The Versatile Master Artist

(This is some background correction, not essential for reading.)

The preface mentioned that this is a completely fictional story, the background, setting, and plot content are not entirely accurate—it is a stage play on an entirely imaginary stage, with the changing Four Seasons inside a crystal ball.

Please understand.

It’s like flipping ”Romance of the Three Kingdoms” upside down, seventy percent fiction, thirty percent reality.

Writing a book feels like being a donkey in a production team, with an obligation of over four thousand words as soon as you open your eyes, almost always racing to finish by midnight. Hence, much of the background content in the book, from the stage setting to the techniques of playing piano or violin, is based purely on impressions from God knows when or made-up on the spot.

For example, in the section where Koukou dances ballet, I bought a few ballet books and watched ”Swan Lake” from beginning to end again.

But when it came to the four-hand play of ”Debussy” by Miss Elina and Gu Weijing, I originally intended to dig out the score left in some corner and dust off the piano.

However.

When I noticed the time, 23:52, I thought, what score to flip through? I randomly composed a few musical phrases on the spot and tossed them in.

Such things are numerous in the text.

Some are deliberately fictionalized, some are simply written incorrectly out of misunderstanding.

As stated in the preface, the original intention of the text is to respect all regions, ethnicities, countries, all righteous and kind-hearted people, all art forms that are crystallizations of people’s efforts. Whether they hail from my favorite Chinese Paintings or piano, from Southeast Asia to Europe and Africa, these are all precious and respectable, regardless of yellow, white, or black skin.

I don’t want Benjamin-style arrogant errors to appear in my text. But the objective reality is, Benjamin-style errors are bound to appear, especially with daily updates at midnight, and writing about unfamiliar foreign lands.

Generally speaking.

When writing and there’s time to check books, I would correct such mistakes casually, but sometimes the information online is conflicting, and one never knows which statement is true or false.

Therefore.

The process of clarifying these is also my own learning process.

I worry that after casual corrections, previous readers might not know, so some things that are too old are challenging to amend. Anyway, I’ve corrected what I can, and specifically opened a correction thread stuffing heaps of background errors within.

Past corrections were forgotten long ago.

In the future, if I discover issues in the writing, I will make a separate note here.

Of course.

As mentioned, it’s written casually, this text is based on an imaginary worldview, where all appearing artists and art critics are entirely fictional. The background environment is also completely made up.

As it is a work intended to amuse, many aspects on art history, exhibitions, and environmental content should follow professional academic references. It’s likely the text is wrong, as might be the corrections, hence it’s aptly named a basket of blunders—

1. Jan van Eyck

I’ve always remembered Jan van Eyck as the inventor of oil painting, transitioning from egg tempera paint in the late medieval period.

Upon consulting later books.

This view is only one among others, some belief sees oil painting invention as a process of continuous evolution, like watercolor. Oil paint usage appeared frequently throughout history.

However.

The reliable perspective remains that Jan van Eyck was the pioneer of oil painting innovation.

From him onward.

The oil painting formula used by European artists fundamentally hasn’t changed to today.

2. Singapore Biennale

The traditional Singapore Biennale doesn’t establish conventional first, second, third prizes but follows popular art by audience voting.

2. Andy Warhol

This is a translation commonly used in China and Taiwan, while the standard translation should more frequently be Andy Warhol.