33 Artists in 3 Acts (15 page)
After a few pleasantries, I comment that the right to travel is less talked about than the right to free speech. “Limiting an individual’s movement through time and space is a crime but, for me, it is also a joke,” declares Ai with a half-smile. “The Internet lets me travel. Technology is beautiful in the most impossible conditions. Technology allows freedom.” Ai’s love of new communication technologies runs deep. Not only does he use Twitter and Instagram throughout the day, he believes they are part of an existential revolution. “The technology allows us to be a new kind of human being,” he says. “With the Internet, a person can be an individual for the first time because he can solely construct his knowledge.” Certainly, the Internet has allowed for a new type of artist, for whom making art involves social media as much as a brush.
I wonder if an exhibition is the best reflection of Ai’s activities. The artist thinks not. “An exhibition is a classic way to show some product,” he says. With regard to the Hirshhorn show, he admits that a “better aesthetic” would represent a broader range of his activities. “My art is fragments. Giving interviews is part of my practice. You have to gather a lot of fragments to capture the reality.” Ai tells me that he had no direct communication from the museum’s staff and that the process was plagued by internal problems, including a shortage of funds. Even if one takes a conservative view of an artwork, the Hirshhorn show could not be called a survey because it excludes many major works.
The reviews of Ai’s Hirshhorn exhibition are fascinating because they have tripped over a question that critics usually ignore: what is an artist? Most reviewers got locked into a binary way of thinking: artist or activist? Or as
The New Yorker
’s Peter Schjeldahl finessed it in his opening sentence, “Is Ai Weiwei a political artist or an artful politician?” Adding to the confusion, the
New York Times’
s influential Roberta Smith argued that Ai “doesn’t make great art as much as great use of the role of the artist.”
Ai experiences “no conscious difference” between being an artist and an activist. “In activism, you can discover art,” he says, “but the purpose
of activism goes beyond having a show.” He wonders why writers, poets, and academics can be politically active without compromising their primary social identity, whereas artists cannot. “Artists who are humanists living in inhuman conditions want to reflect their reality,” he says. “They use art for other purposes, never just as a witness.” Ai takes a deep breath. “For me, being an artist is a total activity. I introduce many things, like political argument and writing, that were not considered art activities.” When confronted with the distinction between “great art” and “great use of the role of the artist,” Ai rolls his eyes. “Art always has uses,” he declares. “It is as if art were supposed to be irresponsible.” Indeed, even art that is supposed to be for “art’s sake” is invariably deployed for something other than pure aesthetic pleasure.
In addition to attending his Hirshhorn opening, Ai had been scheduled to speak at Princeton University. When the artist was unable to honor his commitment, his hosts held a panel discussion about his legacy instead. A member of the audience asked what kind of public figure in the past or present is comparable to Ai. Thomas Keenan, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Bard College, suggested that a martyr was the closest match. “The fact of his martyrdom, his imprisonment, his suffering, is now integrated into the everyday meaning of his name,” said Keenan, according to the
Daily Princetonian
. I relay the observation and ask Ai to respond.
“I don’t know,” he replies, genuinely perplexed. “What are martyrs?”
It’s a Christian thing, I explain. The term is associated primarily with saints who died for their faith. Joan of Arc, for example, claimed to have divine guidance; she was considered a heretic and burned at the stake. Twenty-five years after her death, the Roman Catholic Church declared her a martyr. Almost four hundred years after that, it canonized her as a saint.
Ai chuckles and grapples for something to say, then points into my office space. One of my three black cats has walked into frame. I’m so used to his impertinence that I hadn’t noticed. I shoo him away and take a sip of tea.
Ever since Ai told me about how about his interrogators insisted that he was only an “art worker,” I have been wondering if being an artist has
allowed Ai more political leeway than if he were a straightforward activist without any other identity. When I put the thought to Ai, he agrees wholeheartedly. “It has given me a lot of liberty,” he says. “As an artist, you can be weird. They say, don’t worry about him. He is a crazy artist.”
The idea that an artist is some sort of ultimate individual is gaining traction internationally. It may not be prevalent in Iran, but it has made inroads into China. “As an artist, you have to find your own way. In most professions, you don’t need to be as much of an individual. For artists, it is most important to be independent,” he says. From his position in a Communist country, Ai doesn’t see a downside to individualism, except when it generates secret codes that no one understands. “Individualism has to have a relationship to mainstream thinking. If the individual lacks sensitivity, then there is a danger that they will not be understood by the general public. As long as someone can still communicate, individualism is useful.”
In an interview some time ago, Ai referred to an artist as a “somebody.” The desire to be somebody is a key motivation in a society that values individualism. Indeed, the aspiration may be particularly pronounced in artists. It’s my final question, I tell Ai. How do you feel about the whole notion of being “somebody” versus “nobody”?
“Being somebody is being yourself,” he replies earnestly. “An artist’s success is part of the downside. You can lose yourself. Being yourself is a very difficult game.” Ai’s fingers disappear into his beard, which looks longer and grayer than it was when I saw him in Beijing. “How can you, at the same time, be yourself and refuse the easy categories that come to you with popularity?” he says. “Most artists struggle to be recognized but fame misrecognizes. The moment you touch success, your sense of being somebody disappears.”
Elmgreen & Dragset
Marriage
2004
T
hree days before the VIP opening of the Venice Biennale in early June 2009, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset are standing and smoking in the sun next to a fake real estate sign that says “FOR SALE.” Both men are tall and slim. Elmgreen is a fair-haired forty-eight-year-old Dane, while Dragset, a Norwegian with brown hair and a well-trimmed beard, has just turned forty. Having shared a career since 1995, they are, in their own words, “each half an artist” or a “two-headed monster.” Their combined nationalities have led to an unprecedented situation wherein “one artist” has been awarded two pavilions at this premier international exhibition.
