33 Artists in 3 Acts, page 8
It is important not to confuse art with craft, I add. Contemporary artists’ identities have shifted. There has been a kind of industrial revolution in art. Artists have become ideas people liberated from manual labor; they can delegate without compromising their authorship.
“It’s a question that I get asked a lot as Jeff’s dealer,” interjects Gagosian. “I don’t know any artist who works as hard as Jeff Koons. He is there, every day, hands on. The notion that this is somehow a bogus way of making art is poppycock. You cannot control anything more than Jeff does—from the idea to the computer through the assistants to the fabricator. It is an incredibly focused, demanding process. The backstory that he doesn’t ‘do it’ is just malarkey.”
I point out that the romantic notion of the lone artist making art by his own hand obscures the longer history of artists’ ateliers crowded with assistants, which goes back to the Renaissance with artists such as Michelangelo and reaches a height in the Baroque period with artists like Peter Paul Rubens.
Even though the lady who voiced the query appears unconvinced, we move on to a series of questions about Koons’s Hanging Heart (Magenta/Gold) (1994–2006), which sold at Sotheby’s in November 2007 for $23.6 million, then the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. The consignor, Adam Lindemann, had bought the work for $1.65 million only a couple of years before flipping it at auction. Several members of the audience appear irate. They think it is immoral to resell a work so quickly for seven times the purchase price. However, both artist and dealer resolutely defend Lindemann’s right to sell. “If you are going to have a market, you need liquidity,” explains Koons. “You can’t take liquidity away.” The artist’s proficiency with financial jargon reminds me that, for a moment in the 1980s, he worked as a commodities broker. It is also a sign of the times. Nowadays rich artists have portfolios to manage, and those who fraternize with collectors spend time talking shop about markets of all kinds.
Eventually, I announce that we will take one last question. A woman says to Koons, “You have achieved art superstardom. I want to know: is it lonely at the top?” I redirect the question to both artist and dealer. Of course, Koons does not answer her directly. “I always just wanted to participate,” he says. “I just wanted to be part of the dialogue.” He relays a favorite anecdote about meeting Salvador Dalí when he was seventeen. “I wanted to be part of a continuation of the avant-garde,” he says. “In New York, if you want to participate, the ball is thrown to you,” he adds implausibly, before turning to face his dealer. “I started by selling posters on the sidewalk,” says Gagosian, “and I have never been lonely.”
Ai Weiwei
Study of Perspective—The White House
1995
SCENE 13
Ai Weiwei
“If you have never felt lonely, you should become an activist,” says Ai Weiwei. “Loneliness is a valuable feeling. Artists need to know how to walk alone.” Ai is ensconced in the same Ming Dynasty-style chair at the head of the long wooden table where his wife, Lu Qing, sat when I was here last year. The room is tidier than last time, suggesting that the captain is back and he runs a tight ship. Still, their memorably assertive, sooty-white cat struts the length of the table. Ai pulls his iPhone out of the breast pocket of his thick cotton shirt and takes a couple of photos of my thirteen-year-old daughter, Cora, and me. Ai uploads dozens, sometimes hundreds, of photos every day. Cora, in turn, takes a few shots of the artist and one of the cat, which she will no doubt post on Instagram.
Ai is recovering from his eighty-one-day imprisonment. This morning, he gave himself a buzz cut but left an oblong outcrop of hair on the left side. The powerhouse of a man whom I met in London eighteen months ago is a little out of sorts. According to the terms of his release, he is forbidden to talk about his detention. When he was first set free, he refrained from speaking to the press, but he has slowly become more vocal as he recovers from the ordeal that he tells me was “the highest form of torture . . . two-thirds brainwashing, one-third harassment.” The artist is in the process of writing a day-by-day account of his incarceration, which he thinks could one day become a tragicomic opera or play.
