air of energy, someone hugged her before and after the trip, and he even bared his teeth at her coldly when he looked at her.
This springer girl, who spent five years of training to become a strong person in the dog world, and worked hard to get a job in the public family, is like Grandma Liu entering the Grand View Garden, and like a female migrant worker. She was immediately hit when she saw the evil CEO smiling contemptuously at her.
I feel like a dog has a different fate.
Some dogs are born as cows and horses, and some dogs are born in Rome. Are there any?
It really hurts the enthusiasm for working.
The dog was unable to catch fish and was urged several times by the trainer.
William didn’t care.
He mixed with the reporters waiting in line to pass the customs with great interest, listening to the gossip everywhere. On such a major annual meeting, reporters are always the most well-informed. group.
"Hey, do you know who someone saw just now? They said they just entered from the side ten minutes ago."
Some people were talking quietly.
"Who, Hirst hasn't come yet. The guy from Art News has been squatting with his team for three hours, guarding beside the art museum since dawn, and is still there I didn’t squat enough.”
“Why are you squatting for an interview? There’s no chance. They can’t do an exclusive interview with you in this situation. When the meeting ends, I can stop and ask you in the interview area. Two questions, if you are lucky enough.”
Some people who know me despise this unprofessional behavior.
“I don’t want to do an interview. I just want to take a photo with my idol as a fan and act like a familiar face. Show your face more, and maybe you can say a few words in the future. Besides, maybe adding Hearst's signature would do the trick.It sells for two to three hundred yuan. ”
“Stay up half the night in the cold wind and just pay for the hotel room. It’s too expensive and not worth it. This is not an exclusive film about female celebrities having secret meetings with their lovers. The boss gives it to him How many bonuses are there for such a fight? If this continues, from now on everyone will be competing to see who can survive and squat, and no one will sleep. ”
Some reporters condemned this kind of vicious competition and the involution behavior that drives up the difficulty of practicing.
“You don’t have to mix the rent money. If Hester is in a good mood, you can lick it.” When he gives you a 30-second sketch, you don’t have to work anymore. People may think they are good at licking. Isn't there any precedent in New York for Hearst to write a sketch to a taxi driver using an address book as a fare? "The tone of others is yearning.
"I want to each. If it wasn't for show and hype, I would cut out my tongue. Hearst's sketch can directly change cars on the side of the road. That time was just Gagosian's supporting publicity work before the solo exhibition. Which artist would put on a show and put it on us reporters?"
"Oh, brother, you haven't said yet, who was that person who just went in?"
William came from the police He took his bag back in his hand and heard everyone's conversation getting worse and worse. He couldn't help but go over and pat the shoulder of the media guy who spoke first.
"No, you should know me. ”
The media guy patted his head and opened the photos sent in the work group. The photographers in his team had completed the security check and entered the venue. They will share some wonderful photos.
He quickly scrolled through a lot of photos of beautiful ladies.
Finally, his fingertips stopped on a wide-angle lens view of the front of the venue.
“Look carefully. Do you know that person? The one on the left in the middle of the first row. "
"His"
"I'll go
"No, is it him? I didn't see him in the guest list."
"Indeed, no. Look, the seat he originally sat belonged to the founder of CBX Gallery, Belgium's largest art dealer. Even the sign in front of the seat has not been changed."
"What kind of monster is there? It all came out. I heard in the tabloids last year that this guy died in a mountain accident while climbing a snowy mountain in Nepal."
"Is the big news about oil painting about him?"< /p>
William frowned slightly and stared at the figure on the far left of the photo on the phone screen.
In the main venue, all the guests were dressed in elite suits and leather shoes, and their hair was fixed in such a way that if a fly landed on it, it would cause splits.
It is difficult not to notice the other person.
Because what the other person is paying attention to is like a speck of green among thousands of flowers, or a split fly that suddenly lands on a shiny head.
Messy beard and sloppy gray-white hair.
He is about 1.8 meters tall and weighs more than 200 pounds.
Not fat.
Very strong, extremely strong.
He looks a bit old, but the strong muscles bulging in his arms still make the dusty windbreaker appear to be tightly stretched against his body.
Even if there is only a vicissitudes of profile in the camera.
But his expression looked somewhat neurotic, and his eyes had a sense of excessive vigilance.
There is even an e-cigarette nozzle hanging around his neck.
William is a reporter on the financial line.
I have just been transferred by the editor-in-chief to do follow-up reports. I am definitely not as familiar with celebrities in the art field as my colleagues who only do art news in specialized fields.
He quickly refreshed himself on some relevant knowledge and the status of the guests who would attend this annual meeting.
At this time, it is still difficult to recognize the identity of the other person at a glance like other people.
