I've been thinking about this topic for quite a while, I still haven't got a clear idea about what to say. Since I've started reading books about him, I've gradually found out he is the Man. Even though he is controvertible and his works are controvertible. Personally, he opens my mind about contemporary art and appropriation. Also, it might be weird to say, but it's true, I've started knowing Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp from his books.
I was surprised when Rebecca said 'Ai Weiwei is great'. Then I found Ai's books probably are one kind of the most popular books in the library, I need to reserve and normally don't have a chance to renew them. One day Luisa saw Ai's book laying on my table, she said: 'oh, Ai weiwei.' I asked her: 'You know him?' She said: 'everyone knows him', with an obvious tone. I surprised again. Everyone knows him except me, a Chinese! What a shame. Then I blamed on the Chinese government and the bloody propaganda.
Of course, I shouldn't blame on anyone, It's my fault -- Listening without analyzing and critical thinking. It narrowed my opinion. Actually not only me, many people are narrowly focused. I used to search Ai Weiwei on youtube, I found a large amount is about how he criticizes on political issues, there are not many videos to depict his art works. I've been thinking about this occurrence, I think it may because the Communist Party is mysterious to the West, the Western media wants to know more about it (on the contrary, the Chinese government would say the Western deliberately attempt to discredit the Communist Party). On the other hand, not all the Chinese are satisfied with the existing political system, they are eager to speak out their dissatisfaction, but they don't dare. They need someone who doesn't afraid and has the power to draw attention. Ai Weiwei just happen to be that one.
Obviously, Ai Weiwei has the talent, and he doesn't afraid to express his mind. For me, I think he does these, because he cares. He cares his country and the people who lives in that country. Like his father wrote in a poem: why my eyes were always filled with tears, because I was deeply in love to this land. Ai Weiwei can live a better live, if he can be silent, at least he wouldn't have to be sent to prison. However, like what he said, he treats himself as a readymade. He has the statement: life is art and art is life. his art works are closely relate to his background, personality and the great traditional Chinese culture. In fact, his art works ARE his background, personality and the great traditional Chinese culture. All the sufferings he suffered achieved him.
Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn. When Rebecca said Ai Weiwei is great, she was looking at Ai's Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn. It is a series of photographs made by Ai Weiwei in 1995. It has been done with an ordinary 35mm camera before a brick wall. In dropping the urn, Ai seems at first to be destroying the old (a 2000-year-old vase) in order to create the new. I was shocked and wondered where he bought the urn and how come it becomes legal. Ai Weiwei was also questioned if the Urn he dropped was a real antique Chinese vase, Ai conformed and they’ve gotten much more expensive in recent years, but that for whatever reason they were not museum-quality pieces. Probably that's the difference between an artist and an ordinary person. If I had the urn, I would put it on top of the shelf and dust it every day.
It appears at first a well-worn case of appropriation-cum-alchemy, the sublimation of an ancient object’s financial value and cultural worth into a different, yet parallel, carrier of updated value and worth. And then on another level it works as a satire of the ruling regime’s approach to its patrimony, and of contemporary China’s curious relation to its past—in a situation where destruction of historical artifacts happens almost daily, Ai’s drive to break this one urn in front of a camera becomes a way of drawing attention to the cause.
Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn is made reference to the Cultural Revolution. At time when there was a senseless destruction of the old by the Red Guards. When Ai was growing up, General Mao used to tell them that they could only build a new world if they destroy the old one. That’s the basic concept: destroying the old to contribute to the new. The Sinologist Pierre Rychmans gave an extended explanation to Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn. He said “Cultivation of the moral and spiritual values of the Ancients appears to have most often combined with a curious neglect or indifference (even at times downright iconoclasm) toward the material heritage of the past”, the most important and prestigious objects tended to fall prey to looting and burning of the imperial palace accompanying the fall of practically every dynasty. Seen in this broader perspective, the Cultural Revolution may appear as the latest expression of a very ancient phenomenon of massive iconoclasm recurrent through Chinese history.
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