Chapter 107: Not enough cultural accumulation
Since it is an exchange meeting, there must be experts. One of the organizers of this exchange meeting is the vice president of the Antiques Association. It is said that he is also an appraiser of an auction company, named Andrew.
The item he brought this time was a famous Western painting.
To be honest, the variety of antique artworks in the West is far less rich than in China.
Although there are four major ancient civilizations in the world, and China is still relatively late in history, there are no gaps in ancient Chinese civilization. The cultural relics accumulated over thousands of years cannot be defeated by the other three major ancient civilizations combined.
Andrew is explaining his painting to everyone, and also telling everyone how to identify it.
Since it is an exchange meeting, how can it be done without communication?
It was a work by Paul Sifer. Paul Sifer was a nude portrait painter and illustrator who was good at life drawing and was known as the "King of Beautiful Butts." He is good at using European classical realistic painting methods, and the overall composition also adopts European classical composition methods, depicting a young naked woman in the bedroom.
Seeing this group of people admiring a nude picture, Lin Yuan was speechless.
If it were a nude picture of a woman, it would be acceptable for a group of men to appreciate it, but the picture is of a man!
Paintings like these by famous artists are considered works of art, and paintings like these by ordinary people are probably guilty of spreading obscenity.
"Is Paul Sifer's work only worth 180,000 US dollars?" Henry was a little unbelievable.
You know, Paul Sifer is a world-class painting master!
His works only cost more than 100 or 200,000 US dollars?
Lin Yuan smiled and said: "The bubble of some Western artworks is very big. We all know that Western artworks dominate the auction market. On the auction list, the ones at the top are almost dominated by Western artworks. You can't just see it because In that case, I feel that the value of Western art is generally stronger than that of Chinese art.”
Antique artworks from the middle and lower classes in the West are not good, perhaps because of insufficient cultural accumulation.
In fact, except for a few fine works by well-known painters, most of the artworks - including common works by famous artists, as well as many antique furniture, silverware, etc. that are one or two hundred years old, look to be in good condition. , but the price is not expensive.
As long as you visit Western antique markets and art fairs, you will find that artworks and even antiques worth tens of thousands of dollars are too common.
The purpose of Westerners buying this part of art is mainly to decorate their homes, and they don’t have the funds to speculate in this sector, so their room for appreciation is very limited.
Hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of funds may not be able to purchase a decent work in the Chinese contemporary art market, but it is enough to enable you to own an oil painting by a Western classical art master, or to own an oil painting from one or two hundred years ago. Bring home historical and well-preserved antique furniture and shiny silver wine vessels.
Some people may say, doesn’t this mean that Western artworks are not that rich?
Note that what we are talking about here are Western works of art, which are a bit hyped.
Especially Impressionism and post-war art.
After World War II, the world's art center shifted from Europe to the United States. The United States needed to weaken European classical art while strengthening emerging art from Cézanne to Picasso and even contemporary art in order to establish its own dominance as an art empire.
From another perspective, the sky-high prices of post-war art are also a financial act to some extent.
In Lin Yuan's view, art is sometimes a financial tool, and it needs to find new flashpoints to promote it in order to bring high profits.
Post-war and contemporary art mainly belong to the investment adventure sector. If you choose correctly, the return on investment can be dozens or hundreds of times, but this is destined to be an activity that only a few people can engage in.
"Besides, Paul Sifer was a painter in the 19th century. In a sense, the history is still too short." Lin Yuan added. Of course, it cannot be said that modern and contemporary works of art are not valuable.
Zhang Daqian and Xu Beihong are also modern artists, but their works are generally very expensive.
"In addition, Paul Sifer is more famous for his paintings of nude women, not nude men, and the value is much different." Lin Yuan continued.
Most of the nude women in Sifer's works are young women, appearing in the bedroom, showing their intimate and touching beauty. He was always as ecstatic as an innocent child before the charm of the female body. Even when he was old and sick and unable to walk, they still gave him the strength to cheer up his spirit.
In his works, the female body is absolutely full and full of charm, but it seems to be an unconscious existence. Therefore, their youthful, fat and attractive images all reveal an innocent, pure and natural charm.
As for the naked men!
To be honest, normal men probably don’t like to see this kind of paintings, right?
Lin Yuan didn't go over to join in the fun. What's so interesting about a painting of a naked man? If you don’t know, you might think you’re a psychopath!
In the West, this kind of behavior may be very common. After all, people are open-minded and free!
But Lin Yuan felt that he couldn't accept it.
He drove the treasure hunter and continued to search for valuable things.
Please...you...collect 6...9...books...!
"Tony, that vinyl record is good. It's still profitable within 20,000 US dollars." Lin Yuan said to Tony beside him.
Tony's eyes lit up and he immediately walked towards the holder of the vinyl record.
In today's era of rampant digital carriers, vinyl records, an outdated sound carrier, are not only favored by more and more music enthusiasts, but also lead a nostalgic trend, attracting more and more people to join the vinyl collection team .
We all know that vinyl records are the earliest carrier used to store sound signals in human history.
At first, Edison placed the world's first phonograph he invented in a shopping mall, but it was ignored by customers because of its bulkiness and unsatisfactory sound quality.
Ten years later, the German Paulina stood on the shoulders of the giant Edison, improved the phonograph, and introduced a black disc-shaped dense bakelite record with clear sound quality, easy portability, low cost, and mass reproduction. The record industry era began with This is coming.
However, in the mid-1980s, vinyl records began to be replaced by compact discs.
In fact, when it comes to collecting vinyl records, some people are after the "front page", some are after the band, and some are after the cover. Players from all walks of life are having a great time. With the market price of collectible vinyl records soaring, many collectors are eyeing this huge market. However, many collectors are not selling for the price.
Perhaps for them, collecting a vinyl record is not only a collection of the sounds of that era, but also the self of that era, the story of that era that belongs to the record, and the history and culture related to the record.
After a while, Tony came back with the record, and he finally succeeded.
(End of chapter)