But how should I put it
The image of this person on the screen still gave William a very strong sense of familiarity.
On the one hand, explain.
This person may have been very, very famous, and he has seen photos of each other on some occasions.
On the other hand.
This guy's image is really full of the life of a homeless street guy that is common on the streets of New York and on park benches at night.
Dirty windbreaker, beard, and long curly hair.
The homeless artist’s standard three-piece set.
If you can fool a few tourists into painting, you can defraud them of a few dollars.
You can’t cheat.
Paired with a low-brimmed baseball cap and Nike sneakers for easy escape, as well as a reliable and durable 1911 pistol inherited from American street battles, when the night is dark and the wind is high, you can always find an unlicensed gun. You can turn into a man-manned vending machine or a 24-hour fried chicken restaurant, become a green forest hero, and have a hearty zero-dollar shopping to solve the thermal insulation problem.
The so-called hitetrash in standard slang is white loser.
But
What kind of homeless white loser can come uninvited and sit in the first row of the venue without any hindrance
It seemed that no one present, including the organizers, felt that there was anything inappropriate about this scene.
It was as if he should appear there naturally.
Even the owner of cbx Gallery, whose seat he occupied, did not show any dissatisfaction. He sat directly next to him and was talking to this dusty homeless man who made it difficult to tell his exact age for a while. Talking about something with a smile on his face.
Jesus.
In William's bad knowledge.
This gallerist, who is worth more than $500 million, is rumored to have severe mysophobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. He was once photographed shaking hands with others, then turned around and wiped his hands repeatedly in disgust. of news photos.
Fortunately, he didn't wait until he felt itchy in his heart, as if a cat was scratching him, and racked his brains to figure out who this artist whose painting style didn't match anyone else's was..
He heard someone say the answer with awe.
"That is Hunter Bull, the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Note that it is not a gold medal, but a Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the youngest person in history."
"Oh my god, it's him, I know him. When he was a boy, he worked in Picasso's studio, and later switched to pop art. The three pop godfathers of the United States, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, He was ranked third.”
“At that time, I heard that he suddenly lost interest in his artistic career and wanted to pursue a higher soul unity between humans and gods, so he abandoned it. He lost his soon-to-be-married model girlfriend and his super mansion on Long Island, and became a monk in a secluded monastery in Romania without ever going back."
"The reliable report I know is about looking for vampires."
< p>"The cousin of his ex-girlfriend I interviewed, the inside information is that he is researching the third type of contact with aliens."William shook his head.
When the name Bull appeared, he had already realized who this guy dressed like a tramp was.
Hunter Bull, nicknamed "Elvis" Bull.
He was born into a wealthy family, and his parents sent him to Picasso's studio as an apprentice when he was young. Originally, this was only a bright spot on his resume.
Picasso is known as the founder of modern art.
He has many disciples and students, and there are even more people who have been mentored and influenced by him. Some of them are unsatisfactory and can only use the name of "Picasso's apprentice". Make a living as a mid-level artist.
It is said that Boole was not a diligent student in the studio.
Then again.
Picasso was extremely talented and was hailed as Spain's art prodigy when he was less than 15 years old. He was granted admission to the Royal Fernando Academy of Fine Arts where masters gathered to study.
But Comrade Bi has never been a well-behaved, cute and good student since he was a child.
The 1970s.
In his twilight years, Picasso may have seen in Boole the days when he and his classmates skipped class to drink coffee at the Four Cats Cafe.
In his later years, he went to that studio very rarely, but it seems that Picasso showed favor to Boole when he was still a child.
Throughout the master's entire life, Picasso has never been the kind of good gentleman who likes to support his younger generations.
He showed a considerable degree of patience and attention to Bull.
It may be a tabloid fabrication, but it may not be true.
It is rumored.
Picasso once touched Boole's head and said to a bystander, "You know, he will become the Elvis Presley of artists. He will be the next person alive to see his works." People in the Louvre”
Focus on rock stars., Elvis Presley.
This sentence is like a prophecy from heaven made by the muse in the dark through the mouth of an old art master who is like a candle in the wind.
It entangled this child for half of his life for the next fifty years.
He first engaged in Cubism and abstract art. A few years later, just when everyone thought he would move step by step towards the Surrealist painting style, he switched to Neo-Dadaism. At that time, there were still scholars Call neo-Dadaism "degenerate style".
Soon, a more widely circulated name replaced them as Pop Art.
Throughout the 20th century in the West, there were two revolutionary painting methods that could be linked to gold.
Cubism.
Pop Art.
There is no need to deny racial issues and the affirmative movement. There are some special "painting trends" in the contemporary European and American art field.
Painters who excel in these aspects will be more likely to win awards and attract attention.