At the airport on the fateful day that he was arrested, Ai was stopped by undercover police who told him that his departure was “a danger to the state.” They covered his head with a black hood, put him in a vehicle, then drove for about two hours. When his hood was removed, Ai found himself in a room in a “very standard countryside hotel” with a rug, wallpaper, and covered windows. The artist spent two weeks there before being moved to a less homey location—a high-security military compound. In both places, he was accompanied at all times by two guards, who watched him even as he slept, showered, and shat.
During his detention, he endured some fifty interrogations in which he was handcuffed to a chair. The highly repetitive process often began with the question: what is your occupation? If he replied that he was an artist, his interrogator would pound his fist on the table and yell, “Artist? Anyone can call himself an artist!”
Initially, Ai replied, “Most of us call ourselves artists.”
But his interrogator wouldn’t have it, declaring, “I think you are at most an art worker!”
“Okay, I can call myself an art worker,” replied Ai, who knew this was one battle too farcical to fight.
Ai’s captors were keen to eliminate ambiguity from the artist’s output. The artwork that most obsessed them was Study of Perspective—Tiananmen, a photograph from a 1995 series in which the artist raises his middle finger in front of different landmarks around the world. Again and again, they demanded to know “what does it mean?” says Ai. “So I would talk about the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci, and classic examinations of perspective.” When his interrogators countered that “everybody in the world” knows that this finger is an insult, Ai would reply that the Italians, among others, use a different gesture. When they asked him about the connotations of Tiananmen, the artist would say, “Feudalism.” Indeed, the gate at the north end of the square was not built by the Communists but by a Qing Dynasty emperor. Several times they told Ai that, during the Cultural Revolution, he could have been killed for this photograph alone.
Another artwork that captured the imagination of Ai’s inquisitors was Zodiac Heads/Circle of Animals (2010), which explores the dynamics between originals and fakes. Ai’s piece is a recreation of twelve bronze animal heads originally designed by European Jesuit missionaries for the emperor’s summer palace in the 1700s. The palace was looted by French and British troops during the Second Opium War in 1860 and the zodiac heads removed. When two of the originals (the rat and the rabbit) were put up for auction at Christie’s Yves Saint Laurent sale in February 2009, it aroused the ire of Chinese nationalists. Ai thought the outcry was misplaced because the heads are not actually Chinese and, in his opinion, have “no artistic value.” The controversy inspired him to make his own version in an edition of six.
On what Ai describes as his “most absurd day” of imprisonment, the animal heads were the topic of conversation. First, the police insinuated fraud. “The zodiac you made is not originally designed by you,” they said. Then they proposed a conspiracy theory in which they implied that Ai had been recruited by the CIA when he lived in New York and that his art was merely a front through which foreign operatives could pay him for his “anti-China” activities. “They named people, offices, and foreign governmental agencies that I have never heard of,” explains Ai. “And they said, Weiwei, we have very solid information on that, so you have to think about it and give us a better answer next time.”
Though Ai has not been formally charged with anything, his design company, Fake, has been fined $2.4 million for tax evasion. The Chinese government is well known for obfuscating political matters with other types of accusation. Since his release, Ai has repeatedly asked for a public trial, knowing that he is unlikely to get one. “I am so tired,” says the artist, who has to check in with the police for further “reeducation” every Monday morning. “I sit there like a criminal suspect while the police criticize my behavior.” What’s more, Ai is not allowed to travel beyond the Beijing city limits and has been given no indication of when he will regain possession of his passport. However, unlike Liu Xiaobo, the literary critic who is in the midst of an eleven-year prison sentence, Ai has the run of his home and workplace, perhaps because the artist champions universal moral principles and, unlike Xiaobo, avoids specific ten-point manifestos that aim to overthrow the one-party state. “The struggle for liberty is the most essential value for the young people for the future,” says Ai. “I cannot not talk about those things. This is my true condition.”
