Legs Like Guns: Ai Weiwei and the Revolutionary Selfie

Since Wednesday afternoon, I along with some 64,000 others, have been entertained by a constant upload of pretty entertaining selfies via Ai Weiwei’s instagram feed.  Given Weiwei’s track record with social networking sites, it is of no surprise to see the artist yet again succumbing to this ‘selfie’ craze.  But it becomes clear that the artist has entirely different purposes with this project.  The one thing all these images share is their subjects, who all raise their leg into a pose that resembles a loaded gun. What began as the artist uploading a selfie of himself with his legs raised in such a position, gave rise to a number of his followers playing homage to the same pose via his instagram feed. Weiwei then proceeded to upload these images to his own instagram account, highlighting the power of social networking sites to unite audiences in the name of art.

While it seems bewildering and somewhat disappointing to denote such importance to social media, a debate of this is not really the point of all this. What Weiwei aims to show with these ‘legs like gun selfies’ constitutes a more outright attack on the political situation in China.  He is quite blatantly and quite openly satirising the oppressive nature of the cultural control to which China bases its politics.  This was also implied by the Chinese blog, Beijing Cream (http://beijingcream.com/), who first highlighted the connection between the leg pose in Weiwei’s selfie and the one in the infamous Chinese ballet, The Red Detachment of Women. The ballet was one of the eight model operas that monopolised the 1960s Chinese national landscape during the cultural revolution; a state-sanctioned depiction of one woman’s rise through the Communist party.

Regardless of the speculations to the origins of this pose, Weiwei’s satirical images coming just after the 25th anniversary of these protests in Tiananmen Square is no such coincidence. The artist, pertaining to the metaphor of the raised gun, explicitly pokes his own finger at the regime.   The very same regime which uses guns to gain control.  It is with no surprise that the message accompanying most of these photos is ‘#endguncrime’.  Sanctioning such gun crime is deplored by many and so his protest (disguised as selfie) reaches out and speaks for, the population of China, but clearly goes far beyond that.

Of course I had to have a go myself, sending the snap straight to Sir Weiwei himself (@aiww)

Whilst the underlying message of the campaign is incredibly serious, we can’t deny the allusion to humour.  Several of Weiwei’s followers make reference to a new dance move suggested by the posed leg in photo, ‘is this the new twerking?’, one of Weiwei’s 65,000 asks. Like with anything, be it in art or in politics, it is clear that humour still has the capacity to move people and to further a cause.  Art and humour help us face the one true certainty of life together, and through these ‘selfies’ and their somewhat ironic undertones, the public will be better informed about the crusade in China.

‘To tell a good joke in art we need to face reality head on’. Joke and humour means that we are better prepared and more aware of what is going on in life.  It means we are more likely capable of dealing with an issue, because humour quite often allows us to enter the furthest reaches of the imagination and to explore the fantasy and the absurd. Who says art can’t be funny and that art can’t proclaim change? Weiwei has a clear political message with this otherwise humorous project.  While it shouldn’t, we can’t deny that a selfie has grabbed our attention of an issue we may have otherwise been unaware, or even worse, ignored.

Take a look at some other selfies uploaded onto Weiwei’s instagram account:

Provocative Performance Artist Reenacts Gustave Courbets ‘The Origin of the World’ By Displaying Her Own Vagina

Just as I was beginning to despair with the recent ‘attention seeking’ acts of performance art, one young artist comes along and changes all that.  YES, Deborah de Robertis constitutes a piece of performance art work that directly plays with and challenges Gustave Courbet’s ‘The Origins of the World’.  Indeed if we are aware of the incredibly racy nature of Courbet’s 1866 painting we can only imagine the provocative nature of the act that this performance artist undergoes.  If you weren’t aware, and as the title makes clear the painting references to the beginning of human life, the place where it all starts.  It is a portrait of the female genitalia.  Whilst the painting was seen as a great scandal at the time, today we recognise it an artistic treasure uniting themes such as realism, romance, eroticism and voyerism.  It’s an incredibly powerful piece, it disturbs just as it incites.

Last week de Robertis, draped in a short gold sequin dress, entered ironically, rather inconspicuously into Room 20 of the Musée d’Orsay.  She placed herself boldly and un-ashamedly directly in front of the Courbet masterpiece, but at the same time, she gave nothing away.  A few seconds later she opens her legs revealing her womanhood.  It is as raw as it is intense, and at the same time rather too easy to watch given the brashness of her display.  But what is it about this piece of performance art that allows it to stand so far from other more recent contemporary pieces?

