On Artist Ai WeiWei - Research Paper Example

? ART HISTORY RESEARCH PAPER ON ARTIST AI WEIWEI     “Ai WeiWei, the Exhauster of Freedom, not the Freedom Fighter ”, “ Ai WeiWei, slave of the west” and “Ai WeiWei, a sufferer of Exhibitionism” are just a few barbaric titles of the many articles published on a website that covers extensive criticism on the Chinese artist Ai WeiWei. The website‘s name “Xi Nu Jie Mi” translates into English as The revelation of the secrets of the Slaves of the West. It does not take too long for one to realize the purposes of the authors to such site, nor is it the only site that criticizes the artist greatly. The website, took on the form of Wikipedia introduces individual under different categories. Ai WeiWei’s page also has sections each discloses different information about him; however, all descriptions are negative, violent and written with diminutive words. Moreover, at the bottom of the page, instead of a list of references is a long list of links to more unfavorable articles written about him. In contradiction to the assaulting websites, Ai’s Twitter has numerous Chinese followers voicing out their supports to the controversial artist. Although his domestic supporters appear to be in big number as the amount of donation to his tax bill rises high within a short period of time; his Chinese followers are as a matter of fact scarce when compared to the entire Chinese population. Unquestionably, it is inevitable for every public figure to attract people who oppose him or her; however, Ai’s publicity is drastically a polarized one. Ai WeiWei, the Chinese celebrity artist is possibly the most well known living Chinese artist on an international scale, while his fame is positive to most westerners and some Chinese audiences, his role as a dissident displeases his government and a great populace that still live up to the ideology of the Communist Party of China; the traces that lead to the contradiction of the differences in opinion between his Chinese onlookers can be found through the examination of the making, product and aftermath of the artwork Fairytale. Ever since I can remember, I saw my father living without freedom. Realizing that after I had grown up, I am still living a life without freedom is terrifying. The artist Ai WeiWei’s life story is one that has been repeated and well exposed to his international audiences. In Ai’s case, his background is destined to be the center of attention to his Chinese viewers. Moreover, his background is the precept to acknowledging the propaganda behind his artworks. It is also impossible to omit the introduction of his father, as his biography is one that bears the process of what became today’s China. Ai Qing, a representational figure of the Chinese Red Poet was born to a wealthy landlord in the Zhe-Jiang province during Nationalist China. Due to his resourceful background and flexible politic, he was able to study art and later went to France. As the Communist party came into power, Ai was at first praised but soon misread as a pro-rightist figure and forced to be send to labor camp in Xin-Jiang, a remote province that borders Russia, Mongolia and many other countries in the dry and desolate region. Ai’s unfortunate encounter with Communist China was not a unique one. As soon as Mao came to power, the Chinese people were under strong censorship […] Ai WeiWei was raised under harsh conditions until he was nineteen when the family was finally granted the permission to move back to Beijing. Ai WeiWei’s acrid upbringing did not extinguish his passion for art. After his return to Beijing he was enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy and later traveled to the U.S. where he once attended The Parsons School of Design. Living in New York with an energetic life style, the artist was nourished with the freedom of the country and actively participated and witnessed major art movements and protest events. “Thank the Motherland, Thank the Party ” is the phrase a Chinese person must say upon his or her receiving of an honor. If an individual omits the declaration of such statement, one can be widely criticized by its people and the media. * The reason to this phenomenon was because China, during the reign of Mao was in extreme poverty. All the professional persons in his country such as athletes, scientists and artists must go through the provision of the state to inquire further studies in their field. Therefore, it became the standard phrase when a person to achieve an honor to address one’s appreciation to the Motherland and the Communist Party. Nevertheless, the poverty was certainly not due to Mao’s conversion of the state into a communist one, as the precedent historical events must be taken into account. Ever since the First Opium War in 1840s, the country was involved in countless wars until Mao’s victory over Chiang Kai-shek. The country and its people were exhausted by the ceaseless wars and did not come to prosperity until recent years. Since Ai Weiwe arrest in April of 2011, the westerners who are seen as abnormally supporting Ai Weiwei by the Chinese got the opportunity of using the situation to crtitisize China’s human rights stand. According to the Chinese, Ai Weiwei is favorably treated by the West which according to the China’s laws intrudes into its legal system. The abnormal bias of the Western towards how they treat Ai Weiwei is due to their provocative attitude towards the China government. The Western media and governments consider the arrest of Ai Weiwei as illegal and infringing on the human rights of Ai. They are politicizing the case with the aim of