The Lesson Before I Quit Chapter 15

I almost want to say that isolation and imagination are a kind of happiness: just after the "Cultural Revolution" ended, several modern art albums after World War II began to flow into mainland China. This Shanghainese confirmed what he had known for a long time: everything was late. The "worldliness" he cared about most had already changed its face. All he could do was laugh at the years he had missed:

When I saw it---Oh! Jealous to death!

"Sit off" is the Shanghai dialect for "dead". In 1983, when we first started to communicate, we once talked about Miro and Paul Klee. Michael Mu said this, and then laughed breathlessly: "I have painted them all."

It seems absurd: I, a young man at that time, was imitating Courbet (mid-19th century) in vain, and Michael Mu, an old man, said that he was jealous of Miró (first half of 20th century). The matter still has nothing to do with Courbet and Miro, but that we have long been misplaced in the Chinese version of Western painting - entering the Manhattan Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and Soho's galleries, The problem goes beyond jealousy. Michael Mu, wearing his mushroom-colored trench coat that was fashionable in Shanghai but outdated in New York, stood quietly while watching the various tricks of post-modern art - a bit like a man with a sword who caught the other's hand on the spot. Holding a pistol --- After coming out, he lit a cigarette on the side of the road and said calmly: "It's outdated. Miro, Klee, Matisse, Picasso... are all outdated!"

certainly. All outdated: Lin Fengmian, Chen Shiwen, Postwar Carnival, Li Mengxiong, and himself. Witnessing the post-modern art everywhere in New York, Michael Mu's comments were both cunning and sincere, and suddenly he recalled the words of Confucius: "Thinking without evil." I never understood this sentence, but I understood that he was saying Finding a balance between the memory of Shanghai and the vastness of New York is the loss of at least two generations. This balance must first and only rely on language.