Before you go any further, check out the video of the performance here: *high sexual content ALERT* http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1yaxll_une-artiste-expose-son-sexe-sous-l-origine-du-monde_news

There was something incredibly raw and emotional about her performance, surpassing the so called ‘aesthetics of beauty’ that the History of Art proclaims to, pushing her performance one step ahead.  It is a declaration of a message about women by women to women, to men and to society.  Did you know that in the 1990’s, less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art section of New York’s Metropolitan Museum were women, but 85% of the nudes were female?

As always the most frustrating and often most entertaining part of reading articles like these is the sprawl of comments made by the great public.  One ‘top commenter’ AKA a Carol Dixson naively says ‘I’m guessing about half the population in the world has one. Hers is special? This “artist” needs to get over herself.’  It is comments (attitudes) like this that seems to disregard  the powerful message behind the act of performance art.  If you don’t like it that is fine, but with conceptual art, with performance art, it’s more the message or concept behind it that becomes the most powerful.  I don’t think those gallery-goers or indeed the security staff at the Orsay will forget about this incident for a long time.  And why should they?

Who knew that a vagina that in art is so treasured, becomes so disturbing and hated in real life? Talk about hypocrisy!

Despite the much despised custom that the French adhere to move things at a very glacial pace, it still didn’t take long before De Robertis was removed by security staff.  She has been handed over to the police who have the power to charge her with sexual exhibitionism.

But De Robertis justifies her performance.  ‘If you ignore the context, you could construe this performance as an act of exhibitionism, but what I did was not an impulsive act,” she explained to Luxemburger Wort. “There is a gap in art history, the absent point of view of the object of the gaze. In his realist painting, the painter shows the open legs, but the vagina remains closed. He does not reveal the hole, that is to say, the eye. I am not showing my vagina, but I am revealing what we do not see in the painting, the eye of the vagina, the black hole, this concealed eye, this chasm, which, beyond the flesh, refers to infinity, to the origin of the origin.’

I couldn’t agree more with the brave young woman and neither it seems did the surprised gallery-goers who were quick to applaud her performance.  Why call her brave? She believed in promoting her own message so much that she sacrificed her own position and persona to do so.  Displays of sexual exhibitionism in such a public place like the Musée D’Orsay are going to get you arrested. Yes she broke the law, yes the performance was extremely sexually explicit and yes it came with absolutely NO warning, but this was the very beauty of it! And there is something incredibly powerful and beautiful about her performance. It’s funny how quickly the public go a-wall when a woman’s genitalia is involved.

Last time I checked almost 50% of the population have a vagina, and the other 50% are no stranger to them, so why the outcry? Does it take a nude performance artist disrupting a casual day of museum revelry to make the world notice? Apparently so…

Would you steal a Picasso? Why we can’t hate art thieves

During my morning ritual trawling the Guardian’s art section, I came along an article about art thieves by my favourite art critic, Jonathan Jones.  We probably picture the typical art thief rather glamourously, motivated by money and picking a piece only for the high price it will reach on the black market.  It is unlikely that said thief will be aware of what the the thick brush stroke, open composition and the emphasis on the depiction of light comes to represent, in the impressionist piece that he takes without love from the walls of the gallery.  Clearly the work is of unimportance to them, so we should take it away from the situation.  He is thus a thief.   And this same thief is perhaps the worst kind, taking away works of art from the ever longing  and demanding gaze of the public eye.  I will not sympathise with this man.

The case of Patrick Vialaneix is albeit more tricky to decipher.  Earlier in 2014, he shocked the art world by confessing to stealing from a museum in Cannes in 1999, ‘Child with a Soap Bubble’, a painting believed to be one of Rembrandt’s. It is not a Rembrandt, it is only in a similar style, but that is not the point.  Unlike your standard art thief, he didn’t sell the piece, nor was he ever motivated by his desire to profit from the piece (until an ironic twist at the end- when he has been connected to an attempt to sell the piece).  But, let us put that aside, what matters is that originally, the only thing  Vialanieux was motivated by- was his love for art.  In some ways, I can’t blame the man.

In other ways- I can.  I’m sure I speak for other art lovers when I say that there is nothing that would be more thrilling, than owning our favourite piece of art work.  An art work that is so precious to the public and to the art world, yet hangs exclusively in our own living room.  It is kind of the dream right? That’s exactly it, it’s a pretty warped fantasy, one that we’d prefer would stay just that.