The artist, my daughter, and I walk into a neighboring room that I didn’t see on my last visit—a gallery space with a high ceiling punctured by grand skylights. In it are some works in progress for his solo show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC, which opens in six months. In one corner are several baskets of porcelain river crabs in different shapes and glazes. The Chinese word for “river crab,” hexie, sounds very similar to the word for “harmony,” a government catchphrase often used as an excuse for censorship. Ai picks up a couple of crabs, passing one to me and one to Cora, who is elated to be in an environment full of art and devoid of “do not touch” signs.
In another part of the room is a sculpture created from mangled steel rebar that was exposed when concrete buildings collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake. Some suspect that it was Ai’s campaign to name the children killed in collapsed schools that led to his imprisonment. Evidently uneasy about this sculpture, the artist stares at it. “It has no title yet,” he announces. “Maybe this political thing leads me nowhere. It is so much frustration. It ruins my family’s life. Maybe I have made my point,” he says as we walk away from the rusty, minimal metal rods. “Any awkward moment is a creative moment.”
Leaning against the far wall is Study of Perspective—White House (1995), a photograph in which the artist’s middle finger in the foreground is larger than the president’s house in the background. I assume that it will be in his exhibition in Washington DC and am surprised to learn that the curators have not requested it. The Hirshhorn show was originally put together by the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo for a Japanese audience in 2009 and titled “According to what . . .” after a Jasper Johns painting. I wonder aloud whether the title makes sense three years later in an American context, especially after all that Ai has gone through. He agrees that the title lacks relevance but fears that it is too late to change it. Our exchange reveals what a handicap it is for an artist to be forbidden to travel. Had Ai been able to spend even a few hours with the curators in the American capital, they could have thoroughly revamped the concept and content of the exhibition.
Although Ai is committed to staying in Beijing, he is also keen to create a European base in the cellar of the Berlin studio that belongs to his friend Olafur Eliasson, a Danish–Icelandic artist. The building is a brewery that has survived two world wars. His aspiration is that the subterranean space, which reminds him of his excavated childhood home, will be renovated into something that functions as both a studio and an artwork. Thinking of Eugenio Dittborn’s studio in Chile, I wonder whether artists who have weathered hostile governments seek safety underground, then note that the cultural sphere that used to be called “the underground” has ceased to exist in the era of the Internet.
Lu Qing enters the room, accompanied by an ancient, overweight cocker spaniel wearing a T-shirt. Lunch is ready. Would we like to join the staff? Ai, Lu, my daughter, and I walk across the courtyard, through the computer-filled office, and into a plain staff room where over a dozen people are helping themselves to chicken, cabbage, and rice. Chinese American college kids and a few pasty Europeans mix with mainland Chinese. We load our bowls, then find seats. “It is very difficult to change, even if you want to,” says Ai as he takes his first mouthful. “I lost about thirty pounds when I was in jail. I have gained back every pound. Every day that I criticize the government, I realize, come on, you cannot even lose weight.”
The camaraderie around the lunch table is palpable. Ai sees his studio as akin to a class in which he is the instructor. “I tell people to do this and that, but I mostly like to intrigue them to be themselves, find out what to do and make an effort.” When Ai outsources the fabrication of artworks to potters, carpenters, stoneworkers, metal casters, cameramen, editors, and the like, the process of delegation can be delicate. The craftspeople know the nature of the material better than he does. “They have their own sensitivities about beauty and you cannot ignore what already exists in their mind,” he says. “So my role is to guide, to direct.”
Ai appears to have a successful business but it is equally apparent that he is not primarily motivated by it. His income no doubt pales in comparison to Beijing-based painters such as Zeng Fanzhi. About such artists, Ai is at once understanding and scathing. “China and the Soviet Union had a long time of nonmaterial life because of an ideology that failed,” he explains. “The desire for commercial success is a really strong character of today’s society. Art activity is human; it is not different from other activities.” However, in his opinion, to be a “business artist” requires two qualities: “emptiness and shamelessness.” The emptiness reaches beyond mere neutrality to the “high emptiness of Chinese philosophy,” he adds, while the “shamelessness makes it very contemporary.”
