Good Morning Hank, it's Tuesday.
I finished filming Crash Course US History early yesterday,
so I drove down to the Indianapolis Museum of Art where Sarah is a curator.
By the way, we have our own spring snow in Indianapolis.
Walked into the museum then into the entry lobby, currently home to
this installation by the great Spencer Finch called "Following Nature,"
which Sarah curated
and which abstractly recreates Monet's famous "Garden at Giverny."
Upstairs, I went to visit "Ai Weiwei- According to What?"
I think Ai Weiwei is probably the most important artist alive,
and my wife, not to brag, is responsible for this show's only tour stop in the Midwest.
The show follows Ai's entire career.
He lived in New York from 1981 to 1993,
hanging out with the likes of Allen Ginsberg,
working as a photo journalist,
taking many pictures of himself,
and then he returned to China and worked in the artist community "Beijing East Village,"
which included many Chinese performance artists who would later become wildly famous
but you probably never heard of them, Hank, because this isn't really your scene,
and it's kind of like trying to explain to someone how super famous and amazing DailyGrace is
And they're just like, "Oh, the girl from the Lowe's commercials?"
Anyway, Ai Weiwei went on to his Lowe's commercial, consulting on the birds nest from the Beijing Olympics.
Which you probably do remember.
Although he later distanced himself from it, calling the entire affair, "A pretend smile."
Which, if you remember the Beijing opening ceremony, yeah.
He has continued to take pictures of himself,
including this one. when he was detained by the police
and beaten so badly that he suffered a subdural hematoma.
He uploaded that selfie to Twitter, by the way.
Ai is primarily famous on Tumblr for flicking off important buildings.
But his work is very broad, and as is often the case with contemporary art,
it can be difficult to see what's so interesting without context.
Like, these sculptures,
each is made with more than 2,000 pounds of pressed tea leaves,
call to mind the minimalist sculptures of the likes of Donald Judd and Carl Andre.
But Ai uses distinctly Chinese material,
material that has long been imported by the West.
What is being appropriated and by whom in these cultural and economic exchanges?
Or look at this Neolithic vase painted with the Coke logo.
Or this tryptic of Ai dropping a Han dynasty urn.
How do we respond when confronted with the reality that
the destruction of the old is inherent to creating anything new?
These are interesting and important questions,
both for art historians and for regular people,
but by far my favorite work in the Ai Weiwei show
Is this:
38 tons of steel rebar, arranged in undulating waves.
After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, Ai went there and photographed the rescue efforts,
the destroyed buildings, the awful clusters of backpacks belonging to dead children.
Many blame shoddy construction by corrupt government contracters
for the collapse of so many schools.
More than 5,000 children died
and Ai spear-headed the project to record their names.
As you stand in the gallery, you hear those names read aloud.
This is one of the saddest wall labels I've ever seen.
Running time: 3 hours 41 minutes.
All this steel is from destroyed schools.
It was bent and buckled by the earthquake,
and then Ai and his assistants hammered all of it, all 38 tons of it, straight again.
"Poetry makes nothing happen," W.H. Auden once famously wrote.
"It is a way of happening, a mouth."
Straightening this rebar didn't bring back those children
or hold the shoddy contractors accountable.
It made nothing happen.
But the way of happening threatens the Chinese government enough
that they detain and threaten Ai Weiwei,
because in a world supersaturated with tragic statistics,
where even photographs and videos can lose their punch,
Ai found a way to bring form to love and anger and grief.
That's why good art matters so much, Hank, and why it has always mattered.
Even if it does make nothing happen.
I'll see you on Friday.
*names of the children are heard echoing in the gallery*
