Artist Sleeps Outside Till the Grass Grows

The artist's "piece is a commentary on human choice in the grand scheme of things…"

Artist He Yunchang (aka A Chang) is sleeping outside in Beijing's Caochangdi art village till the grass grows. (all photos by xingrui_beijing)

Artist Sleeps Outside Till the Grass Grows

hyperallergic.com

Since March 24, He Yunchang, also known as A Chang, has been sleeping outside in the Beijing artist village of Caochangdi (whose name literally means “Grassland/s”) until the grass is fully grown.

Ai Weiwei Ordered to Stop Self-Surveillance

Chinese authorities censor Ai Weiwei's surveillance of himself in his home...but their surveillance continues...

Ai Weiwei Ordered to Stop Self-Surveillance

blogs.wsj.com

Chinese authorities put the finishing touch on artist provocateur Ai Weiwei’s latest performance art piece, ordering him to turn off four live webcams he had installed inside his own home in a wry effort to turn state surveillance on its head.

World’s biggest buyer of contemporary art?

A leading art paper has called the tiny peninsula the world’s biggest buyer of contemporary art, spending around a billion dollars since 2005.

Takashi Murakami’s exhibition “Ego” opens at the Qatar Museum.

Qatar's arty investments

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From the $250mn purchase of Cezanne's The Card Players to investment in Takashi Murakami's Ego exhibit - first in Versailles and now Doha - Qatar's elite are spending hundreds of millions of in making the country a world-class destination.

Lot's of big art events going in Qater - want to visit again soon!

A video teaser to Takashi Murakami's first solo exhibition in the Middle East. Murakami - EGO will be on view from February 9 to June 24, 2012 in the Al-Riwaq exhibition hall, located on the grounds of the Museum of Islamic Art on Doha's Corniche. The exhibition will immerse visitors in a fantasy world conceived by the renowned Japanese artist, capturing the way Murakami channels the ecstasy and anxiety of contemporary culture.

Behind the scenes interview with Takashi Murakami - EGO, Doha Qatar 2012.

www.youtube.com

Behind the scenes with Takashi Murakami as he and his Kaikai Kiki team prepare to launch his first exhibition in Middle East. Opens 9 FEB 2012. For more info...

Louise Bourgeois Solo Show to Open in Qatar | Gallerist NY

www.galleristny.com/2012/01/9597/ - Cached

The first solo survey of the work of Louise Bourgeois in the Middle East will open tomorrow at the Qatar Museum Authority Gallery. The show will “contextualize” ...

William of Arabia: Chinese Contemporary Art in the Middle East!

williamjandersen.blogspot.com
One of my favorite artists now has a solo show up in Qatar! I believe Doha's Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, is really smart in bringing in a big name artist from outside the region, but also just as importantly, not the typical Western artist. I like Cai Guo-Qiang because he consistently comes up with thoughtful but unconventional ways to talk about his own heritage as well as historical and contemporary global trade and exchange. His artwork is smart but fun and easily appreciated by a larger audience. I hope to go soon!

The Most Expensive Painting Ever $250m Bought by Qatari Royal Family

www.artkuwait.org

Qatar has purchased a Paul Cézanne painting, The Card Players, for more than $250 million. The deal, in a single stroke, sets the highest price ever paid for a work of art and upends the modern art market. If the...

William of Arabia: World's Biggest Contemporary Art Buyer? Qatar!

Jul 20, 2011

You may know Qatar as the home of Al Jazeera but this small kingdom in the Persian Gulf is a major contemporary art buyer, according to Art Newspaper. see also: more on Qatar as the world's biggest contemporary art buyer ...

http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/

William of Arabia: more on Qatar as the world's biggest ...

Jul 20, 2011

Qatar as the world's biggest contemporary art buyer · www.artkuwait.org. see also: World's Biggest Contemporary Art Buyer? Qatar! Posted by William Andersen at 2:15 PM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to ...

http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/

William of Arabia: Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei? - Doha, Qatar

Jun 15, 2011

Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei? - Doha, Qatar. I got permission to put this "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" poster up in this little shop: Posted by William Andersen at 5:31 AM · Email ThisBlogThis!Share to TwitterShare to Facebook ...

http://williamjandersen.blogspot.com/

Art as the politics of the impossible

In light of a recent art exhibition in Doha, Hamid Dabashi writes that art must respond to a renewed Arab consciousness that is aware of what is happening in the Arab World. 

Cai Guo-Giang's opening at Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha [Hamid Dabashi/ Al Jazeera]

Art as the politics of the impossible

aje.me

Art scenes in the Arab world should reflect and anticipate the art that will emerge from these historical times.

Chinese Contemporary Art in the Middle East!

One of my favorite artists now has a solo show up in Qatar!  I believe Doha's Mathaf, the Arab Museum of Modern Art, is really smart in bringing in a big name artist from outside the region, but also just as importantly, not the typical Western artist.   I like Cai Guo-Qiang because he consistently comes up with  thoughtful but unconventional ways to talk about his own heritage as well as historical and contemporary global trade and exchange.  His artwork is smart but fun and easily appreciated by a larger audience.  I hope to go soon!

