Art imitates Art imitates Art

The Han Dynasty was a very stable dynasty, lasting in two periods for about 400 years.  It was a time of expansion, established Confucianism, poetry, literature and diplomacy.  China also controlled the trade routes through the Taklamakan Desert (the Silk Road), thus bringing in tremendous prosperity.  In part as a result of both Confucianism (and its connection to ancestor worship) and tremendous trade, very hard stoneware ceramics flourished in the Han Dynasty.
 

Artist Ai Weiwei, one of the most important artists of the last few decades (not just because he's coming from the context of China and its repressive regime), has taken Han Dynasty vases and reimagined them.  As brightly colored dipped works.  My favorite, stamped with the Coca-Cola logo, parallels for me the take-over by modern American consumerism of everything. 

As the Hirshhorn puts it: "In this and other works in which the artist destroys the old to create the new, such as “Coca-Cola Vase” (2007) and his ongoing series of “Colored Vases,” Ai raises questions about the definition and endurance of cultural value."

Ai Weiwei then created a photographic triptych of an event in which he drops a Han Dynasty urn.  Ai draws our attention to what makes value--we value these vases precisely because of their age; they are of dubious quality and they are ubiquitous (precisely because of the circumstances of their creation). 

 

On Sunday, February 16, artist Maximo Caminero walked in to the Perez Art Museum in Miami, took one of the vase works from Ai's According to What? installation and smashed it.  He has been charged with criminal mischief for breaking the vase, valued at $1 million.  Caminero told the police/press: "I did it for all the local artists in Miami that have never been shown in museums here," he says. "They have spent so many millions now on international artists. It's the same political situation over and over again. I've been here for 30 years and it's always the same."

Caminero says that it was spontaneous (the museum says premeditated), that he didn't really think about the value of Ai's work.  The value question is again raised--is it $1,000,000 because of the Han vase's value, the value that it has as a work by Ai, the value it has as one part of a multiple work installation, and/or the value the insurance company insists it have when exhibited?  Ai's response was that he should have found another means of protest, because of the trouble it will bring Caminero, but that the vase is gone and he expresses calm with that.  Other artists, many upset with Perez Art Museum's policy of passing over local artists, seem to support Caminero's act, feeling it was in connection with Ai's own work. 

Caminero's own work will receive more attention because of his act of vandalism.  But what he has done is the equivalent of a child kicking someone because he is thwarted--it brings the wrong attention in greater measure than the correct attention.  Will the Perez Art Museum look at its exhibition policies? (They are currently hosting the work of Edouard Duval-Carrie, a Haitian born but Miami based artist; I can't delve their history enough to know whether Caminero's protest is valid.)  Sometimes we feel just like children who can't get parents' attention.  Desecration and destruction are one way to draw that kind of attention.