Violin (installation)

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Violin is a work of art by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei .

prehistory

Ai Weiwei lived in exile in New York between 1981 and 1993. First he had to put his artistic work on hold as he had to work to make a living in New York. Nevertheless, he moved early on in the New York art scene, in which Neo-Expressionism was dominant in the late 1980s . Weiwei joined this, but this type of art did not convince him. Rather, he was fascinated by the currents of surrealism , dadaism and pop art . In his early New York works there is therefore a reference to precisely these currents, their representatives as well as to contemporary American events, in which the topic of AIDS played a major role at the end of the 1980s . In 1988 Ai Weiwei had his first American exhibition, One Shoe-Safe Sex , made possible by the New York gallery owner Ethan Cohen, who had been specializing in contemporary Chinese artists since 1987. With his works Violin , Safe Sex , One Shoe and later Forever Bicycle , Ai Weiwei ties in with the dreamy and imaginative imagery of the surrealists, with the series in Andy Warhol's pop art, as well as with the ready-mades Marcel Duchamp .

Work description

Ai Weiwei's violin (63 × 23 × 7 cm) from 1985 corresponds to the body of a violin made of dark brown wood with the typical F-holes and a chinrest , but the neck of which has been replaced by the upper end of a garden tool. Instead of the fingerboard , saddle and snail , a piece of the style of a shovel or spade is mounted, which ends in a sturdy handle made of metal and wood. The body of the violin consists of a solid block of wood, strings and bridge are missing.

Interpretative approach

According to a classification by Francis M. Naumann of the various types of ready-made by Marcel Duchamp, Weiwei's violin can be classified under the category of assisted ready-made (supported ready-made: an everyday object that is combined with another object, i.e. by this is "supported"). Like Duchamp before him, Weiwei's violin refers to a questioning of the autonomy of art. He examines the boundary between art and non-art and provokes a free interpretation of the viewer through the self-reliance of the object. The bringing together of two completely disconnected objects separates the connection between the function and usefulness of the respective objects and thus challenges us to rethink stuck views. (Compare Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel from 1913). The expansion of the humanly limited area of ​​experience through the de-textualization of objects, fantasy and absurdity was also propagated by the surrealists. The Dadaists, on the other hand, challenged a certain irony in their works, which Ai Weiwei takes up, but places the importance of political issues higher.

With regard to Ai Weiwei's past, the violin can be used as a political statement and protest about the fate of his father. Their education and knowledge were compulsively mocked during the Cultural Revolution through manual labor, cleaning toilets with a shovel in a workers camp in northern China. If one follows this thesis, the violin is not only a very personal work of Ai Weiwei, but also a political commentary on the role of the artist in the Chinese cultural revolution and Mao's system of government at the time. With regard to the idea, production and design, a reference to Duchamp's ready-mades can be made, even if there are differences in content. According to Duchamp, the ready-made should have no relation to the artist's personal life. Ai Weiwei, on the other hand, uses his art as a kind of propaganda of his own. " It interests me to try and create something with no purpose to it; but to make art also creates a purpose. "

literature

  • Interviews with Hans Ulrich Obrist: Ai Weiwei speaks . Hanser, Munich 2011 ISBN 978-3-446-23846-6 .
  • Ai Weiwei: According to what? . Prestel Verlag, 2012, ISBN 3-7913-5240-7 .
  • Ai Weiwei. Works - Beijing 1993 - 2003 . Exhibition Kunsthalle Bern April 2, 2004 - May 30, 2004, Hong Kong: Timezone 8 2003. ISBN 988-97262-8-9 .
  • Ai Weiwei, Bernhard Fibicher [and a.]: Ai Weiwei . London: Phaidon 2009.
  • Francis M. Naumann: Marcel Duchamp - The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Harry N. Abrams, New York 1999, ISBN 0-8109-6334-5 .
  • Ai Weiwei: Architecture. Edited by Caroline Klein. Daab Media, Cologne 2010, ISBN 3-942597-01-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ai Weiwei in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
  2. ↑ Ai Weiwei in an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist.
  3. ↑ Figure
  4. ^ Francis M. Naumann: Marcel Duchamp - The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Harry N. Abrams, New York 1999
  5. ↑ Ai Weiwei in: Ai Weiwei, Bernhard Fibicher [u. a.]: Ai Weiwei . London: Phaidon 2009, p. 85.