We met outside Tate Modern. The location was convenient for us both and held shared fond memories of aimless Sunday afternoon strolls along the South Bank. She brought along her new baby, a happy, sociable little soul, and we sat under the west wall of the old power station for over an hour and had so much to say we kept interrupting each other. We were better friends, it seemed to me, thinking about it afterwards, than when we were ‘together’.
We had no plans to go inside the Tate and look at the art. But the concrete ramp leading down to the Turbine Hall entrance was only ten yards away, and entry was free, and as an afterthought we decided to pop down and take a quick look at the porcelain sunflower seeds. If you haven’t heard or read about these, there are a hundred million of them, combined weight 150 tons, spread out in a thousand-square-metre heap on the floor. It’s a work of art, sponsored by Unilever. Each seed has been moulded, painted and fired by hand. Directed by the Chinese artist, 1,600 skilled porcelain workers took two-and-a-half years to produce them.
His original idea was that the public should treat his grey rectangular heap of porcelain sunflower seeds as an afternoon at the beach. We should bring the family, and relax or play on it. After the seeds had been disturbed by hundreds of art lovers’ feet, however, an unforeseen dust was detected in the air. This dust was deemed possibly noxious to asthmatics, and the seeds were immediately roped off. Now the general public is allowed to stand at the edges and look.
Pushing the baby ahead of us, we walked down the ramp and into the Turbine Hall. There it was: an impressive, industrial quantity of hand-crafted sunflower seeds bounded by a thin line of viewers. The authorised version is that the seeds symbolise, among other things, mass consumption, human individuality, Chinese industry, Chairman Mao and famine. But as a proud philistine I had my mental sneer in place and my dismissive comments composed before I’d even crossed the threshold. Modern art? It’s all political, innit? Who is this guy anyway? What a slag! Did someone say Unilever? And so on.
But when we went up close and saw, or imagined I saw, the beauty and individuality of each seed, it took the wind out my sails. Confronted by the fruit of so much careful, intricate labour, my bone-headed prejudice of half a minute before thoroughly embarrassed me. And when I contrasted the stupid arrogance with which I had approached the seeds, and the humility with which they were presented in an undifferentiated heap on the floor, I felt sad for all of us.
Of course I didn’t let on to her that my hard-line attitude had crumbled and I had allowed myself to be affected. It would have ruined my image. On the way out I went inside the darkened video booth where you can ask the artist a question and he’ll get back to you. A plump, monkish face appeared on the screen. The hooded, stoner eyes were politely downcast. He had a long goatee beard. ‘Ask me a question,’ he said. ‘So are you married, boss?’ I said.
After that we went upstairs and had a bite to eat in the restaurant. The waitress was French. She was going off shortly, she said. Which was just as well as she’d had enough. God, she said, how she hated the public today. It was Gauguin’s fault. Gauguin! What a joke! France’s most rubbish painter and all we ignorant English come flocking in to see him like a lot of Pavlov’s dogs and run her off her feet. Anything else?
When we’d finished our tea, she wheeled her little girl off to the facilities to change her nappy. I sat on at the table and that plump, monkish face with the goatee beard rose again in my imagination like a full moon. It was a powerful face, such as I’ve rarely seen; a face, if ever there was one, set apart for greatness. When I got home, I Googled him.
Ai Weiwei is China’s most famous living artist and the communist state’s most outspoken living critic, I read. He first gained the attention of the international art world in 2000 as co-curator of the notorious Shanghai art exhibition Fuck Off, which included the display of human body parts. His early years were spent in a Manchurian labour camp where his poet father was made to clean the lavatories. And if he keeps on banging on about liberty and dignity the way he has been lately, by all accounts, his next work, let’s call it ‘Pass the Domestos’, will not be available to a worldwide public.
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