The lenses of capitalism and communism influence how Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei’s art are seen as political critiques. The celebrity persona of Andy Warhol differs greatly from that of Ai Weiwei, however “Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei share an Iconoclastic spirit” (Delaney, M, 2016 p.27). More so their artistic practices both stem from Marcel Duchamp’s, ‘ready-mades’. This essay will consider the extents to which both artists’ can be considered activists. If there were a binary in place to understand the political effects and various ways activism is preformed, Weiwei and Warhol would undoubtedly be on opposite sides of the spectrum. Ai Weiwei would take on the overtly active and outspoken side, while Warhol’s passivity and projected indifference …show more content…
Known for being the father of Pop Art, and a giant in pop culture, Warhol dominated the art scene from the late fifties up until his untimely death in 1987. However Warhol’s influence spread further then the art world, he also was a major player in the LGBT, avant-garde and experimental cinema movements. Born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Slovakian immigrant parents, Warhol came from humble beginnings. Becoming widely known for debuting the concept of ‘pop art’ in 1962. Warhol’s reach grew further when he started experimenting with film, becoming a major player in the LGBT, avant-garde and experimental cinema movements. Warhol’s artist studio, known famously as ‘The Factory’ became a hub for experimentation, and a go-to point for celebrities, musicians and trans folk. During this time, Warhol came out as an openly gay man, challenging the status quo of the day, a time when being homosexual was illegal. While also producing highly experiential films such as ‘Blow Job’ (1964) and ‘Sleep’ (1964) which were highly political and provocative, at the time. As art critic Dave Hickey asserts, “Art has political consequences, which is to say, it reorganized society and creates constituencies of people around it” (Hickey, 2007), Andy Warhol’s art and lived experience created a political constituency which can be best recognised in the function of the “Silver Factory” on …show more content…
Art Review Magazine recently named Ai Weiwei “the most powerful artist in the world”, primarily because (Like Warhol) his reach extends further then the art world. Born in 1957 in Beijing, China, Weiwei is the son of the famous Chinese poet Ai Qing. Weiwei was introduced to the price of dissidents at an early age when his farther was denounced during the Anti-Rightist movement and sent (with the rest of his family) to a labour camp for the remaining duration of the Cultural Revolution.
After Mao Zedong’s death and the collapse of the Cultural Revolution Weiwei enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy. Film did not hold him long and in 1978 Weiwei became a founding member of an avant-garde group of artist called ‘the stars’, and an obsession with democracy and a deep critique of the Chinese government began to manifest. In 1981 Weiwei moved to the United States to practice and study art. One of Weiwei’s most iconic early pieces, Dropping Han Dynasty Urn (1995) depicts Weiwei holding, dropping, and the subsequent smashing of a Han Dynasty Urn. The performative gesture of this work is entrenched in Weiwei’s personal history, the significance of smashing a valued Chinese artefact symbolises the ‘desecration of cultural heritage (Delaney, 2016 p.30)’ that occurred during the Cultural Revolution and Weiwei’s
The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chinese culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member of the Chinese society nor the poor, we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, an American woman whom helps him write the book. When Liang Heng and Judy Shapiro fell in love in China during 1979, they weren’t just a rarity; they were both pioneers at a time when the idea of marriages between foreigners and Chinese were still unacceptable in society.
Hung Liu is successful in creating a juxtaposing image that tells a story about the many aspects of her Chinese origins. According to the painting, not all life in China is surrounded by beauty and elegance, like many believe it to be based on the traditional historical customs. Liu makes her point using a brilliant yet subtle progression, moving from the ideal to reality. Making use of the various principles and elements of art in her work creates a careful visual composition that benefit and support the painting’s achievements as a whole. This oil painting, being approximately 13 years old now, will hold a special place in Chinese history for the rest of its existence. The ideas Hung Liu portrays in Interregnum may help reform a social movement in the country by making her viewers socially aware of the cruel conditions the Chinese are facing under Communist rule, and this is all made possible through the assimilation of the principles and
Andy Warhol was a graphic artist, painter, and film maker, amoung other things, also associated with Pop Art. He moved to New York, around 1950, where he did his first advertisements as a comercial artist and, later, began showing in expositions. One technique employed by Warhol involved repeditive silk screen prints on canvas. He used this method to produce many series of prints with various, easily reconizable images. Between 1962 and 1964 in his self titled studio “The Factory”(Phaidon 484), Warhol produced over two thousand pictures. One of these, Lavender Disaster, was made in 1963 and belonged to a series of pictures all including the same image of an electric chair.
