photo courtesy of anna.xie
Questions
“According to What?” The exhibit’s name was a question—which suited me that day. Questions filled my mind as my granddaughter and I ran through the drizzle and up the steps to the museum. What was art anyway in the year 2013? Who gets to define it? And would I like the work of this popular but controversial Chinese artist?
After my experience the previous day, I was feeling prickly on the subject of art. We’d taken a painting class—just for fun—and I’d had a hard time bending myself to the instructor’s concept of art. “In the age of photography,” she’d opined, “realism and representational art are dead. It’s all about color now.”
Okay. I like color just fine. But what’s wrong with colorful flowers and trees or mountains and people? Still, I did my best to paint the garden we’d walked through earlier using the horizontal bands of color and vertical stripes employed by Wolf Kahn who was our inspiration for the day’s lesson. It wasn’t a style that suited me, though, and my painting showed it.
Image courtesy of Bopuc
And now, here I was, riding the escalator up to see the work of an artist who was more modern than “modern art.” Ai Weiwei. His artistry was so radical, in fact, that it landed him in jail.
“Straight”
The first room devoted to Ai Weiwei focused on the design of the Beijing National Stadium, known as the Bird’s Nest, for which he was the artistic consultant. Interesting. Impressive. But …
What else did he do?
We stepped into the next gallery where we found his fragrant “tea house” (made entirely of tea) and the beautifully constructed cabinets of “phases of the moon” and the controversial photos of the artist dropping and breaking a Han Dynasty urn. They’re all worth discussing. But I’ll zero in instead on “Straight,” the huge work that commemorates the Great Sichuan Earthquake of 2008.
photo courtesy of Edna Winti
And I do mean huge, 38 tons of huge. Rebar stretching 58 feet in one direction and 20 feet in the other. Nothing smaller would have been appropriate for art about an earthquake that killed somewhere between 69,000 and 90,000 people, including more than 5000 school children.
Ai Weiwei was the artist in charge, but “Straight” was worked on by hundreds of volunteers. They collected information about the dead. They pointed out the shoddy construction and decried the corruption of government officials. They gathered the mangled rebar from a recycling center and pounded it straight with steel mallets.
“Straight” had its own large room at the museum. Rebars were lined up on the floor, piled on top of each other to form a raised relief map of an undulating earth, a fault slicing through the center of it. On the wall, the names of more than 5000 dead school children are printed on white paper. Ai’s citizen investigators and Twitter followers helped him collect the names. When he posted them on his blog, the government shut it down.
“Modern Art” or Art for the 21st Century
I’ve been interested in art since childhood. I’m a frequent visitor to art galleries and fairs. I’ve painted and sketched and dyed fabric. So why do I feel so unsophisticated when I walk into a gallery of “modern art”? Why do I look at a piece of “modern art” and think, There’s nothing there?
This, however, was not the case with Ai Weiwei’s exhibit. Each piece was soaked with meaning. And he wasn’t shy about adding to that meaning with his comments. In the case of “Straight,” he included a video that showed the aftermath of the earthquake and the work of the volunteers. “We have to respect life and refuse to forget,” he said, looking into the camera.
Blogs and Twitter
Weiwei-ism #56 says, “Everything is art. Everything is politics.” The sentiment was displayed on monitors in the Davis Lab at the museum where 1000s of his photos faded in and out: architectural details, cats on chairs, food on plates, strange haircuts and outrageous wigs. These were photos Ai Weiwei distributed on his Twitter page before the Chinese government shut it down. They are funny and ordinary. Bits of art in a world full of wonderful things recognized by the eye of an artist.
Art, everywhere. Art by and for the people. Art escaped from the picture frame. Art on Facebook and Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. Maybe that’s what “modern art” is in the 21st century.
Next week’s blog post: Fame and Invisibility
Art? Who art thou? Art is what you dare. I dot here and a cross. 8 US million. Take it or art it. The choice is your art.
Wow! You give me food for thought.
I, too, am often at a loss when I look at “modern” art. I think everyone is trying to convey something in their art, but not everyone who looks at it “gets” the artist’s message. I think it is important for an artist to work in the mode that feels “right” to him/her and not try to fit themselves into the “box” that contains the current popular style. I was able to see the Picasso Exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum last year, and I liked that Picasso tried out a lot of styles. I didn’t care for his cubist works much, but on the whole, I loved his work.
It’s true, Barb. We all need to work in the mode that feels right for us but also like Picasso try out more than one style.
NIcki, your writing is everything it should be–insightful, historical, you paint a picture with words for everyone to read. OK, now I sound like a ‘rabid’ fan! Do you know the work of Japanese artist, Toko Shinoda? I love the simplicity of her work, she is by far my favorite artist. Thanks for blogging! –V
Veda, I didn’t know the work of Toko Shinoda, so I looked it up online. You have a very sophisticated taste.