influencing Chinese citizens who are not satisfied with the communism rule of China. According to the writer of the article, ‘West’s support for Ai Weiwei is abnormal,’ on the Global times websites, the West are not interested in and not patient in discussing the law but only wants to play politics with the China government. It is worth noting that the social legal system in China is daily improving in the recent past and no person let alone a famous celebrity like Weiwei can be put under arrest without any charge like it was during the days of Mao. The writer argues that, the law should be considered while discussing the plight of Ai Weiwei, even if there are some speculated loopholes as some people might suggest. The West and some Chinese are arguing in vanity to persuade the world at large that the Chinese government is oppressing people who support democracy in China. Is this the real situation in China? Many artists and known intellectuals in recent years have sharply criticized the government and Ai is not an exception. Most of them have freely criticized almost everything and yet gained both wealth and fame. China seems to have become politically tolerant in the recent days. For instance, Ai Weiwei has won more fans and media coverage from the West and in China in the recent past more than any of his peers. This is attributed mostly due to his confrontational and biting comments towards his government. The writer, Global Times, argues that the idea that political persecution in China is rampant is fallacious and that the country is instead in an era of flourishing democracy. This though does not mean that, famous intellects and artists can do whatever they want in the pretense of democracy. The West too is not entitled to dictate to China what to do. Is it abnormal to hype up the case against, Ai? The Global Times argues that, this is just a ploy by the West to paralyze China’s legal system with the aim of distablizingits political base. Ai Weiwei, according to this article will definitely be supported by the West who would oppose any verdicts on him with the aim of downing the political values of the Chinese. When the west want to conduct political conflicts with the Chinese they like to get involved and voice their concerns especially in cases involving dissidents. The greatest test for the Chinese as regards this case is to maintain a cool, clear, and solid mindset as far as the Western temptations are concerned. Most film-makers will relish the idea of bringing their debut to the public domain more so in the months preceding the premiere of their films. This though was not the case with Ai Weiwei as Alison Klayman a film director found out. What transpired during April third 2011 was not Alison expected. “Ai Weiwei: Never sorry,” Klaymans forthcoming film as it was known, the Chinese artist and controversial political actist she had been filming for quite sometimes was arrested. Ai Weiwei was detained in an unknown destination for almost two months and his wife had only been allowed to visit him for the very first time. Klayman was distressed and said that the situation left her hanging and didn’t know how things would progress from there on. Here is a man, a celebrated artist, an activist, cherished by the West but not appreciated in her own country. How then do artist’s expected to express themselves in China without infringing or locking horns with the government? Westerners were due to release a film appreciating Ai Weiwei’s contribution to the now seen to be flourishing democracy in Chinese art industry when he is arrested and detained in a unknown location. It seems the West’s support for Ai Weiwei is not abnormal afterall. The West seems concerned and asked what they could do help Ai. Klayman Allison was on alert providing assistance to the journalist on the ground in Beijing and providing up-to-date verification and information on Twitter. Most westerners consider Ai Weiwei as a person who has unwittingly and voluntarily took the role of a dissident. The consider Ai to have cleverly embraced that position. He at times knows that the position he has taken is reductive and he doesn’t want to express he fully urge of what he wants to accomplish. Sometimes, this position suits his purposes. Narratives written about Ai Weiwei are mostly reliable and very irresistible for any writer who reads about him. His dramatic life as a child in Xinjiang, the exile, he’s growing up in the West and his reemergence as a revolutionary political activist, and famous artist in China, makes narratives about him very powerful and insightful. The quantity of interviews that Ai Weiwei ha conducted over the years are intriguing and in some ways have become an act of itself. He conducts these interviews to satisfy the needs of those people asking for them and at the same time, he likes them. There is something very interesting in the whole process, that is why he does the interviews over and over again. According to Evan Osnos, the writer of the article, “Who is afraid of Ai Weiwei?” and once his interview, Ai Weiwei once said in an interview that he dislikes repetition the most. Osnos finds that answer to be really funny and weird since in the many interviews that Ai Weiwei has conducted over the years, he repeats all his stories over and over again. Osnos thinks that, Ai Weiwei sees his interviews as him being in service to a much larger idea which in itself is pretty original. Although Ai Weiwei repeats his stories over and over again, they make up his broader project. Osnos happens to have written on many other different profiles attempts to compare their