What Would Ai Weiwei Do? What the Smashing of a Million-Dollar Artwork Has to Teach Us
RELIGION DISPATCHES
By S. Brent Plate
FLORIDA---Tradition is itself a series of creative and destructive acts, stability and instability; the icons are the tradition as much as the images of iconoclasm. Nothing stays the same. Critical outsiders often sum up Ai's work as "iconoclastic," a very old term from deep inside the Christian tradition. Iconoclasts are the "breakers of icons," sacred images used for worship and devotion. This week, Ai's artwork is back in the news. On Sunday, Dominican-born artist named Maximo Caminero walked into the Pérez Art Museum in Miami and smashed one of the vases that was part of Ai Weiwei's Colored Vases display. [link]
By S. Brent Plate
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| Ai Weiwei," Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn," 1995/2009; " |