The Versatile Master Artist

The weather in Yangon is just right in the afternoon, with the window opened to the fullest.

Warm wind carrying sunlight rushes in from outside, lifting the light blue curtains and leaving an unfathomable dark shadow on the white wall, along with that slender and graceful figure.

Amidst the clamor,

Koizumi Katsuko had already walked to a spot several meters behind them, unnoticed.

The girl stood by the window, her hip slightly leaning against the windowsill, staring at the classmates whose faces still retained mocking smiles not yet fully replaced by astonishment.

"When envy blurs the eyes, one loses the calmness needed to appreciate the beauty of art."

Koizumi Katsuko said slowly, word by word.

"Senior Xiaosong, regarding our issues, I apologize but feel no regret. I appreciate your efforts towards me, but I also have the right to refuse this goodwill. I am prepared to endure your insults and anger towards me, but I cannot accept your insult towards Gu Weijing."

"Koshiba Tarou, I, Koizumi Katsuko, completely and utterly disagree with you."

"You can vent your anger on me."

"But Senior Xiaosong, it’s just too much to bear to insult one of the most outstanding peers I’ve ever met in my life like this."

Her crisp voice, rising and falling, carried solemnity and determination, like a string of wind chimes hanging in a Zen Buddhism temple on the Himalayan Plateau, tinkling.

Everyone in the classroom had their mouths wide open.

If not restricted by their physiological structure, their jaws would have already hit the floor in unison.

What kind of bizarre development is this?

Something must be wrong with how the world has opened today; everything familiar around has become unbelievably strange.

There’s a common saying in the art world: there’s no standard for judging art, people’s eyes will naturally give the answer.

This statement is at most only half true.

In the eyes of a thousand people, there are a thousand Hamlets; everyone, of course, has the right to like or dislike a particular piece of art.

You can love Van Gogh, you can dislike Monet. You might consider Andy Warhol just a ninth-rate art speculator, ripping apart Picasso’s "Gernika", a rare treasure worth hundreds of millions of US dollars, and then carefully placing Uncle Wang’s bathroom graffiti from the village into Citibank’s underground vault.

As long as you own the artwork, have enough financial power, and are capricious enough, you can certainly do so.

In the long history of human art, whether it’s marketing tricks of hype or a collector being relatively "free-spirited",

there are far more absurd things than these examples.

Each individual has the right to pursue individuality and aesthetic differences.

However, art needs a unified evaluation standard in the great tide of society.

Art galleries need to know which artworks are unremarkable and which are worth preserving in temperature and humidity-controlled glass cabinets, with perhaps three old men with armbands taking shifts to watch them 24 hours a day.

Collectors also need to know which artworks bought at the price of tissue paper might turn into yachts and Victoria’s Secret models in the future.

Which artworks bought at the price of Mediterranean yachts and Victoria’s Secret models might turn into tissue paper in their grandchildren’s hands in the future.

The art world always likes to create an atmosphere for ordinary people, thinking that this evaluation standard is the beauty of the artwork.

What’s well-painted is naturally valuable, and what’s lacking in artistic value is naturally not.

This is, of course, a load of bull to fool kids.

Artists of classical art who focus on technique may still have traces to follow in evaluation methods.

Those avant-garde artists who emphasize form and concept are nonsense; why on earth is your branch, entered into the exhibition, more noble than my stone, why is your entire urinal considered art? I pee in front of Van Gogh’s paintings and get dragged away by the police?

This standard has never been beauty or ugliness.

But the authority of those who hold the aesthetic right to convince others.

In the Great Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qianlong was the authority. In the modern art world, the "Oil Painting" magazine of the Ilyena family is the authority.

And at this moment in the Fitz Classroom, Koshiba Tarou is the absolute authority.

He says Gu Weijing is trash, his painting skills are so poor they’re worse than if he painted with his toes, and everyone would immediately believe that Gu Weijing’s painting skills are utterly worthless and join in the mockery.

Any opposition and questioning of this from the students not only appear low in emotional intelligence but can also be easily crushed by Assistant Xiaosong’s authority.

Unless...

This person is Koizumi Katsuko.

Miss Sakai’s father is a renowned international artist, her mother a professor in the advanced class of Fitz School, and she herself has been repeatedly mentioned in Japanese mainland media and some Asian newspapers as an art prodigy since she was young.

Such a girl is like a fairy floating in the clouds in the minds of her classmates.

And is no less authoritative academically than Koshiba Tarou.

Therefore, when two academic authorities collide,

Miss Sakai suddenly jumps out, with a nearly protective stance akin to refusing to yield a religious belief or a taboo in her heart, to defend Gu Weijing,

these Fitz students all feel as if they’re simply out of their minds.

"Gu Weijing—the most outstanding young man I’ve ever met in my life?"

With a thud.

Mona sweeps her arm across the stapler on the table, knocking it over to one side.

The stapler falls from a meter-high tabletop, crashing heavily onto the foot of the student council president wearing little leather shoes.