If given the opportunity and knowing you would get away with it, would you steal a work of art from a museum? If so, what piece would you choose? If I could own just one piece it would be Van Gogh’s ‘Portrait de l’artiste au chevalet’ (1889), housed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  That doesn’t mean I’d ever steal it though. Art should be looked at and shared, and having it hidden in my own house, with my heart stopping every time the door rings, is not my idea of fun.  Art is fun, and so this reduces its everyday meaning.

Whilst Vialaneix is a thief, he stole because he loved a piece of art so much he wanted it all to himself. I can understand that, but under no circumstance do I sympathise with him.  Art is made by the people and is for the people.  Taking the piece away from the art world compromises art history and culture, and there is something quite sinister in allowing that. The spectator deciphers the creative process, and so we should not deny the spectator, the piece or even the artist, that freedom, that joy.

Like always, I’ll leave you with a little Duchamp, a little comment on the role of the spectator in the interpretation and lasting importance of art.

‘The artist exists only if he is known…..The artist makes something, then one day, he is recognised by the intervention of the public, of the spectator; so later he goes onto posterity’

Performance Art: Powerful or Pompous?

I enjoy my morning ritual of browsing the Guardian and the Independent for their up-to-date art criticisms.  Whilst I more often than not disagree with the writings of these art journalists, I do admire their brutal honesty.  This morning, I came upon an article titled, ‘The artist who lays eggs with her vagina- or why performance art is so silly’ by Jonathan Jones of the Guardian. Jones examines a contemporary case of performance art by the German artist, Milo Moiré.  Moiré reveals her naked body in a public square in Cologne, and in doing so, provokes a spectacle by creating abstract pieces by pushing eggs filled with paint out of her vagina, onto the bare canvas below her.

As a girl who has a penchant for art history and in particular, modern art between 1920 and 1970, I should really condemn this sort of performance? Yes, I struggle to comprehend it and even explain it to others, but there is something quite compelling about this ‘performance’ that fits quite nicely into the way art should be embodied. Firstly, the piece makes a statement.  It crusades for feminism and equal rights for women, and so, in my eyes, it is brave and uncompromising.  Secondly, whilst the performance aspect of the work can stand alone as an art work, the artist herself creates a lasting piece of work in the form of the abstract paintings.  By creating a performance, she creates work and also leaves a powerful message.  Art should be non-exclusive, and devoid of pretence.  It should be an open concept that is not restrained by any definitions to which the art world or the public deem it to be.  If it affects you, surely we can surrender this concept as art?

‘Performance art is a joke. Taken terribly seriously by the art world, it is a litmus test of pretension and intellectual dishonesty. If you are wowed by it, you are either susceptible to pseudo-intellectual guff, or lying’ (Jonathan Jones, The Guardian)

I don’t agree with Jonathan Jones. I agree that there is still some sort of nostalgia for 70’s performance art, heralded by those such as Burden, Gilbert and George and Abramovic, but with our contemporary present, art should move forward and embody a direct representation of this time, rather than always looking back to the past.  Naturally, life in 2014 is completely different to life in the 70’s, we have new concerns and we should tackle these in different ways.  Can we still relate to 70’s performance art? I certainly can.  But can today’s generation, with a limited knowledge of art, really do so?

Whilst Moiré’s performance is shocking, vulgar and incredibly provocative, surely her aim has been achieved? We are all talking about her performance.  Whilst this may in the form of humour or irony, she has aligned herself as a performance artist by creating a public spectacle, that will not leave the minds of the public, nor the art world, for a long time.

Is today’s performance art a joke? What do you think?

Please read more here: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/apr/22/artist-eggs-vagina-paintings-performance-art-milo-moire

Lost & Found: The trauma of the Holocaust memories re-opened in painting

€1 billion of prized Holocaust art found at the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, son of a Nazi Perpetrator.

As I browse the morning newspaper, I find my eyes are drawn to anything that encompasses the word Art. Welch Überraschung (what a surprise). What I was to find, was to prove my belief in Arts power to transcend boundaries and to encapsulate time. I was fascinated to read about Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrand Gurlitt, who worked for the Nazi’s selling degenerate art works stolen from the Jews or from museums during the Holocaust. An incredible story in itself if we are to consider Hildebrand’s own family story and history, before Cornelius was to even come along. Hildebrand and his brother were a quarter jewish, and in a unsatisfying twist of fate this proved his testimony, getting him off the hook after being arrested after the War for his involvement with the Nazi’s.

