Andy Warhol & Ai Weiwei

Art Outings

I had the best time today at The Andy Warhol Museum! Get this! 7 floors of Andy Warhol’s and Ai Weiwei’s works, side by side. Amazing! Whereas, the Ai Weiwei exhibit at Carnegie Museum of Art was just his Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads, the Warhol featured almost all of Weiwei’s works. I got to see two of his works which I shared in the my previous blog post about Weiwei: Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995) and Tea Brick (2006). However, the Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn wasn’t displayed as photographs. According to the description, Weiwei recreated his iconic work in legos, and in a pixelated form, to argue the distribution of images by digital technologies. It was really awesome to see Warhol’s and Weiwei’s works side by side. It allowed me to see how much of an influence Warhol was to Weiwei. Each floor “focus[ed] on the parallels, intersections, and points of differences between their practices.” I saw how one person represented the 20th century (Warhol), while the other represented this current century (Weiwei). I was surprised to see how their respective works on Mao were similar to one another. They both featured his face and his signature stance, except they were executed with different materials. Weiwei painted his Maos’ with oil on canvas, while Warhol used acrylic paint and silkscreen ink on linen fabric. At the end of my visit, I came to a conclusion. Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol both produced work on controversial subjects during controversial time periods. If you guys have the chance, I highly recommend seeing Weiwei’s exhibit at Carnegie first, and then see this second exhibit at the Warhol!

Check out my post on Ai Weiwei for a refresher!

Check out my trip!

P.S. This got me annoyed! Can you tell what’s wrong? Also, I’ll put up captions later. I’m having some technical difficulties.

My Trip To Carnegie Museum of Art

Art Outings

Yesterday, I visited the Carnegie Museum of Art for two particular exhibitions: Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (AAP) 105th Annual Exhibition. Ai Weiwei’s exhibit was so cool! These huge zodiac heads were erected on these bases and were placed accordingly to form a circle as the name of the exhibit suggests. There also was a little handout that told you the order of the heads and the meanings of that particular animal. All of these zodiac heads were so detailed! I was surprised by their height and the size of their heads. Their heads were bigger than mine! I have a selfie with my zodiac animal (rat) to prove it! Weiwei amazed me again!

The Associated Artists of Pittsburgh 105th Annual Exhibition was cool too! Once I entered the gallery, I instantly gravitated towards a rainbow colored piece of art. Upon further inspection, I found out they were all made of dyed phone books. Another piece I liked was Hand-Typed Check Shirt (2016) by Lenka Clayton. Clayton disassembled a cotton shirt at the seams into 21 parts, and then ran each of them through a typewriter. She created the pattern by pressing on the equals key over 30,000 times. After she was done printing the pieces, she hand-sewn each of the pieces back together again. I found that so creative and the tedious, as well. She has remarkable patience! All of the works in this exhibit were outstanding! There was a little of everything there. There were mixed media pieces, photographs, drawings, paintings, and sculptures. They were all so interestingly different!

I didn’t just see these two exhibits during my visit. I saw some of the works of the artist, Alison Knowles. This was the first time I was exposed to Ms. Knowles work. I found that her works were very hands-on, bright, and very different from one another. She did a lot of screen printing and collage work. I also visited the Scaife Gallery to see if there was anything new in there since my last visit in April (Art History and History of GD!). I saw some of the works of my favorite artists: Monet, Van Gogh, Klimt, and Munch. I was also delighted to see the Collection of Miniatures. I really wished that there were miniature people in these little settings!

Instead of putting all of my photographs from my visit altogether, I decided to divide them up into three sections: Ai Weiwei’s exhibit, AAP’s exhibit, and the rest of my trip. This was such a great trip! I’m planning on finally going to the Andy Warhol Museum sometime this weekend, especially now that I have a 25% discount off my ticket for Ai Weiwei’s exhibit there.

Handout Front

Handout Back

Rat

Tiger

Rabbit

Dragon

Snake

Horse

Goat

Monkey

Rooster

Dog

Pig

Selfie!

Continua (2011) by Katie Murken

Blooming Membrane (2015) by Gary Jurysta

Waterfall Vision (2016) Jennifer Nagle Myers

Absence (2016) by Rebecca J. Harmon

Hand-Typed Check Shirt (2016) by Lenka Clayton

Strength of Stele by Sarika Goulatia

Women in Field (2016) by Alan Horowitz

Big Break by Corey Escoto

The Dream is Ended: This is the Morning (2015) by Laurie Trok

Elephant Man (2015) by John A. Mayer

Alison Knowles

A Rake’s Progress (2008) by Alison Knowles

Quecha (7 Indian Moons) (1987) by Alison Knowles

Four Shoes (2011) by Alison Knowles

Book Jacket (2006) by Alison Knowles

In and Out the Window (Banner) (2010) by Alison Knowles

Girl under Apple Tree by Edvard Munch

Water Lilies (c. 1915-1926) by Claude Monet

Place des Lices, St. Tropez (1893) by Paul Signac

Self Portrait (c. 1883-1887) by Paul Cezanne

Collection of Miniatures

Ai Weiwei: China’s Rebel

Uncategorized

Ai Weiwei was born in Beijing, China in the year 1957. He is a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of China’s authoritarian regime. In April of 2011, Weiwei was arrested by Chinese authorities and was isolated from the outside world for almost three months. After his release, the government prohibited him from leaving Beijing for one year and he was also not allowed to travel without government permission. As a result, he became China’s symbol for the struggle of human rights in China.

Ai is greatly influenced by the works of Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp, and Jasper Johns. In fact, he spent his formative years as artist in New York City during the ‘80s when Warhol was considered a god. In a Smithsonian Magazine article, he basically said that this experience allowed him to understand how to “combine his life and art into a daring and politically charged performance that helps define how we see modern China.” He has gained an international audience with his work. He doesn’t really have a particular visual style either in any of his work. He tends to venture into different mediums such as sculpting, photography, architecture, and even social media to deliver his social message.

So why am I writing about him? Because I’m going to see his new exhibit at the Andy Warhol Museum next week. I came across his work for the first time when I was doing my preliminary research on art censorship for my English final last year. I like how all of his works have some social message behind it. I also admire the fact that he doesn’t stick to one platform or genre to get his message out to the world. One of my favorite works of his is Sunflower Seeds (2010). This was an installation made up of millions of small, identical but unique works that were hand-crafted in porcelain. Ai decided to have these seeds made out porcelain because it is widely associated with China. Ai’s message for this installation was to take closer look at the whole “Made in China” sensation in the world and to take a look at the geopolitics of cultural and economic exchange. Ai Weiwei is a brave man to stand up against the harsh Chinese government with his artworks. He truly is China’s rebel artist.

Here are some his works: