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Is Ai Weiwei still an artist? Is Ai Weiwei still an artist?
(5 months later)
Ai Weiwei is the most important artist in the world right now, a visionary who is defying an entire political system. He is a hero. And yet, is he actually an artist at all? Has his art vanished into the storm of polemic?Ai Weiwei is the most important artist in the world right now, a visionary who is defying an entire political system. He is a hero. And yet, is he actually an artist at all? Has his art vanished into the storm of polemic?
You don't have to go to an art gallery to encounter Ai Weiwei – indeed, it might be the last place to look. London theatre audiences are currently admiring him in the play The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, which is based on a book about his ordeal called Hanging Man. There's the film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. And last but definitely not least there is the powerful voice of the man himself, constantly needling China's authoritarianism and anyone in the west who apologises for it.You don't have to go to an art gallery to encounter Ai Weiwei – indeed, it might be the last place to look. London theatre audiences are currently admiring him in the play The Arrest of Ai Weiwei, which is based on a book about his ordeal called Hanging Man. There's the film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. And last but definitely not least there is the powerful voice of the man himself, constantly needling China's authoritarianism and anyone in the west who apologises for it.
Where is Ai Weiwei's art amid all this global agitation and adulation? His best-known work in Britain was a paradoxical event. Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern was a vast grey and black layer of porcelain replica seeds, filling much of the former power station's Turbine Hall: yet it became notorious because his plan for people to roll about among the seeds, letting them run through their hands, had to be called off for health and safety reasons. Instead, most visitors experienced the installation at a distance, as a kind of gigantic minimalist sculpture or even a flat abstract painting.Where is Ai Weiwei's art amid all this global agitation and adulation? His best-known work in Britain was a paradoxical event. Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern was a vast grey and black layer of porcelain replica seeds, filling much of the former power station's Turbine Hall: yet it became notorious because his plan for people to roll about among the seeds, letting them run through their hands, had to be called off for health and safety reasons. Instead, most visitors experienced the installation at a distance, as a kind of gigantic minimalist sculpture or even a flat abstract painting.
As such, it fits well with his other works, which are not usually meant to be handled but invite quiet contemplation. I recently gazed at his installation He Xie (River Crab) in the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington DC. It consists of thousands of porcelain crabs, beautifully realistic, eerily similar and yet each unique. Like the myriad sunflower seeds at Tate Modern, these crabs invite thoughts about nature, individuality, craft and mass production: the abundance of the natural world, the ingenuity of humans – and the darker side of our relationship with nature and each other.As such, it fits well with his other works, which are not usually meant to be handled but invite quiet contemplation. I recently gazed at his installation He Xie (River Crab) in the Hirshhorn Gallery in Washington DC. It consists of thousands of porcelain crabs, beautifully realistic, eerily similar and yet each unique. Like the myriad sunflower seeds at Tate Modern, these crabs invite thoughts about nature, individuality, craft and mass production: the abundance of the natural world, the ingenuity of humans – and the darker side of our relationship with nature and each other.
The exhibition at the Hirshhorn was in fact a rare chance to see Ai Weiwei's art in depth and in the quiet context of a conventional gallery show. His art is double-faced. On the one hand there are polemics: an array of rusty metal poles from schools destroyed in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008; a snaking trail of children's backpacks that is also part of his protest at the earthquake victims' fate.The exhibition at the Hirshhorn was in fact a rare chance to see Ai Weiwei's art in depth and in the quiet context of a conventional gallery show. His art is double-faced. On the one hand there are polemics: an array of rusty metal poles from schools destroyed in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008; a snaking trail of children's backpacks that is also part of his protest at the earthquake victims' fate.
Yet along with his bold confrontation of all that makes him bleed with anger there is a more mysterious and beautiful side to Ai Weiwei's art. This is above all visible in his fields of crabs and sunflower seeds. Nature is a minimalist art work: it produces the same things over again in genetic patterns of stunning plenitude. A billion crabs. A billion people. Ai Weiwei is getting at something really sublime.Yet along with his bold confrontation of all that makes him bleed with anger there is a more mysterious and beautiful side to Ai Weiwei's art. This is above all visible in his fields of crabs and sunflower seeds. Nature is a minimalist art work: it produces the same things over again in genetic patterns of stunning plenitude. A billion crabs. A billion people. Ai Weiwei is getting at something really sublime.
The unease and poetry of life on earth in 2013 is expressed by Ai Weiwei as perhaps by no other artist.The unease and poetry of life on earth in 2013 is expressed by Ai Weiwei as perhaps by no other artist.
I think I have answered my own question.I think I have answered my own question.
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