The Versatile Master Artist

South Asia and Central Europe are five time zones apart.

Older people sleep less, rise early, and go to bed late.

When Gu Weijing sent a message to Old Yang late at night, Elder Cao was still pacing between the rock garden and pond in his courtyard.

Many foreigners have a mysterious fascination with Chinese gardens. The Metropolitan Museum built a Ming-style garden named ”Mingxuan” on the second floor of its exhibition hall.

The courtyard where Elder Cao lives was specially prepared by the college for this revered elder Eastern artist when he decided years ago to accept the invitation from the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts to serve as the head of the Eastern Art Department and a lifelong professor.

They hired professional Dongxia construction advisors to build an antique-style courtyard by the Alster Lake in Hamburg’s inner city, modeled after ”Tea Pavilion Inn” in Suzhou Yuantong Zen Temple.

This was both an imitation assignment by Hamburg’s architecture department of Ming and Qing garden style, and a tribute and gift of respect from the board to Mr. Cao Xuan.

Mr. Cao Xuan was born in the water villages of Jiangnan and once lived in Yuantong Zen Temple during his childhood as he learned to paint.

His lifelong affinity for Buddhism is related to this.

By the way.

Southeast Shiquan Street, where Yuantong Zen Temple is located in Suzhou, was a dwelling place for many literati and scholars during the Late Qing and Republic era.

From the small courtyard where Elder Cao lived in his youth, a thirty-step walk to the right would lead to Dafeng Hall, the studio of the Zhang Clan brothers, Daqian and Shan Ma, who were just gaining fame at that time.

”Almost like a different life.”

Looking at the familiar scenery,

Cao Xuan lightly sighed, sat by the flower pool in the courtyard, and gazed at the rippling water and lotus leaves in the pond.

The college also painstakingly transplanted lotus flowers here; because the latitude of Hamburg is much higher than that of Suzhou, the spring winds in March and April still have a damp chill, while Jiangnan would already be covered with lotus leaves, the early-blooming lotus buds just beginning to show, yet here there are only two or three small lotus leaves.

Ultimately, this is not home.

”Still... unwilling,” the old man reached out to stir the pond water.

Thoughts flowed.

The reason Mr. Cao Xuan, past seventy, decided to move from Qingmei to teach in Europe was because he still had an unresolved breath within him.

This breath is called dissatisfaction.

Meticulous brushwork, freehand brushwork, gardens, landscapes and rocks, cloisonné and blue and white porcelain.

These things are splendid and eye-catching, having sparked waves of Eastern fever and Huaxia fever in the West.

Paintings from the Song-Yuan migration remain coveted international treasures today, resonating with the aristocratic elite in Old Europe.

Ming Dynasty furniture styles inspired designer Marcel Breuer to create Bauhaus design style, which swept the world.

Handmade carpets produced by Tianjin textile workshops in the Late Qing and Early Republic era crossed the ocean to New York and San Francisco, earning fervent admiration from homemakers, even surpassing Turkish carpets and defeating traditional luxury companies like Louis Vuitton.

Nowadays, these century-old Eastern carpets, less than ten feet long, easily fetch thousands of US dollars at auction.

But no matter how popular antiques and paintings are or how many woven carpets are sold.

The Western art world always looks at Eastern art with a peculiar, condescending gaze.

It cannot simply be called discrimination.

Rather than liken it to the malicious mockery of Chinese kung fu by the two hundred-pound foreign strongman in ”Huo Yuanjia”.

It is more like blond foreign research experts examining Eastern art as if it were a biological specimen on the anatomy table of a biologist or a finely crafted mummy dug from the Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

They seem to be observing a trend that has died...

”Look, their bodies are very strong.”

”Their noses are high and wide, suggesting they could breathe efficiently in snowy weather.”

”Wow, look at this skull, I think their brain capacity might even be on par with ours.”

Elder Cao couldn’t quite grasp this feeling.

But he knew he never liked this feeling.

Today, Dongxia is already one of the largest art markets globally, Westerners like accepting Dongxia’s money but do not appreciate the new generation of artists shaped by traditional Dongxia culture.

Even in Asia.

Europe and America collectors prefer Japanese culture, and Japanese take pride in Impressionism as if it were a son-in-law. They prefer the Korean Wave culture, and the monochrome painting movement of the 1970s in South Korea has influenced the trajectory of modern art development to some extent, with contemporary art truly being a rising force.

However, in the contemporary art world, there is a lack of voice and representation from Dongxia.

There’s a lack of powerful and resonant art voices from the ancient East.

Elder Cao felt this way in his youth, and this era is no different.

A hundred years have changed many things, altered the nation’s poverty and weakness, yet the art discourse and world influence of Dongxia art have not fundamentally changed.

Even the names of older generation artists like Qi Baishi, Huang Binhong, Wu Guanzhong, Zhao Wuji who once sparked waves in the West are gradually extinguished by time.

One by one they pass away.

As the last ancient spirit from that generation alive today, Mr. Cao Xuan watches the younger generations, hoping to find a successor strong enough.