Ai Weiwei at the Crocker

           A week ago, I went and saw the exhibition of Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads at the Crocker Art Museum.  The work consists of twelve animal heads made of cast bronze representing the creatures of the Chinese Zodiac. Big deal, right? The Chinese Zodiac is a pretty much meaningless in the United State. I have always seen it in the context of paper place settings in a Chinese restaurant where is serves as a mere curiosity. I am the year of the Rat, but does it matter? From an outside perspective, and without much knowledge of Ai Weiwei, I thought these works seemed shallow and boring.  How wrong I was.

The Circle of Animals in the Crocker courtyard

I walked through the exhibition and acknowledged the skill and execution of the pieces. Each piece weighs around 1600 pounds, is 10 feet tall, and has quite a physical presence.  I stood underneath the Tiger and melted a little towards the work.  "Ok, they're more impressive in person," I thought. However, it wasn't until I walked upstairs and began reading the information presented about the works that I began to understand the significance of this piece.

During the Second Opium war with China, British and French troops looted the Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan). Among the items pillaged were the bronze animals heads from a zodiac time fountain. These heads have periodically shown up for auctions in that last few decades and are a major point of contention in the ongoing global debate about the repatriation of lost art work.  These pieces are particularly irksome to many Chinese because they are symbols of the shame and subjugation associated with European colonialism.  Ironically, the fountain was western inspired and the original heads were designed by an Italian Jesuit missionary. They are unusual pieces with an unusual history.

Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals are essentially copies of the original bronze heads with some changes in the scale and presentation.  Despite these minor variations, he is largely appropriating these works.  He has re-contextualized the pieces into a fine art setting and generated new layers of meaning by doing so. The new works demand dialogue about the repatriation of stolen artifacts.  All over the world this battle is raging on.  The western colonial powers have works of art from all over the world that are best perceived as stolen. Public opinion in favor of their return and a taboo on buying and selling these items will be crucial to helping future repatriation claims.  In these heads, Ai Wei Wei has created posterchildren for that movement.

This tiger is not for sale

But whether or not he has strong feelings about the original heads is unclear. Ai Weiwei is definitely a disciple of Marcel Duchamp, pop art, and appropriation and I would venture that he sees his interpretations of the lost heads as having more meaning than the originals. He mentions in the video accompanying the work that the pieces were not even originally Chinese. I believe Ai Weiwei is saying to a Chinese audience, "here are works far more impressive and meaningful than the original heads. Why stay hung up on the originals? Recognize that we are making important art now.

The works may also be subtly criticizing how the US views China. China, alternately feared and derided in popular western culture, is thought of as backwards country that produces low quality items.  Ai Weiwei addresses this by making these pieces purposefully large, bold, and demanding of our attention. He is speaking in the language of the oldest fine art by using bronze, which China has a long and celebrated history of working.  These pieces dispel stereotypes and assert a strong, intelligent, modern Chinese identity.

So it turns out, this work was more loaded with meaning than I had imagined. The Circle of Animals is totally worth checking out and, in my book, Ai Weiwei went from being some celebrity artist to an artist that interests me.