Pictured above: Installation view of Fragile (2011), Gunpowder on 480 panels of porcelain, 318 x 1800 cm (125 3/16 x 708 11/16 in.) overall, approximately 30 x 39.75 cm (11 13/16 x 15 5/8 in.) each panel, 480 panels in total, Commissioned by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Photo by Hiro Ihara, Courtesy Cai Studio

Link to Cai Guo-Qiang's Exhibit in Doha

And from Art Kuwait: 

www.artkuwait.org

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar – Exhibition of Cai Guo-Qiang

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art presents Cai Guo-Qiang: Saraab, a major exhibition featuring newly commissioned work by Cai Guo-Qiang. As Cai’s first solo exhibition in the Middle East and the first single-artist exhibition presented by Mathaf, Saraab opens new...

"We Need to Ai Weiwei": The Ai Weiwei Question on Chinese Social Media

As with the Wenzhou train collision last year, Chinese netizens are using images to circumvent censorship and show their support of Ai Weiwei.

This one shows Ai being whipped, with different types of punishments. The one the guard is holding says “tax evasion”. Others include stirring up trouble and causing a revolution.

"We Need to Ai Weiwei": The Ai Weiwei Question on Chinese Social Media

hyperallergic.com

What has the response to Ai Weiwei’s tax case been like in China? Netizens are using images to circumvent censorship and show support.

Ai Weiwei Absent (艾未未‧缺席)

Ai Weiwei, Forever Bicycles, 2011

Absent indeed - Taipei Times

www.taipeitimes.com

Ai Weiwei Absent (艾未未‧缺席), the appropriately titled exhibition currently on view at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM), is the best show of the Chinese artist’s work you are likely see in Taipei for at least the next few years. Unfortunately, the displayed works reveal little about why he has become...

Ai Weiwei vows to fight amid new challenge from authorities

Ai Weiwei vows to clear tax charges amid fresh challenge from authorities - Guardian - latestChina.com

...Hours before the deadline for paying the 15m yuan (£1.47m) fine, tax officials told the artist and human rights campaigner he could not use his mother's house as collateral and that there were problems with the funds he had raised in a public appeal.

"I only heard this morning about this money problem," Ai told the Guardian on Monday. "They put us in a very difficult situation. They are not following the law. There is nothing I can do"....

Ai Weiwei to challenge tax demand

Ai Weiwei to challenge tax demand

www.bbc.co.uk

Chinese artist and government critic Ai Weiwei says he will use money loaned from supporters to challenge his tax demand in court.

Chinese Citizens send Ai Weiwei over a million RMB in half a day!

The charges against Ai Weiwei are so obvious false, Chinese citizens send him over a million RMB online in half a day in protest against the powers that be...

Chinese Citizens Pay Ai Weiwei's Taxes

www.huffingtonpost.com

Not since Spartacus has there been such a widespread act of generosity for an activist and leader. On November 1, the Chinese government declared that dissident artist and activist Ai Weiwei owed $2.4 million dollars in unpaid taxes, and had to pay it back within the next 2 weeks.

Ai Weiwei supporters send him over a million RMB online in half a day: Shanghaiist

shanghaiist.com

On Tuesday, dissident-artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) who was freed not too long ago from an 81-day detention, was slapped with a RMB15 million fine for tax evasion, a princely sum he has been given 15 days to cough up. The very next day, his mother Ai Ying (高瑛) and brother Ai Dan (艾丹) announced that they we...

Chinese netizens help Ai Weiwei pay taxes

Chinese netizens help Ai Weiwei pay taxes Financial Times  By Kathrin Hille and Jamil Anderlini in Beijing Thousands of Chinese have donated money online to help Ai Weiwei pay a $2.4m tax bill, in a rare fundraising ...

Ai Weiwei named most powerful person in art world

Ai Weiwei 'most powerful artist'

www.bbc.co.uk

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is named the most powerful person in the art world, according to a poll compiled by ArtReview magazine.

Putting Ai Weiwei in perspective, the MAM panel - Art City

From: Mary-Louise Schumacher

The panel on Ai Weiwei put the artists "release" in perspective and was both a condemnation of MAM's initial response and, to a lesser degree, a vindication of sorts as well.

Putting Ai Weiwei in perspective, the MAM panel - Art City

www.jsonline.com

It was telling that it was the political science professor and not the art experts who best articulated the meaning of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's detention at a recent panel discussion at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

See also:

• Panel Discussion: Ai Weiwei: The Collision of Art ...
• China and Taiwan Reunite Painting
• Ai Weiwei, Freed Chinese Artist, Said to Be Back a...
• Ai Weiwei accepts visiting lecturer position at Be...
• Ai Weiwei's sister gives details of his confinemen...
• seems like Berlin is the place to be (at least for...
• more "dissidents" heading to Germany...
• two very smart, very perceptive, but opposing view...
• more on Milwaukee's Summer of China from Thirdcoas...
• contemporary Chinese art lecture TONIGHT!

contemporary Chinese art lecture TONIGHT!

Shi Xinning - Conemplating Duchamp (2006)

Milwaukee Art Museum

 

Tonight: Join Melissa Chiu from the Asia Society for a special lecture on contemporary Chinese art. Lubar Auditorium, 6:15 p.m., free with Museum admission, and air conditioned!