Chapter 3 Impressions of Tiffany

Friends must take me to see "Tiffany Jewelry Store".I said: "What's so good about Tiffany Jewelry Store?" "Tiffany Jewelry Store is the most famous jewelry store in the world. After watching a jewelry store for a long time, the one I linger on is the Tiffany Jewelry Store!" "Well, for Audrey Hepburn's sake, let's go to the Tiffany Jewelry Store." We took the subway to Go to Fifth Street. Fifth Street in New York is the busiest commercial center in New York (maybe the busiest place in the world), especially in the evening when the company is off work and the shops are still open, there are pink crowds flowing on Fifth Street. The so-called pink is full of Vibrant and beautiful colors.At this time, all the men and women working in the company poured out of the office. They were all dressed in bright and fashionable clothes. The colors and styles of almost everyone had been carefully selected. When you look at it from a distance, these crowds really look like a picture. An abstract painting with clear flowing lines.Once I was gallery-hopping on Fifty-seventh Street downtown, and there are dozens of first-rate galleries showing the works of many established and unknown painters.I walked around the house and looked out of the window of a gallery displaying Impressionist paintings. The tall and energetic office girls flew by like butterflies outside the window. I suddenly felt that the light and shadow of Impressionism seemed to be at dusk from Paris to New York at that moment. .

I have visited more than one hundred galleries in New York, saw the brilliance of Western art since the Middle Ages, and then walked carefully on the streets, and saw many beautiful Westerners (not in movies, but in life), I often When I walked halfway, I stopped and thought deeply: Why are Westerners more beautiful?Is there something wrong with my own aesthetics? One day I was near the Rockefeller Center, the sky was slowly snowing, I found a roadside cafe to sit down, the cafe has a row of bright floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw many beautiful women walking by, I don’t know why Suddenly, a scene of watching a puppet show in childhood emerged.At that time, puppetry was usually divided into "Southeast School" and "Northwest School"; the Southeast School was good guys, all of them were black-haired, black-eyed, and handsome Chinese, while the Northwest School was bad guys, all of them were blond, blue-eyed, high-nosed, big-eyed foreigners. people.

In my childhood, I felt that the people of the "Northwest School" were really not good-looking, but at this moment, when I faced many real people from the "Northwest School", I felt inferior. What is the problem? ? Later, I slowly found the answer. When I was learning painting, the first teacher who taught me painting was the statue of Venus. He said: "Look at those eyes, nose, , The contours of the lips are so beautiful, look how well-proportioned the proportions are, Chinese women can no longer find a beauty like Venus." The second one is Agrippa, he said: "Look at his chin How powerful, and the eyebrows are full of heroism!" Because I learned painting, I read the history of Western art not only once, but also constantly reviewed the works of Western artists, and I was always moved by those arts again and again.

When I grew up, I was obsessed with movies. In the movies, the beautiful men and women in the West kept rising and falling in my mind like a tide, and this kind of Hollywood aesthetics was widely spread in newspapers every day. Then I watched Chinese movies The stars in the film also more or less grew up with some Hollywood patterns.As a result, the confidence of the "Southeast School" faded with the decline of the puppet show, replaced by the yearning of the "Northwest School". At that moment in the coffee shop, I realized that Chinese aesthetics was in a terrible crisis.I think, if I learned painting from the plaster statues of Concubine Yang and Zhao Feiyan, or copied Han Gan's round-faced and stout horse figures, maybe this is not the case today.Or if there are a few typical characters for Wynn in Chinese movies, then today we will not give beauty to Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable casually.

The subway in New York is packed with all kinds of people, there are typical blondes, there are blacks, Jews, Japanese, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, or don't know where, they are always very different, I think, I don't know what their aesthetics are like?The only thing that is certain is that the stronger the art of the country, the more confident it is in aesthetics! When I got out of the subway in New York and walked to the jewelry store in Guinea, because I thought about it like that, I felt a lot lighter, and my interest in seeing beautiful women also decreased.When we arrived at the "Tiffany Jewelry Store", it was a huge store. There was only one shining diamond in the huge window facing the street. The door was locked. My friend said: "You must first inform the lady at the counter, she Only after you have seen clearly will you open the door." I said, "No, just look at the window."

We took a walk to find a coffee shop, and laughed at ourselves: "At least Audrey Hepburn looks a bit Chinese!" My friend didn't hear me clearly, and asked: "What? What did you say?" No." I said, "Let's sit somewhere! Tiffany's is nothing more than that!" — April 1982