Microscope: focusing on a single artwork<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ai Weiwei\u2019s \u201cSculpture Installation,\u201d 2006<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fuck you! Ai Weiwei\u2019s arm stretches out, index finger extended. The marble self-portrait recalls Ai\u2019s 1995-2003 photographic series \u201cStudy of Perspective,\u201d wherein he photographed his own extended arm\u2013and finger\u2013in front of numerous and stereotypically prominent international buildings, whether the White House, the Eiffel Tower, or Tiananmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perspective here refers both to the classical western system for delineating space and to a personal opinion in the sense of \u201ca point of view.\u201d One is a general, if distorting system, full up with its one-eyed omniscience, whereas the other is unique and subjective. Either way, the arm demonstrates how perspective is relative. Ai\u2019s experiments with relative perspective also show how the individual is bigger, more important and ultimately independent of governmental power and its static symbols. The individual is always the active subject, whereas the monuments, towers and palaces are mere inanimate objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note that the arm is amputated, not decapitated. The loss is corporal, not sentient. Like Gogol\u2019s Nose, the arm maintains its independence, even absent its owner. In English, \u201carms\u201d refer also to \u201carmaments.\u201d That finger and the stubborn and absurd defiance it indicates are at turns pathetic and bathetic. Ai\u2019s work is thus at once a memorial to the use of arms\/weapons and also their human cost. Accordingly the amputated arm can be seen as both \u201ca call to arms,\u201d a rallying cry, and also, playing on Hemingway, a farewell to arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSculpture Installation\u201d is also an homage to one of the masters of performance art and of provocation too, as it is based on Bruce Nauman\u2019s \u201cFrom Hand to Mouth\u201d of 1967, a cast of Nauman\u2019s flaccid arm, hand, neck and mouth. \u201cFrom Hand to Mouth\u201d is about authority (the voice) and execution (the hand). As Amelia Warr notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFrom Hand to Mouth\u201d was made during a period of intense reflection on how to make art and what it is to be an artist. The sculpture is a literal physical representation of the title. Nauman links utterance to gesture, speech to manual activity. Cutting away the body to isolate a fragment, he has created a form that stands as a sculptural whole in itself, providing a new meaning out of an old clich\u00e9.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ai\u2019s version, however, the axis is hand-ear, not hand-eye. The individual listens but does not speak, not verbally anyway. And it is marble, not wax moulded over a cloth frame like Nauman\u2019s. Both are equally fragile, however, after their own art. The marble speaks though to classical sculpture and possibly contains a gentle reference to an ancient Greek concept: demos, meaning \u201cthe people\u201d and kratia, \u201cpower and rule.\u201d One could almost imagine it being grafted onto the Venus de Milo, just to help her out. Thus while Nauman takes the \u201chand to mouth\u201d clich\u00e9 back to its fundamentals, Ai returns them to allegory. References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/strong>T. Warr (ed.) and A. Jones (survey), The Artist\u2019s Body, London and New York: Phaidon, 2000, 164-5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Microscope: focusing on a single artwork … Continue reading
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