The hub of the sprawling Venice Biennale is the
giardini
, a park full of pavilions in a broad range of architectural styles. When Elmgreen and Dragset visited the
giardini
out of season, they fancied the location as an upscale neighborhood, then asked themselves: who might live here? They decided to transform the Danish pavilion into the home of a family in the midst of a divorce and the Nordic pavilion (jointly owned by Norway, Sweden, and Finland) into a gay bachelor pad. Then they imagined that both homeowners were avid collectors, which gave them license to fill the pavilions with works by twenty-four artists, including themselves.
“I always thought that if I didn’t behave myself as an artist, I’d be reborn as a curator or an interior decorator!” says Elmgreen with a husky laugh in between puffs on a Danish brand of cigarettes called Prince. “As artists, we could be more dictatorial than normal curators, creating an integrated group show that tells a story,” he adds. Elmgreen loves confrontation; Dragset prefers diplomacy. “We explained the concept carefully,” says Dragset. “We warned the artists that their work might take on other meanings. So far, no one has flipped out.” Venice is a notoriously difficult city in which to produce exhibitions. “Everything—
everything
—has to arrive by boat,” says Elmgreen with a deep sigh.
The artists are both wearing shirts with fine checks that are the same color as their trainers. Elmgreen’s ensemble is red and black, Dragset’s is royal blue and white, as if they were twin boys color-coded by a doting mother. When the pair are due to make an important public appearance, they confer on wardrobe to make sure that they don’t match. “We don’t want to look like Gilbert and George!” says Dragset. Gilbert and George, an older gay artistic duo who always dress in matching tweed suits and use only their first names, declared themselves “living sculptures” in the late 1960s. Before Gilbert and George, artists did performances and cultivated spectacular public images, but few had put themselves forth as art itself. “Gilbert and George were early in doing a sustainable collaboration,” says Dragset, admitting the ancestry. “We don’t see ourselves as artworks but we do take our humor very seriously,” adds Elmgreen.
Elmgreen and Dragset met in a gay bar called After Dark in Copenhagen in 1994, became lovers, and then began collaborating a year later. Neither went to art school, although Dragset had attended university for a couple of years for studies that he describes as “part clown, part Shakespeare.” The men were lovers for nine and a half years but are now platonic collaborators. Standing tall with their hands on the back of their hips, their postures mirror each other with uncanny frequency. The name “Elmgreen” would suit a landscape painter, whereas “Dragset” sounds like a cross-dressing performance troupe. The artists think that, together, their names suggest a “boring Scandinavian
law firm,” an association they prefer to being perceived as a brand like Bang & Olufsen.
Standing near us in the Danish pavilion is an actor who will play the role of a real estate agent giving guided open-house tours. Rehearsing his lines in a plummy English accent, he says, “The building was designed in 1930 by Carl Brummer in the neoclassical style at the rear. Here we have the modern 1960s’ extensions . . . It has a breezy feel to it, with some gorgeous interiors. Do come in . . .” Once through the foyer, we enter a living room with a mezzanine whose stairs look like they’ve been torn apart by an earthquake. Along a corridor is a gothic installation titled
Teenage Bedroom
(2009) by Klara Lidén, a Swedish artist who lives in Berlin. Deeper into the pavilion is a mock kitchen displaying the collection of Weimar porcelain owned by the artists’ Milan art dealer, Massimo de Carlo.
The artists linger in a large exhibition space that they have transformed into a grand dining room. On one wall is a work titled
Anything Helps
(2005–09), an arrangement of twenty-two signs used by beggars from all over Europe. Finnish artist Jani Leinonen collected the panhandling signs for roughly $20 each, mounted them in gilt frames and hung them salon style. Beneath these multilingual solicitations is the family’s Jack Russell terrier. The taxidermy dog, which sits attentively, evoking the trademark of His Master’s Voice, is an untitled artwork by Maurizio Cattelan. “Maurizio was here earlier, checking out the installation,” says Dragset. “He is a good team player.”
Against another wall stands an Elmgreen & Dragset sculpture titled
Rosa
(2006), a gold-plated statue of a Mexican maid.
Rosa
is the first of a series of faithful portraits, cast from women of different nationalities who work as full-time domestic help. The sculptures wear readymade, black-and-white uniforms over their gilded “skin” and have attentive but inconspicuous postures that are at once dignified and subservient.
In the middle of the room is
Table for Bergman
, a new work by the artistic duo, which consists of a six-meter dining table bisected by a jagged fissure but nevertheless set with crystal glasses, silver cutlery, and a porcelain dinner service. Despite the divorce, etiquette requires that
the imagined couple’s social occasion must go on. “It’s shinier than a Steinway piano,” says Elmgreen of the table that was fabricated in Italy. “We kept having to request another coat of lacquer to achieve the right ambience in the piece.”
“Ingmar Bergman is dead cool,” offers Elmgreen, referring to the Swedish film director evoked in the title of this work.
“He’s definitely dead,” remarks Dragset.
“Bergman’s project was about people who set out to do something good and become evil in the process,” says Elmgreen with some glee. “He was in love with his own neurosis.” Elmgreen, though physically fairer, is the psychologically darker of the artistic duo. He has a more menacing demeanor, despite his ample charms.
“Are you in love with your own neurosis?” I tease Elmgreen, then turn to Dragset. “Are you in love with
his
neurosis?”
“It is really hard to be in love with other people’s neurosis,” says Elmgreen preemptively.