Prospero | Ai Weiwei

Artist not in residence

"Ai Weiwei at Blenheim Palace"

By G.G.D.

THIS is not the first time a historic home has been used to showcase contemporary art, or that a radical artist has been co-opted by the establishment, but the scale and scope of "Ai Weiwei at Blenheim" surely make it one of the most ambitious. For the next few weeks the lavish state rooms and salons of Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, will house 50 works by the Chinese artist, some of them site-specific pieces made for the exhibition. That the opening of Ai Weiwei’s biggest UK retrospective to date coincided with the demonstrations in Hong Kong has only made it more poignant. This, the Blenheim Art Foundation’s first exhibition, is an ambitious statement of intent.

The settings for the pieces in this retrospective are, for the most part, inspired. And the fact that Mr Ai, who has been unable to leave China since 2011 as a result of his social activism, had to find homes for his pieces using 3D videos and models is only occasionally noticeable. The gargantuan, cascading chandelier hanging from the opulent baroque ceiling of the great hall is a tour de force. Its social subtext—as a signifier for conspicuous overconsumption and the boom of a status-conscious wealthy class in China—is perhaps somewhat lost in the grandiosity of a space where it looks thoroughly at home, but it is nevertheless a dazzling opener.

A collection of gold-plated Zodiac animal busts, "Circle of Animals" (2010), looks resplendent lined up in Blenheim’s state dining room between 18th-century Chinese gold plates and vases from the palace’s own collections. Mr Ai's work was inspired by the fountain sculptures in the Summer Palace in Beijing that were torched and looted in 1860 by French and British soldiers. The regal yet cartoon-ish animal heads are an uneasy reminder that though the Cultural Revolution destroyed much of China’s artistic heritage, the West is by no means blameless.

Other pieces shine too. The deep blue porcelain orbs of "Bubble" (2008) sprout in a geometrical grid design from the lawn, each carrying reflections of the opulent palace and gardens in their simple glazed surfaces. Elsewhere there are five Han-dynasty vases bathed in standard car paints (both damaging and protecting them in the process). The specially commissioned "Soft Ground" carpet is designed to look as if a vehicle as run over it with mudded tyres, but visitors wouldn’t know it was a piece in the show unless they were told. Mr Ai’s tumbling pile of 2,300 hand-painted porcelain crabs ("He Xie", 2010) lying adrift on a carpet under the watchful eye of several Van Dyck-painted Churchill ancestors in the Red Drawing Room is also visually arresting. Crabs are part of the artist’s personal mythology, the word for river crab in Chinese sounds very similar to that for harmony, a key slogan of the Chinese government.

The visitor's handout could do more to fill in the context of the works on display. The power of some pieces, such as the handcuffs made out of the precious huali wood used to make luxury furniture in China, and strewn lasciviously across the bed in Churchill’s birth-room, could be lessened as a result of insufficient knowledge. Some will know Ai Weiwei was handcuffed and interrogated repeatedly when arrested in 2011; many may not.

The palace’s library, a long, light-dappled room designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) and filled with historic tomes, gilded domes and a nineteenth-century organ, is now also home to Mr Ai's "Study of Perspective" series. These photographs show iconic monuments, views and government buildings foregrounded by the artist’s middle finger as if to offer perspective. Here they are hung on their sides—whether by accident or by design is unclear. Some visitors who have come to Blenheim for Churchill and the Capability Brown-designed gardens are visibly turned off. One American visitor told a rather uncomfortable-looking guide that the room had been ruined, the day before another had asked for the photos to be taken down—he considered them inflammatory.

Ai Weiwei would probably find the discomfort amusing—paradoxically his absence seems to make you imagine his presence more strongly. Through his work he appears at times to be repudiating the palace and everything it stands for, at others he seems to be extolling its beauty. This exhibition is a clever, dizzying and irreverent high- and low-culture kaleidoscope of periods, ideas and values. It raises questions and provokes but never provides easy answers.


"Ai Weiwei at Blenheim Palace" runs till April 26th 2015

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