Ai Weiwei

Private Collection

Ai Weiwei, Ai Weiwei Sun Flower Seeds, London: Tate Publishing, 2010, p. 52 (another example illustrated)

Kataoka, M., Matsubara, H. & Merewether, C., Ai Weiwei—According to What? Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2009, p. 39, 40 (another example illustrated)

Ai, W. & Siemons, M., Ai Weiwei: So Sorry. Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2009 p. 81 (another example illustrated)

Fok, S., The Stars Artists: Pioneers of Contemporary Chinese Art 1979–2000, Taipei: Artist Publishing Co., 2007, p. 162 (another example illustrated)

Merewether, C., Ai Weiwei Works: Beijing 1993–2003. Hong Kong: Timezone 8, 2003, p. 105 (another example illustrated) 

“Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act.” — Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei is not only one of China’s most controversial contemporary artists, but also an influential architect, curator, and blogger. He has had over 50 architectural projects in China, including the “Bird’s Nest” in Beijing, a collaboration with the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron. Ai, who spent twelve years in the United States, is deeply influenced by Western modernists like Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns. Subversion, appropriation, juxtaposition, satire, and the ready-made are some of the strategies he uses in his installations. Hopeful for change and intensely critical at the same time, Ai’s works are always in dialogue with the sociopolitical realities of contemporary China, and he may be regarded as a mirror of his country’s rapid transformations in the recent decades. Although Ai has always been marginalized and even denounced in China, he has been invited by many international museums to exhibit his works, including the solo show Sunflower Seeds in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London; Ai Weiwei: According to What currently on tour in the United States; and, earlier in his career, Documenta in Kassel, Germany. Mami Kataoka, Chief Curator of the Mori Art Museum, encapsulates Ai’s significance in an essay dedicated to According to What: “He seems to be asking us not to observe China from a distance as the “other” but to consider the country from our own context, and in so doing, seeking universal values that connect China and the rest of the world at a fundamental level”. (Mami Kataoka, “According to What? – A Questioning Attitude,” Ai Weiwei - According to What, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Mori Art Museum and Del Monico Books Prestel, 2012, p.10)

Table with Three Legs represents a groundbreaking, revolutionary gesture and pivotal artwork in the development of contemporary Chinese art. The artist has removed a leg from a Ming-dynasty table and repurposed and reassembled it using the mortise-and-tenon joinery technique. Infused with Dadaism, it represents the search for a new Chinese artist language, but at the same time evokes nostalgia for China’s craft traditions. The transformed table seems to mirror contemporary China. As Ai himself says, “We move too fast. Memory is what we can grasp. Memory is that which we most hold on to as we move at a rapid pace.” More importantly, the work re-presents traditional culture in a new form and reexamines the significance of traditional art and craft for the Chinese people. The sculpture appears “useless,” but this “uselessness” is precisely what makes it powerful as cultural critique.