The Versatile Master Artist

"Uh, it might not be the right time. Sorry, I still want to compete for the position of chief curator for the Japanese Pavilion at the next Venice Biennale, it’s really hard to make time..."

With Miss Elina’s arrival, all the magazine’s shareholders were present.

The art world’s big shots gathered.

Any ambitious art student walking into this conference room might faint from excitement.

An artist’s career needs benefactors.

And every shareholder present here was such a benefactor.

Art professors, art experts, top curators... Some of them also served as academicians of the French Academy or judges for the Turner Watercolor Award.

Any one of them, once outside, could make others soar and skip ten years of detours with just a snap of their fingers.

The shareholder structure of "Oil Painting" magazine is quite scattered.

Before the Krug Brothers Bank entered, the major shareholders were only the Austrian National Publishing Group, the European Art Association, and the Ilyena family.

And there were many minor shareholders.

Almost all of them were famous art giants and art critics.

This shareholder structure has been a feature of "Oil Painting" magazine in recent years.

Top experts and scholars with enough weight usually hold important positions. Who has the time to expend so much energy to write for a magazine without reason?

Over the past half-century, when Anna’s grandfather and aunt managed this institution.

In order to hire some sufficiently influential scholars to write or serve as special guest commentators.

They sometimes offered the opportunity to buy a certain shareholding of the magazine at a relatively low price, attracting world-class experts and scholars to write long-term reviews for "Oil Painting".

To maintain their independence, they rejected requests from gallery owners to invest and buy shares.

Remaining all kinds of high-end art individuals.

The shareholders of "Oil Painting" almost covered them all.

It even included a senior advisor from Spain’s Ministry of Culture, who moved from academia to politics.

Rumor has it that he is closely related to a prime minister candidate and hopes to join the next government as the head of the cultural department.

If five hundred years ago, the church mastered the artistic aesthetics of European society.

Three hundred years ago, it was the kings.

Then in the past century, it was the shareholders of this "Oil Painting" magazine.

If at this moment, a terrorist were to detonate a bomb in this conference room.

That bomb would not only destroy flesh but obliterate the abstract concept of "artistic aesthetics". By tomorrow morning, it would trigger a global super earthquake in the art world.

The management of "Oil Painting" magazine holds supreme authority in determining the quality of a super gold mine in the art market that has over a hundred billion US Dollars flowing in annually, a number that continues to rise steadily.

Yet the entire magazine’s profit margin is not high.

Before Krug Bank considered investing, even the market valuation was conservatively estimated at only around 70 to 100 million Euros.

Perhaps this could rank in the top ten globally in the magazine and publishing field.

But the shareholders wanted more than some lousy global top ten. With the resources they hold, they could easily become one of the most valuable magazines.

Compared to North America’s "Vogue", a fashion leading magazine with a similar founding year and a century-old history as "Oil Painting".

It might not even reach half of the brand valuation given by the Wall Street investment banks.

The commercial value has a massive space for extraction.

Compared with their outstanding achievements in the art domain, the Ilyena family is indeed overly cautious and prudent financially.

Human desires are always greedy.

Therefore,

From the moment Anna was wheeled into the conference room by Eliot, the atmosphere in the room became exceptionally strange.

The conference room is large.

With red drapes, plush carpets, a classically styled walnut long table divides the room in two.

Comfortable armchairs are set up facing each other on both sides of the long table.

One side of the long table sat a group of elderly men with an average age of over fifty-five.

Across from them sat two young girls, whose combined age didn’t even reach fifty.

The old men were grey-haired.

The young girls appeared fresh and tender, like they could ooze water.

At this moment, the scene in the conference room appeared as disjointed as dried old trees confronting two bright hyacinths.

The composition resembled some kind of religious painting with a strange allegory.

These art moguls who influence contemporary art trends, who whispered and conversed among themselves, couldn’t help but glance at the opposite side of the table.

None of them ever spoke to Anna.

The shareholders’ meeting had no prior rehearsals.

Everyone’s seating arrangement was spontaneously formed.

This atmosphere, where they whispered to each other and deliberately isolated the two girls across the table, was also spontaneously formed.

"Alas... what a pity."

Someone sighed quietly in their heart.

Many of them had no personal animosity towards Miss Anna.

In fact, in the past, they even had a good personal friendship with Anna’s aunt.

Yet today, under a strange mutual understanding, they all maintained a deliberate distance from Elina.

Even when the other party’s gaze came over, they turned their heads voluntarily, completely treating the other as an invisible ghost.

"Why bother attending just to witness being expelled?" Professor Yingji, sitting diagonally opposite Anna, displayed a look of sympathy and reluctance on his face.

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