This is normal. Art has the function of reflecting hot social issues.
But if a person can continuously hit the two biggest artistic trends in the past hundred years, then he is almost destined to become the most eye-catching superstar in the history of art.
The entire last two decades of the 20th century were a period of crazy rise in Hunter Bull's worth.
Thirty years after Picasso made his prediction.
2005.
The early representative work of Pop Art, the silk screen print of Elvis Presley's Triple Image based on film photos, was auctioned at Sotheby's in New York for a sky-high price of US$80 million, setting a new record for similar paintings.
In the same year, the unit price of Hunter Bull’s personal works exceeded US$17.3 million.
Among all living painters in human history, he ranked second. At that time, he was only 1.2 million US dollars away from Hirst's record of 18.5 million US dollars.
But he succeeded in winning the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Biennale that Hirst had longed for for many years without success. That year, he was only 42 years old.
It happened to be the age when Elvis Presley, the second-largest rock star in terms of record sales in human history, died.
It seems to be some kind of strange reincarnation of fate.
Historically, Elvis Presley has been troubled by emotional problems for a long time, going crazy and having an unstable mental state. Elvis Presley's manager recalled that he once gave all his friends a then-latest Mercedes sedan and a loaded and loaded revolver for Christmas.
This artist, who was predicted by Picasso as a child that his career would be as shining as Elvis Presley, also had the same psychological problem.
Okay.
Psychological issues do not accurately summarize Huntbull's situation.
It is completely normal for artists to have some psychotic lunatics and gibbering idiots.
However, as talented as Mr. Boole is,Such a unique character.
A rare occurrence in a century.
Those who are crazier than him are not as successful as him, and those who are almost as successful as him are far less crazy than them.
The great artists have more or less quirks. Yayoi Kusama, Edvard Munch, and Van Gogh, these people have even been diagnosed with mental problems and have been admitted to mental hospitals.
But he was out of the scope of his quirk.
It directly sublimates the matter of "going crazy" to the level of abstraction.
He likes extreme sports. He once envisioned jumping from an altitude of 10,000 meters alone without a parachute, protection measures or coach, and finally landed on a buffer the size of a rugby field supported by supports. In the giant network. He also dressed up as a homeless man and wandered aimlessly on the street corner. A kind-hearted gentleman probably treated him to a hot dog out of humanitarianism, and he casually wrote a huge check in return.
It is basically certain that this is not a marketing trick.
Because there were no cameras or the paparazzi reported the incident, even the enthusiastic gentleman thought it was a humorous joke. Fortunately, he threw the check into the shoe cabinet where the sundries were placed. box instead of throwing it away.
It wasn’t until three years later that I was browsing interviews in the New York Times and found that the photo of the artist interviewed on the headline looked a little familiar.
I just ran to the bank and tried to exchange it.
The check was found to be genuine.
Although the 180-day time limit for personal checks has long passed, in accordance with U.S. law, after contacting and obtaining the consent of Bull's attorney, the check worth $1 million was still successfully exchanged.
The summer when the news was exposed.
People all over the East Coast of the United States are often happy to have nothing to do, and treat homeless people wandering the streets to eat hot dogs, hoping that the other person will be a hidden super rich man.
Bull's madness has become part of his charming character, attracting a large number of fans and followers around the world.
Sociologists studied him as some kind of social event and believed that this was a phenomenon that made him popular, and it was a group gibbering in a high-pressure, fast-paced urban life.
He completely meets all the stereotypes and imaginary expectations people have for the role of "artist".
In the media’s impression, the high point and end of Buell’s career both occurred in the same year, 2005.
He did not suffer the cold reception from the market and the bursting of the bubble like Hearst, nor did he cause a sex scandal and was too late, but the sudden stop of Buell's career was of a "physical" nature. of.
Just when everyone is about to gradually accept the artist's weird behavior and feel accustomed to it.
He played an unprecedented ruthless life.
The great painter who was standing at the pinnacle of glory drove himself crazy.
One day, Hunter, who was preparing for his wedding,Bull drove from his home on Long Island to a Manhattan supermarket to buy pop-up popsicles for singles to use while waiting in line.
Before going out, he told the housekeeper that he would be there in about an hour and refused to be accompanied by bodyguards.
Then.
He disappeared.
People found the Ferrari F430 sedan he drove out that day in the parking lot of Madison Avenue, and found on the windshield a message written by Buell in women's lipstick to his Brazilian girlfriend. Leave a message
Jen, I have thought about it for a long time. Marriage scares me, like a free bird caught in a dust net. I want to spend a few months thinking about something, something deeper about our world. Please remember to collect it, the latest and fastest website is free to read without anti-theft