The Gurlitt family claimed that all these art works were lost when their family home was destroyed during the Dresden bombings. But the hidden stash of some 1,400 art works, valued at over one million euros, tells a very different story. They were in fact passed down from Hildebrand, to his son Cornelius, who has been living of the income generated by the private sales of some of the works ever since.

One of these works include a Henri Matisse that belongs to prominent Jewish collector, Paul Rosenberg. The piece was seized by the Nazi’s in 1942 in a bank vault in Paris, and is one of the many pieces found in Cornelius’s flat. Other works found include pieces by Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas and Max Beckmann.

What becomes the main issue here is that of ownership. The trauma of memories is often made in reference to the pain the Holocaust brought. With a burgeoning gap between its history and today, we find ourselves turning to objects as a way to keep these memories alive. The seizure of numerous degenerate art works confiscated by the Nazi’s during the War, appear to belong not only to the original owners, but also to the public. They bring with them a somewhat renewed and harrowing history.

Whilst, for the time being the collection officially still belongs to Cornelius Gurlitt, there is a public out cry for those obtained illegally to be reunited with their rightful owners, notably those persecuted Jewish collectors. “There’s so much evidence that many of these works came from victims of the Holocaust and that they were taken out of German museums,” said Jonathan Petropoulos, an expert on art looted by the Nazis at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.

You can read the article here: http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21589456-vast-trove-art-comes-light-munich-flat-after-seven-decades-hildebrand-gurlitts-secret

Some of the works found in Cornelius’s apartment include:

Sitzende Frau (Sitting Woman) by Henry Matisse- Valued at £60 million

A painting by Otto Dix called Selbstportrait Rauchend (Selfportrait Smoking)

Another painting from Otto Dix- Valued at £6 million

An allegorical dreamy romantic scene by Marc Chagall- Valued at £15 million

Max Liebermann’s Zwei Reiter am Strande (Two riders on the beach)- Valued at £8 million

There’s No Such Thing as Bad Press…

The Saatchi Gallery

The Saatchi Gallery in London is one of my all time favourite contemporary art galleries simply because of the freedom and lack of pretence that it offers. Opened by Charles Saatchi in order to showcase his personal collection to the public in 1985, it now takes residence just off the Kings Road in the heart of Chelsea. In 2010, the Saatchi Gallery was given to us, the British public and so became the Museum of Contemporary Art for London. It is the only contemporary art museum of its size that boasts free entry, something that is enabled through its partnership with the art auction house, Phillips de Pury & Company. It’s a hot spot for all things modern, launching the careers of many unknown artists into their world famous counterparts, and has influenced British art, quickly becoming a legacy.

But with the great hanging art on the walls and the blow up installations, comes great displays of drama and controversy. And it’s fair to say that the Saatchi has attracted a great deal of criticism over the years, but its inconsistency appears to be its secret to success. In June of this year, its owner, the one and only Charles Saatchi, was caught by paparazzi choking his wife Nigella Lawson at a local restaurant in London. Despite the personal dramas and the very public controversies, we can’t forget what the Saatchi Gallery has given the art world since its doors first opened.

The gallery’s history starts with a fascination for U.S artists; the minimalism movement that included Donald Judd, and of course the Pop Art movement belonging to Andy Warhol. It showcased American art and artists for the first time in the UK, including but not limited to Jeff Koons. But its hasty abandonment of U.S art in favour of British Artists is arguably its greatest legacy. The Young British Artists pioneered by Damien Hirst in the late eighties at the playground of Saatchi HQ pioneered great british talent bringing them to the foreground of contemporary art. Rachel Whiteread, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and Jenny Saville are a few of these British artists who owe much of their success to the teachings and gallery space offered to them by Hirst and Saatchi. Whilst the collaboration between these two appeared on the surface to be the art dream, it was also the source of tension and quarrels between the pair. Hirst sums up his feelings on Charles Saatchi, ‘I’m not Charles Saatchi’s barrel-organ monkey … He only recognises art with his wallet … he believes he can affect art values with buying power, and he still believes he can do it.’