Although still adopting a traditional literary form, the poetry writing can be regarded as an example of the heterogeneity and border-crossing of cultural-scape in globalization period. Those poems were produced under the brunt of the international mobility that is propelled by the capitalist globalization, but precisely and paradoxically, in a suspending situation caused by national regulation, a “state of exception” of this mobility. The juxtaposition of the frustration on foreign life and the flare of nationalist emotion (with the rhetoric emulating ancient barbarian-expelling heroes), may imply a paradoxical consequence in globalization: the international mobility undergirding the national awareness instead of undermining it. Following this thread, the publication of this kind of poetry in 1930s, the oblivion of it after war, and the subsequent re-discovery, recognition, and research of it can be all taken as symptomatic traces of the localization, articulation, and transformation of national consciousness (both as “Chinese” and “American”) in the continuous globalization. Needless to say, those poems are deeply flawed in terms of aesthetics due to the rather poor literacy of their authors. It would be invoking to put these poems beside those “high art” works also produced in globalization context, such as the works on the Eiffel Tower and the London fog by Huang Zunxian (黄遵宪), a late Qin intellectual caught in between the East and the West, the
Ah Xian born in Beijing in 1960 left china following the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, also known as tank man incident, and moved to Sydney Australia. Having moved from his native country, Ah Xian wanted his work to represent that “cultural identity is permanent and no matter what other places and influences one
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
“I don’t want to be part of this kind of denying reality. We live in this time. We have to speak out” (Klayman). Ai Weiwei is an internationally known Chinese artist as well as activist, and his motivation and determination can be summed up by this quote. In all of his pieces, Weiwei critically examines the social and administrative issues facing China today. Many of his works exhibit multiple themes that can be interpreted in various different ways. This lends itself to the universal appeal of his art and makes it a more effective medium of conveying his messages to viewers. Ai Weiwei’s activist artwork—and activist artwork in general—is important to society because it effectively forces the viewer to engage in a self-reflective process that makes the viewer critically examine his or her own beliefs and world. Nevertheless, censorship greatly hinders the dissemination of the critical and thought provoking messages of Ai Weiwei’s art and makes his artwork less effective. In order to gain a better understanding of the relationship of Ai Weiwei’s activist art and the Communist Party’s subsequent censorship, I will examine Ai Weiwei’s influential childhood, his specific brand of activist artwork, the censorship of the Chinese government and the effects of censorship on the effectiveness of Ai Weiwei’s art.
Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (from A to B and Back Again). Orlando: Harcourt, 2006. Print.
Andy Warhol and Frida Kahlo had an immense amount of impact on the world of art. Warhol has always explored the rooted connection between celebrity culture and artistic expression, which left him with a lasting legacy that has marked him for one of the most famous artists to have existed. The population was fascinated by Warhol’s ability to blur the lines between fine art and innovative design, providing him a large following and work that will be remembered for decades. Kahlo too is a name that is not likely to be forgotten. Her work is recognizable on a global level and her works are loved by many people. The deep admiration her followers have given her, and the amount of modern artists that she has influenced, creates an immortalization
... the echoes of intellectuals as Epicurus, Gramsci, Sartre and Picasso, though if we look at each of us more closely our actions do have a weight and consequences in the course of history. It is for this reason that we, as citizens and “not-organic” intellectuals, must try to find our meaning.
The Brilliant Minds of Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol Leonardo Da Vinci and Andy Warhol were, and still are, two of the most influential and perpetual artists of their perspective time periods. Da Vinci being from the late 15th century to the early 16th century, he combined aspects of form and idea but also the ideals of mathematics and complete realism like no other that has done before. Andy Warhol, of the 20th century, portrayed his paintings and photographs using his personality and uniqueness that gave off a certain vibrato that made people fall in love almost instantaneously. Da Vinci had a bizarre but wonderful obsession with the anatomy of individuals and used this addiction to drive his sculptures and paintings. Andy Warhol was
Before I started this research paper, all I knew about Andy Warhol was that he was the leader of the pop art movement. Reading his book and many biographies written about him, I have learned that Warhol is a truly complex character. I found out during my research that Warhol is a hoarder. Warhol himself has admitted that he had a problem with throwing anything away. In his book, he addressed that he wanted a clean empty space, but his mind wouldn’t let him. This new perspective of Warhol allowed me to tie his artwork as a reflection of his mind. I think Andy Warhol as exactly what he was, an artist in New York City. I cannot imagine Warhol outside of the NYC scene because Warhol was very provocative for the time period he lived in and NYC is perfect for people like
After the 1940 surrender of Paris, which many Americans viewed as the fall of culture due to Paris’ status as the international mecca for the arts, it was evident that the world required a new and superior cultural hub. Throughout the 1940s American artists, with the influence of European Modern and Surrealist painters, were able to elevate New York City to the center of the art world by implementing a “new, strong, and original” artistic style that simultaneously fought fascist ideology: Abstract Expressionism (Guilbault 65). After the war, galleries throughout Europe exhibited American Abstract art, Rothko’s in particular, to prove that American art, once thought tasteless, possessed artistic depth and merit (“Mark Rothko”). Therefore, Abstract Expression had a major role in making New York City the worldwide cultural metropolis that it is today. In terms of shifts in worldview, Abstract Expressionism placed a great importance on intense emotion and spirituality in a society where religiousness was, and continues to be, replaced by other, often self-centered or materialistic, pursuits. The movement allowed and encouraged the public to explore their darkest fears and woes, which, in the wake of the Second World War and, later on, during the Cold War was likely therapeutic. Above all else, it made society recognize that art should no longer be viewed with suspicion; instead, it should be accepted as an integral element of culture
Through successful conceptualization and execution of his “action” installations, Joseph Beuys was able to present how he and many others felt about such matters related to psychology, the social structure, and politics. The messages in Beuys’s works may not have been clear to many, but he sought to show that all humans are creative and that art is not meant to be easily understood because there wouldn’t be a need for art if is was. I believe Joseph Beuys can be considered one of the greatest time-based performers of his time.
Chinese art went through many different stages starting from the year 1842. But the massacre of Tiananmen Square in the year 1989 was a turning point in the political life of China and in the country's art. Until the year 1992 art in China was underground, but it kept expanding. As a result of that, some Chinese artists started to do art works that rebel against their government and express their feelings towards China. One of these artists is the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei who expressed in each piece of art he did, his feelings that China should let its people break away from the rotten traditional, in order to express their thoughts freely.