Cai Guo-Qiang

signed in Pinyin and Chinese, titled in Chinese and English and dated 2003

Cai Guo-Qiang, London, Albion, 2004, pp. 138-139
Cai Guo-Qiang, Taiwan, Artist Publication Ltd., 2005, p. 129
Cai Guo-Qiang, Oh Black Fireworksi, Institut Valencia d'Art modern and Generalitat Valenciana, 2005, p. 205

The work is in good condition overall. There are no apparent condition issues with this work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Half a billion people (or close to a billion, depending upon the report) watched the televised version of the massive fireworks event that Cai Guo-Qiang orchestrated for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. A coup of a different kind for the artist, the major survey exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe opened in February 2008 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. I Want to Believe, the Guggenheim's first solo show for a Chinese-born artist, subsequently traveled to the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, where it was on display during the Olympics; and it will conclude its tour at the Guggenheim Bilbao. For Cai Guo-Qiang these two disparate roles, as subject of a major exhibition organized by one of the world's premier venues for contemporary art, and as Director of Visual and Special Effects for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics, represent pinnacles in a career already marked by such accomplishments as the receipt of the Golden Lion Award at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, and the curatorship of the first Venice Biennale China pavilion in 2005. They also demonstrate the range of the artist's talents and interests, from impresario of the grand gesture to creator of contemplative works of art on a human scale, such as are included in I Want to Believe. Furthermore, they exemplify his interest in connecting with a variety of audiences, and they make clear his exceptional ability to negotiate with authorities both within the art world and without, so that his projects come to fruition. These qualities are also apparent in Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky: People (Lot 690) and the events leading up to its creation.

Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky: People is a large-scale gunpowder drawing produced as a lasting work of art related to the transient site-specific event, Project No. 60: Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky. The latter was Cai Guo-Qiang's response to an invitation to engineer a project at Siwa, an isolated western Egyptian oasis whose main economic activity has been agriculture (producing dates and olives), but which recently has begun to draw tourists. Throughout his career, Cai Guo-Qiang has been fascinated by the past, seeking ways in which to link the history of a site with the present through his art; in addition, he is sympathetic to traditional ways of thinking: he has expertise in fengshui (geomancy); he has produced works of art involving traditional medicines (among which may be counted gunpowder); and he gives credence to divination. In fact, he had been warned by fortune-tellers both in New York and in Siwa that the Siwa project would encounter difficulties, but that those difficulties would be ameliorated through the efforts of the local people.

Settlements grew around the fresh water springs of Siwa Oasis many millennia ago. The oasis boasts not only the natural beauty of rocky hills and a lake surrounded by seemingly endless sand dunes of the Sahara Desert, but also such ancient sites as the ruins of the Temple of Amon: it is an environmentally unique place of cultural and historical significance. In particular, as the seat of one of the most powerful oracles of the ancient world, the oracle of Amon, Siwa offered Cai Guo-Qiang a profound setting for the creation of a work of art. Most notably, it is said that when Alexander the Great consulted the oracle at the Temple of Amon, the oracle confirmed his divinity and, thus, his rightful position as pharaoh of Egypt. Writing in the Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe exhibition catalogue, scholar Reiko Tomii identifies the meanings of the man, eagle, and eye mentioned in the title of Cai's work as, respectively, "humankind as an agent of history," Alexander the Great, and humankind's vision (p. 254). It is worth noting too that the god Amon became associated with another deity of the Egyptian pantheon, Horus, who was represented as a falcon (similar to an eagle), or as a falcon-headed human. The Eye of Horus, also known as the all-seeing eye, was a common amulet of ancient Egypt, promoting health and prosperity, and protecting the bearer from evil.

Mindful of his position as an outsider in a small agricultural town, Cai Guo-Qiang was particularly motivated to involve the local community in his project for Siwa. He commissioned over three hundred silk and bamboo kites, to be fashioned in the shapes of humans, eagles, and eyes, at Weifang, a Chinese town known for kite production. The Chinese kite tradition includes kites shaped like raptors or painted with human figures drawn from legend, but the eye was new to the repertoire. He then distributed the large kites—each roughly five feet square—to schools in Siwa, where six hundred children painted them with bright primary colors. The original plan called for flying the finished kites joined together in long strings, and then igniting gunpowder fuses running up each string of kites, for a glorious send-off. When the wind unexpectedly abated (the bad luck predicted by the fortune tellers), rendering it impossible to fly the kites, students carried the kites to the top of a rocky ridge where they were set alight via a gunpowder fuse—fabricated at the last minute with the help of the students—against the dramatic backdrop of a desert sunset. Some kites remained, to be used by a newly established local kite club.

In the 1980s Cai Guo-Qiang first created two-dimensional works of art with gunpowder, by painting on canvas and then burning a gunpowder drawing into the paint. Later he switched to paper. He has also burned such drawings onto the interior and exterior walls of buildings. Of all media, paper is the most sensitive to the burning gunpowder, and Cai has produced his most nuanced gunpowder drawings with that medium. As with other such works, Cai rendered Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky: People via a predictable series of steps whose results would be unpredictable—a kind of controlled chaos, characteristic of all Cai's gunpowder projects from the smallest to the most grand. He uses different kinds of gunpowder, some made to his specifications, sowing it across the paper with small or large gestures. Between layers of gunpowder he lays stencils, resulting in such silhouettes as the flying kite-figures and the strings tethering them in Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky: People. The controlled burn that sears the final image onto and into the paper leaves a subtle range of hues deployed in a manner representing the momentary release of contained energy—the gunpowder's chemical energy and the artist's creative energy—in a collaboration between the artist and one of the most uncontrollable forces in nature, fire.

With Man, Eagle and Eye in the Sky: People, Cai Guo-Qiang extrapolated from the site-specific work of art that transpired at Siwa, to express a moving vision of the place of human beings within the cosmos. Soaring through the swirling gray maelstrom of a scorched cosmos alive with energy, the spirits are propelled by unseen forces but anchored to the ground by slender tethers: Cai has long been interested in the relationship between human beings and the universe. Mounting the work as a set of folding panels ties the gunpowder drawing to the great tradition of Chinese painting, which features folding screens as an important painting format. Furthermore, the subtle range of tones apparent in the work is suggestive of the range of ink tones in Chinese brush and ink painting. As a child, Cai Guo-Qiang had studied calligraphy, as well as martial arts: a long-seated appreciation for those aesthetics, including the physical rhythm of the gesture, informs this work. Cai's medium of gunpowder may be revolutionary, but in other ways his work is deeply tied to tradition.