Emptiness and shamelessness are not uncommon in Western art, I say. Some of the most successful artists appear to be nihilists who don’t believe in much other than themselves and the luxury goods market. Ai nods. “For them, art has become pure play, lacking any essential truth,” he says. “It is a skill of surviving. Deng Xiaoping said it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white as long as it catches the mouse.”
Ai, by contrast, has the kind of self-belief that is deepened and intensified by his cause. Indeed, his belief in the right of people to pursue and speak the truth is so strong that it allows him to weather fifty interrogations. When I wonder aloud what authenticity means to him, he mulls it over. Ai used to trade in Chinese antiques, assessing their genuineness, and, of course, his company is called Fake. It is a complex issue but it boils down to one thing: candor. “It is a habit,” he says. “It is a road we are comfortable with.” On a related note, Ai tells me that the Chinese language has no term for “credibility.” In ancient times, a word related to this kind of reliable integrity existed, but it fell out of use and then was buried by several generations of coercive Communist thought control.
My daughter has been listening intently to Ai. “How do you feel about being famous?” she asks.
“It comes too quick, too much. It is kind of ridiculous but I have good intentions,” he says kindly. “Fame needs to have content. If you use it for a purpose, it becomes different. So I am very happy that I have this chance to always speak my mind.” Many Western artists squander their freedom of speech through convoluted forms of self-censorship. It is hard to resist Ai’s elation that he is not one of them.
Jeff Koons
The New Jeff Koons
1980
SCENE 14
Ai Weiwei and Jeff Koons
Two months later, I am invited to an odd event in the Swiss town of Basel, the day before its art fair opens. Guests will watch the premiere of Ai Weiwei—Never Sorry, a documentary film about the artist directed by Alison Klayman, then move on to a champagne reception for Jeff Koons’s exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler. While my comparison of the two artists is deliberate, this Basel pairing is no doubt accidental. The Koons show was scheduled long before the Ai premiere and the lack of direct dialogue between the film and the exhibition is marked. For different reasons, neither artist manages to attend the event.
Never Sorry turns out to be a wonderful film. The two scenes that I find most absorbing explore aspects of Ai’s life which I haven’t seen with my own eyes. In one, Ai eats bite-size chunks of melon as quickly as his two-year-old son, Ai Lao, can deliver them to him. The little game reveals the artist as a playful dad. When the Sichuan earthquake hit, a woman with whom Ai had had an affair was pregnant with his son. The knowledge that Ai was to be a father gave him a strong sense of duty. China’s one child policy was instituted in 1979 to curb population growth. In a land of solo children, the loss of one child is the loss of a family.
In the other memorable scene, bulldozers demolish Ai’s studio complex in Shanghai. The local government had invited Ai to design the project as part of an urban regeneration scheme but then did an about-face, saying that the building was illegal. I had heard about this incident but had never seen the jaw-dropping spectacle of its destruction.
The film also contains some explicit statements from Ai. When asked if he is a brand, he affirms, “I’m a brand for liberal thinking and individualism.” Ai describes himself as an “eternal optimist” and declares, “If it is not publicized, it’s like it never happened.” In the last line of the film, he says, “It is the responsibility of any artist to protect freedom of speech.”
The Jeff Koons exhibition, which is titled “Jeff Koons,” includes three distinct bodies of work: “The New” (1980–87), “Banality” (1988), and “Celebration” (1994–present). The room displaying the earliest series is breathtaking. “The New” comprises dozens of Hoovers (unused vacuum cleaners and carpet shampooers in mint condition), which have been placed in plexiglass cases illuminated from below by rows of blindingly bright fluorescent tubes. I had seen individual pieces from this series at auction previews but never a curated selection of the work. The large room feels like a science fiction department-store showroom, which is glorifying newness and advocating the notion that cleanliness is next to godliness. While Ai has created antique readymades, Koons here focuses on the factory-fresh.
