Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is one of the most well-known Chinese artists in the Western world. His work is simple but has a deep meaning behind it. This is the first time I'd heard of him, but I was fascinated to see the work he has done. His work with the traditional furniture and urns and with the porcelain sunflower seeds were my favorites.

In my opinion, he appears to be fundamentally against making anything sacred, be it history, art or any number of other things. One of his best known pieces were 3 photographs of him dropping a Han Dynasty urn (shown below).

Most people endow such valuable, historical artifacts as 'sacred' and 'untouchable' but Ai Weiwei felt no need to preserve it just because it is ancient. In that same way, his work with cutting up and reattaching ancient furniture shows a lack of reverence for the past. 

One of the most interesting discussions we had in class was about the porcelain sunflower seed exhibit (shown below). Why did Ai Weiwei allow people to walk on and destroy the thousands of handmade little sunflower seeds?

I think its because he feels the same way about art as he does about history. Art is beautiful and important, but it is not sacred. It should not be worshiped and preserved to the point where it loses the essence of what it should be. Those seeds are beautiful, but part of that beauty would be lost if they were so sacred that they could never be touched. The individuality and subtle detail of each seed would be impossible to fully appreciate without being able to touch them. I believe Ai Weiwei was not bothered by the idea that in allowing people to walk on the seeds was destroying them because he knows that art is not permanent and we shouldn't pretend like it is; we should appreciate it without making it sacred.