The theory behind Saatchi being more interested in art dealing than art collecting appears to take strength, outrunning his own history. After having bought the iconic piece ‘Shark’ by Hirst for £50,000, in 1991 he sold it for 7 million in 2004. It is with no surprise that David Lee can be quoted saying, ‘Charles Saatchi has all the hallmarks of being a dealer, not a collector. He first talks up the works and then sells them.’ But in 2004, a fire within the premises destroyed over 50 million pounds worth of Saatchi’s collection, burning a hole not only in his wallet, but also in the joy of his personal collection built up over the years. It included the highly controversial Tracey Emin piece, ‘Everyone I have Slept with 1963-95’, that becomes ironic in itself if one is aware of Emin’s relationship with the Saatchi Gallery! Greed, fire and scandal…it all happens at the Saatchi Gallery.

With the birth of the The Triumph of Painting exhibition, we learn that the year 2004 was clearly just that, the year of scandal. What better way to cause a media frenzy than a painting by Stella Vine of Princess Diana with blood dripping from her lips, entitled Hi Paul Can You Come Over? A couple of years later in 2006, it was clear that Saatchi had not learnt its lesson. The work of Dash Snows Fuck the Police which included the tool of the artist’s semen and Gerald Davis’ painting Monica which outright shows a woman giving a blow job, quickly grabbed the medias attention. The calls from the public and the media demanding that the artists’ work be placed in an adult-only room alongside parental guidance, meant that the Saatchi Gallery had once again grabbed the headlines.

At the heart of the erotic and the revolt, the Saatchi Gallery cannot help but play and challenge the viewer within its own space. When you visit the Saatchi you will be struck between the more playful and abstract art and that which is intended to strike and move, like the room filled with childhood portraits of modern tyrants, including Hitler and Stalin.  Check out Annie Kevin’s Dictator Portraits at Saatchi or online here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/20/annie-kevans-dictator-portraits-hitler-mao-mussolini-at-saatchi_n_3467284.html

Despite this, the Saatchi boasts a very notable philosophy. It’s goals include taking art that is often viewed as exclusive, and making it accessible to the mainstream, showcasing contemporary work that would otherwise not be showcased. Rebecca Wilson, the head of development at the gallery says, ‘The gallery’s guiding principle is to show what is being made now, the most interesting artists of today. It’s about drawing people’s attentions to someone who might be tomorrow’s Damien Hirst.’

And what could pertain more to opening up the publics eyes to art and aiding the struggling artist than the open-access section on the gallery’s website that was first run in 2006 and later rebranded as Saatchi Online. This novel tool allows artists to upload up to twenty of their works to their own personal web page, which by 2010 boasted the work of some 100,000 artists. Taking a modest 30% commission for the artists work, the Saatchi Gallery again proves to be the platform to take the unknown artist to the big time.

 

 

Despite common appearances, Saatchi also appears to have a soft spot for hard hitting issues and ethical concerns. In 2008, inspired by the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Saatchi put on The Revolution Continues, showcasing Chinese art and focusing on the political issues and moral concerns of China’s Cultural Revolution. It was seen by many as one of the most connected and true showcase of contemporary modern art to be shown in the UK.

We’ll leave things on a good note, because despite its coloured past and its expected troubled future, The Saatchi Gallery has great intentions. It vows to make art something for the people, something that can be achieved by anyone, and for that to be their focal aim in a climate that is increasingly money and status driven deserves some recognition.

Rappers and Artists are two very different things

Don’t EVER call Picasso ‘baby’

So us art fags went into cardiac arrest when we heard the new track ‘Picasso Baby’ by Jay Z. Not only does he refer to Picasso as ‘baby’, but his reference to other artists like Rothko, Koons and Warhol and art institutions such as the MoMa and Christie’s is derogatory and insulting. Let me be very clear, Jay Z is a rapper, a very good one at that, but it is hard not to lose respect for him when he writes lyrics that denotes art to cheap sex and fast cars. Picasso would quake in his grave. 

Jay Z even labels his song ‘Picasso Baby: A Performance Art Film’. WHAT. A. JOKE

Marina Abramović, who has been labelled ‘the grandmother of performance art’ plays along with Jay Z in the attempt to transform this song from a document to a work of art. TOTAL FAIL. The duo that is Jay Z and Abramović, attempt to represent the on going battle between the hip-hop and art world that has been present since the seventies. But despite the artistic qualities of the video, the constant echoing of the lyrics completely undermine any attempts Jay Z made to create an artistic piece.

The only thing artistic about this song, is the ironic way in which we satirise it. In future, I’d recommend Jay Z stay away from Art, and instead focus on what he does best….which is?

I’ve posted the song link below (for satirical purposes ONLY):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMG2oNqBy-Y

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