The Versatile Master Artist

The hills overlap with gold appearing and disappearing, clouds of hair frame the scented cheeks like snow. Lazy to draw the eyebrows, playing with makeup and delaying the washing. Reflecting flowers front and back in the mirror, flower faces mirrored with each other. Newly pasted embroidered silk jacket, double double golden doves — Tang · Wen Tingyun ”Bodhisattva Barbarian”

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Good horses can be found often, a Berle not so often, beautiful artworks and artists may remain in obscurity, this truth is quite right.

If it’s gold it will always shine, an outstanding artwork will naturally speak, this saying is also true.

Open a textbook on the evolution of art, and you’ll find that the history of art from ancient times to present is composed of these two contraditory narratives.

Half is reality, half is fairy tale.

The entire history of human art is a flower of hope growing in the cracks between reality and fairy tale.

It is not as romantic as philosophers imagined, nor as despairing as melancholic poets depicted.

When Uncle Sakai calmly faces his paintings and his life with an indifferent attitude, silently munching on rice balls and painting in the studio, as his small belly slowly grows.

Give life some time, good fortune will eventually knock on his door.

The process of getting that painting exhibited was repeatedly postponed.

Like most young painters who passed the first selection in a gallery, at first he was only arranged a booth in the preliminary exhibition of the Tokyo Art Fair. With the agent’s hard persuasion, it was upgraded to a main exhibition booth for the next year.

At the final preparation stage before the exhibition, it was taken down by the owner of Ota Art Gallery himself.

This famous Japanese art dealer saw the potential of this painting, and gave Uncle Sakai a chance beyond the norm.

He took it to the London Art Fair in 2006, three years later, together with the already renowned Yayoi Kusama, becoming part of an European tour exhibition funded heavily by Ota Art Gallery.

Three postponements became the three-step springboard of fate.

As sesame blooms climb higher and higher.

Three years later, this oil painting was sold to a Middle Eastern oil businessman for 270,000 pounds, becoming the seventh most expensive piece sold at that year’s London Art Fair, and for a moment the spotlight was dazzling, the name Yakai Ichiro became famous in Asia.

At that time.

Their first daughter, Koizumi Katsuko, had already been born.

”270,000 pounds, my father never thought there was anything to be amazed at about this price. He said, for the then not very famous Yakai Ichiro, 270,000 pounds was as high as a miracle. For the painting itself, however, this price was too low.”

Koizumi Katsuko told Gu Weijing: ”In the following ten years, my father’s works have sold for 500,000 dollars, 1 million dollars, 3 million dollars. But none of these works can compare to that painting. That painting recorded the greatest transformation of his life. It was the peak of his life’s work, the most awesome piece he ever painted in his lifetime.”

”This has nothing to do with technique, it’s only about love and pain.”

”I once asked my father at the dining table, what was it like to paint such a piece, wasn’t it very exciting. Selling the first artwork in his life equivalent to 5 million yen, enough to exchange for an apartment in Tokyo, wasn’t it a very fulfilling thing.”

Koizumi Katsuko patted Gu Weijing’s cheek.

”He answered me, Shengzi, it’s not like that. When I made this painting, I was just very calm. I knew it was impressive, how could a work into which I’ve poured so much effort not be impressive? I also knew it should sell for a high price. But, none of that mattered.”

”The important thing is, I knew who the painting was for. My heart had already settled down. For me at that time, whether this painting could sell for 300,000 pounds or 300,000 yen or 3,000 yen, whether it could exchange for an apartment or just the bowl of ramen at hand, none of it mattered. Even whether I could stay or not had already become unimportant. Having your mother as my audience, even if I were just a street artist painting only for her, I’d be happy.”

”The media always says, that art fair was the most important turning point in my life, I got the opportunity of the London Art Fair, just like Monet deciding to join the Impressionism Salon, Dali rising to fame at the 1928 Carnegie Art Exhibition, and Mr. Ota being the greatest confidant and benefactor of my life.”

”No, my benefactor will always be your mother. The turning point of my life was not the bustling Regent’s Park exhibition hall in London, but the unfinished building in Osaka whose name I couldn’t recall. When your mother led me into the unfinished building, I was just a sad, self-abased, pitiful and helpless little dog. Twenty minutes later, when we walked out of that unfinished building again, I had already become today’s artist Mr. Yakai Ichiro, had become a calm and happy person.”

Miss Sakai gently scratched Gu Weijing’s ear.

”This is the story of my parents, now do you understand?”

[When your mother led me into the unfinished building, I was just a sad, self-abased, pitiful and helpless little dog. Twenty minutes later, when we walked out of that unfinished building again, I had already become today’s artist Mr. Yakai Ichiro, had become a calm and happy person.]

Gu Weijing found himself lost in thought about the scene where that chubby round artist said these words to his daughter.

There were no earth-shattering vows, no men bared to the waist shouting battle cries like in hot-blooded manga.

In fact, except for certain specific gourmet manga, probably no manga artist would arrange for a man to utter words of life reflection at a dinner table over a bowl of ramen soup.