idiosyncratic behaviors with that of Ai Weiwei whom he happened to have interviewed. According to Osnos, Ai Weiwei is a very amiable interviewee who makes himself available to the interviewer not in a self-promotional or cynical way. Ai Weiwei is very accommodative and appreciated the whatever Osnos wanted to do while compiling his life story by simply following him around without having to talk to him. Ai Weiwei is most of the time compared to other intellectuals in China because his is open and talking about his life is so comfortable, even the most painful experiences of his life (Osnos, 2011). At the same time, Ai Weiwei is also very comfortable in shutting off the parts of his life that he would not want to discuss, especially his mother. Ai Weiwei is frequently and closely being watched by the Government. For instance, in April 2010 on his trip to Chengdu, plain clothes police followed him around as witnessed by Osnos. This was not the first time though when it happened. Ai Weiwei though relished the following by the police in some way. For instance, in one incidence when a caravan was tailing him, Ai Weiwei pulled over his car and walked back towards the car that was following him, shouted in rudeness and his shook his fist at it as the car sped off. He Twitted about it immediately. Apart from being followed around, Ai Weiwei is always being videotaped everywere. Sometimes he gets very confrontational with the people videotaping him. Ai Weiwei would at times go out of his way to talk with the people videotaping him. He would although not talk to them in a confrontational manner but in an angry way. He although does not follow simple rules of such a relationship where you pretend that you are not aware that people are trailing you and the same people pretend that they are not trailing or videotaping you. Ai Weiwei was happy with people and was able to destabilize the whole encounter and encouraged and welcomed them to join him and his crew for dinner. Although he understands that such situations could be very dangerous for him, he does it anyways. The question though is, why does he do that? He is the only one who knows why he does this. He enjoys such moments and he would mostly respond by Twitting and taking photographs with them. His controversial nature is evident by his behavior of alerting the police whenever he is being followed. This confuses the Chinese security agencies since he puts the agencies into opposition to each other. Ai Weiwei has a very open mind about the situation surrounding him. This is evident when he once went in for questioning in in a police station. There were two policemen in with him for questioning and Ai Weiwei asserted that the policemen who were question followed the law to the latter. According to Osnos, Ai Weiwei was surprised at how the station officers were so welcoming and professional. Ai Weiwei even Twitted about it saying that, “they had been warmly and kindly received,” which genuinely surprised him. One thing about Ai Weiwei though is his tendency of categorizing people as either enemy or friends. It is surprising to note that even though Ai Weiwei sharply criticized the Chinese government, he still believed that the entire legal system could not necessarily flawed. This is evidenced when the police rejected his complains and he was forced to file a lawsuit against the government at the courts. He argued that, it is worth working through the system in all its detail before you can critic it. Ai Weiwei believed that, one needed to go through the system entirely in order to identify it flaws. He held this idea that, one needed to confront the system, document the confrontation process so as to eventually be able to critique it. In the history of dissidents in utilitarian regimes, there is tradition of some kind where the dissidents had to live their entire lives as normal people. “ The most persuasive form of dissidents is live their lives as normal as possible as they were living in an open society,” this is according to a Polish dissident, Adam Michnk. This is the belief that this famous Chinese artist subscribes to explicitly. Ai Weiwei is not writing idealistic statements for other Chinese intellectuals. He is dealing with people on a somewhat popular basis. Onsos claims that, Ai weiwei likes to be naked most of the time and does things that he knows will get him much attention. According to Ai Weiwei, protection comes from being an internationally known artist and a celebrity. Most Chinese younsters, IT professionals, lawyers, and the old people claim that they have a lot to learn from Ai Weiwei. According to one Chinese lawyer who attended a dinner organized by Ai Weiwei for hi facebook fans, Ai Weiwei lives a life of service where he tries to obtain information from people who would not otherwise give it up. Although they are worried being seen with him, they considers themselves to want to live in a “normal society.” Ai Wei has gotten himself in an unknown territory. In China, there has never been a person with a combination of qualities like those that Ai Weiwei had. He is a completely selfless, intellectually aware activist with the ability to impact people from a wide spectrum. He has ventured in a very risky act of organizing people into a society sharing similar values in China, something which many Chinese are not willing to do. These reasons and his ability to attract huge attention both locally and internationally are what makes the Chinese government more concerned with him. References Artur Dirks. The Social History of Art. Taunton, MA., 2005. 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