An Interesting Chinese Artist

I saw a documentary on PBS's Frontline tonight about the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. I like some of his art, other bits of this I find silly and pretentious. But I love his politics. He strikes me as a down-to-earth guy.

Here's the "teaser" for the PBS Frontline documentary:



If you hunger for more, then watch this BBC documentary:



Is he a "great" artist? I don't think so but I'm willing to say that his art is "interesting". From Wikipedia about his "Sunflower Seeds" piece:

In October 2010, Sunflower Seeds was installed at the Tate Modern Turbine Hall, the work consists of one hundred million porcelain "seeds," each individually hand-painted in the town of Jingdezhen by 1,600 Chinese artisans, and scattered over a large area of the exhibition hall. The artist was keen for visitors to walk across and roll in the work to experience and contemplate the essence of his comment on mass consumption, Chinese industry, famine and collective work. However, on 16 October, Tate Modern stopped people from walking on the exhibit due to health liability concerns over the porcelain dust.

As art it is bizarre. To "simulate" a sunflower seed by having a small army of craftsmen to "produce" an imitation of the real thing when you could buy the real thing cheaply is bizarre. All that effort for what? From watching the video I would guess that one reason was the sunflowers were a symbol that the Communists liked, the idea that the sunflower always turned to watch the sun, i.e. the party leadership, an unquestioning following of the party line. Stepping on the seeds is a symbol of breaking with that past subjection. But it is a big effort to get a small point across. I wish he wrote a poem like this father instead of putting 1,600 people to work to create this "installation".

Toward the end of the BBC documentary the claim is made that sunflower seeds represent the food that saved starving peasants during the Cultural Revolution. The critic claims this art "is a monument to the multitude, poverty, and transformation". But to make art that requires such deep "interpretation" to be meaningful means the art is "interesting" but within a century it will be completely forgotten because required insight or interpretation doesn't talk to people across the ages. It appeals right now to sophisticates, historians, critics, but not ordinary people. Real art can't be built on such narrow elitism. All this sophistication turns to dust within a century because the public won't "know" what is required to "appreciate" the art. Great art is built on great themes that are deeply rooted in a civilization and can be interpreted and appreciated over thousands of years, not a mere century.

On the other hand, I think his architecture, the "Bird Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics, is a truly wonderful building. And the BBC documentary show brick buildings with wonderful texture. So he does do first class artful architecture.

Where he goes astray, in my mind, is to indulge in the silly elitist "conceptual" art of the 20th century.

Ai Weiwei is a great self promoter. That is his genius. He is very like Andy Warhol. Or today's Damian Hirst. These are "great artists" who will be forgotten within a century. Being popular doesn't guarantee you a place in history.

When I hear him in the BBC documentary answer the question of "do you believe that art can communicate and engage with ordinary people as well as using ordinary people's experience... are you a believer in connecting with the lots of people" by saying:

Yes, I believe that only when art is connecting with ordinary feeling or ordinary common sense does it become most powerful.

This is great and this is the thread in his work that I can engage with and enjoy. The elitist stuff I'm not interested in, but when he does art that is meant to reverberate with ordinary people do I think he has the makings of a great artist. He is interesting because he is bridging East and West in his art. He may find a place in history, but much of his "art" will be forgotten. It will be the stuff that speaks across the millennia that will make him a great artist and that means speaking at the level of "ordinary" people, their myths, their aesthetic, their experience.

His politics are astoundingly courageous and hopefully will create more freedom for the Chinese. I like the comment in the video that he manages to survive in China because the authorities are thugs and Ai Weiwei is a bit of a thug, so he understands the authorities' maneuvers and, so far, has managed to counter their moves. But it is pretty clear that his days are numbered. Sad.

I do think he is a heroic cultural figure. His art probably will not last. But he certainly is a great man for today and his art is enormously interesting because it fits in and accommodates his politics.

Update 2011apr03: There is a report in the UK's Guardian newspaper that Ai Weiwei has been "detained" by the Chinese police. The Communists just can't take an independent thinker. They have to crush anything and anybody that they see as "undermining" their iron grip on China. Sad.

China's best-known artist, Ai Weiwei, has been detained in Beijing and police have searched his studio, confiscated computers and questioned assistants.

The 53-year-old remains uncontactable more than 12 hours after officials held him at the capital's airport.

Ai, who designed the Olympic Bird's Nest stadium, has been an outspoken critic of the government.

Although he has repeatedly experienced harassment, he appeared to be relatively protected by the status of his late father, a renowned poet, and his international profile. Last year, he created the Sunflower Seeds installation for Tate Modern.

His detention comes amid what human rights campaigners have described as the harshest crackdown on activists and dissidents in over a decade.

At least 23 people have been criminally detained, mostly in relation to incitement to subversion or creating a disturbance.

Three more have been formally arrested and more than a dozen are missing, including high profile human rights lawyers.

Officials detained Ai at immigration control as he attempted to catch a flight to Hong Kong for business. An officer told an assistant travelling with him that the artist had "other business" and could not board the plane.

Uniformed and plainclothes police surrounded and searched his studio in Caochangdi, in the north of the capital. Power to the neighbourhood was cut off.

Men who appeared to be plainclothes officers grabbed the phone of a Guardian journalist who photographed the scene and deleted the image. A uniformed man said: "You are not allowed to be on this street. You must leave."

A staff member told the BBC Chinese news service that officers had taken away eight of Ai's assistants and volunteers.

A friend of the artist tweeted that most had been released but that his wife Lu Qing and two employees remained out of contact.

Police are thought to have searched two other properties relating to Ai and visited the mother of his two-year-old son.

Twitter users reported that police also detained Ai's friend Wen Tao. Wen's mobile was not available.

Beijing police said they did not know anything about either man. Asked about Ai, an airport police spokesman said: "I do not have the obligation to tell you the information. You may have got your information wrong.

The Chinese people have made a pact with the devil. They "bought" economic growth at the cost of their social and political soul. They saw how vicious the regime is after the crushing of the Tiananmen protests.

There is much more in the Guardian article. Go read the whole article.

Ai Weiwei has long been a thorn in the Chinese government's side, but human rights campaigners see his detention as part of the wider crackdown that has seen activists, dissidents and lawyers detained or go missing.

"Ai Weiwei has been a bit of an outlier and the harassment against him has been more and more intense in the past few months," said Nicholas Bequelin, Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. "I think the signal it sends is that if he can be arbitrarily harassed in this way, no one is safe."

The drive by security officials follows anonymous calls for "jasmine revolution" protests, echoing the uprisings in the Middle East. Although the posting was on an overseas website, and there was little sign of domestic support for the appeal, officials began detaining and harassing people within hours of its appearance.