Description
My artist I chosen is Ai Weiwei, he is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural.
Unformatted Attachment Preview
Purchase answer to see full attachment
Explanation & Answer
Attached.
Surname 1
Name:
Professor:
Course:
Date:
Contemporary Art History-Ai Weiwei
Surname 2
Introduction
Ai Weiwei is the most recognized Chinese contemporary artist ("Ai Weiwei | Artnet").
Weiwei’s provocative mixture of Chinese tradition and history in modern practices is perceived
as cultural commentary, human rights activism, and assessment of the global inequities of power.
Weiwei was born in 1957 in Beijing, China to a renowned poet, Ai Qing, a former member of
the Chinese Communist Party ("Ai Weiwei | Artnet"). His father was accused of being "rightist"
opposition to the government, and therefore the family was banished to a labor camp in
Heilongjiang, rural northeast China. Weiwei and his family lived in the labor camp for 16 years
and returned to Beijing after the death of Mao Zedong and end of the Cultural Revolution of
1976. Upon return, Weiwei joined the Beijing Film Academy where he participated in the
formation of the Stars Group, a new avant-garde art group in China (Lucas 28. In his formative
years as an artist in New York, Weiwei was inspired by leading figures in visual art movement
such as Andy Warhol to create daring and politically charged performances that define how the
world views contemporary China. Weiwei has been active in art since 1980, majoring in
conceptual art, performance art, capitalist realism art, installation art, and excessive art. Weiwei
uses various genres or medium- performance, ready-mades, sculpture, photography, architecture,
and blogs to pass his message (Steinfeld 14).
Weiwei is a scholar, artist, photographer, filmmaker, and architect. He is a great critic of
the Chinese government, calling the regime to accountability for human rights violations,
censorship, and punishment for dissenters (Steinfeld 12). As an excessivist artist, Weiwei's
paintings are built by thick layers of paint, highlighting the role of the material as the carrier of
the message, the theme, and object of its complex narrative. For example, when Weiwei splashed
models with paint as a photoshoot for Dover Street Market Fashion Editorial in "V Magazine" he
Surname 3
used painting as a form of social turbulence. The color palette, the shape of the paint, and the
picture composition were carefully planned out to emphasize China's ways of erasing
individualism. Weiwei's installments focus on individualism. In the “Sunflower Seed”
presentation, Weiwei sought the services of professionals who crafted 100 million ceramic
sunflower seeds (Steinfeld 16. All the seeds were handmade and revealed the definitive
technique of Chinese pottery. The relationship between the massive installation and his love for
individuality represents the Chinese society that he grew up from. While the Chinese government
championed for the eradication of the ancient culture, Ai and other artists suffered during the
cultural reconstruction. During the cultural revolution, architectures were ruined, ancient scrolls
burned, and antiques smashed (Steinfeld 16. Therefore, Weiwei resorted to creating art that
symbolized an outcry of his emotions.
Figure 1.0. Ai Weiwei. “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.” 1995. Artnet.com. Web.10 August.
2019.
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), Surveillance Camera (2010), and Straight (2008)
are among the most important artworks created by Weiwei. Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn is an
early artwork by Weiwei which exhibits an act of conceptual brilliance and need to create a
controversy (Becker 113). In his parent’s home in Beijing, Weiwei broke a valuable antique
Surname 4
ceremonial urn. Not only did the 2000-year-old flower vase have significant worth but had both
cultural and symbolic value (Becker 120). The breaking of the antique vase created a sharp
contradiction among antique dealers who termed Weiwei’s artwork as an act of desperation. He
responded to the criticism by stating that Mao Zedong used to advise Chinese nationals that they
can only create a different world if they destroy the previous one (Becker 126). The dropping of
the urn embodies the cultural destruction based on the expurgation of cultural reminiscence in an
anti-elite society that prevented information access.
This art can be analyzed through formalism and iconographic methodologies of analysis
since it is an example of Weiwei's de-contextualizing ancient objects created in the iconoclastic
phase. The dropping of the antique vase is the detailed documentation of destruction that occurs
in a split second. It is an illustration of Newton's three laws of motion. When We...