I wrote about this earlier and the post drew a huge audience. I thought that that was that but another act of stupidity is underway. This weekend the New York Times published an article that represents round two in the saga of the artist who smashed one of Ai Weiwei’s pots in the Pérez Museum in Miami:
“The mustering of support for their fellow artist, Maximo Caminero, who has been charged with criminal mischief and could face up to five years in prison if convicted, includes a defense of the intellectual underpinnings of his action. ‘We do not support the act, but we support the intention,’ said Danilo Gonzalez, a painter and sculptor who said he spoke for many of his fellow artists.
“While Mr. Caminero’s purpose, as he initially expressed it shortly after breaking the vase on Feb. 16, was to draw attention to a dearth of exhibition space for local artists in Miami’s museums, he has since said that he was driven more by a spontaneous impulse to emulate Mr. Ai’s own destruction of vases, some thousands of years old.”
It sounds noble in some ways, but let’s forget that Maximo Caminero claims to be an artist for one moment. What if he was just a deranged museum goer who decided to break a pot? The art world would be united in its outrage at this barbarian act. But he is an artist. So we treat it as performance art.
The work he damaged is from Weiwei’s most important assembly of painted pots. It’s not just another group in this large series. Not that it would matter, but this is his masterpiece. I doubt that many of the artists expressing support for Caminero would be as friendly if he had done the same thing to one of their major works. So I sense a little artifice here and maybe a little Ai envy.
What I find most damming is that Caminero acted out of bedrock ignorance. He had no knowledge of what Ai was saying in his art and he had no knowledge that Ai was working with actual prehistoric pots. As reported above, protesting the poor un-exhibited Miami artists was not his motivation but his excuse. It was an impulsive and stupid act.
I think we should think twice before setting up a defense fund when someone commits a destructive act based on ignorance and stupidity in a public place where we trust visitors to behave rationally. Bear in mind I am not saying that Caminero is either ignorant or stupid overall; he might otherwise be a genius for all I know.
But he should pay for own defense, go to trial and suffer whatever consequences the law administers for such acts. And it should serve as a lesson to wannabes.
Lastly, the fact that a photograph of a pot being smashed motivated him to smash one himself makes me wonder if he is indeed an artist himself. This is the crudest response imaginable to a work of art.
In a survey taken three years ago about right wingers and their perception of art, the study revealed that they cannot differentiate between art and advertisements and believe that they play the same role.
So to them a statue of the Rape of Europa admonished the viewer to rush out of the museum and commit the same act. It explained a lot.
Caminero is acting out of the same coarse, misguided impulse. If he truly is an artist he would have found a more aesthetic and original solution that did not involve destroying a major work by a fellow artist. Let him serve jail time.
Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of CFile.
Above image: Detail from the center panel in Ai Weiwei’s photographic triptych, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn.
Any thoughts about this post? Share yours in the comment box below.
Read the full article at the New York Times
Read our earlier commentary on the act
Garth, I think you overstate the case. Wei Wei’s installation was not impossible to repair. He can simply get one of his minions to paint a similar pot in the same color, and the repaired version will be indistinguishable from the original. Great pains of conservation are not required. I think all that huffing about “masterpiece” is not necessary. And whether you find Mr. Caminero’s logic to be a reason or an excuse, I think you could find his cause interesting, and maybe even valid. As conceptual art, Caminero’s gesture may be crude, but you have to admit it’s amusing. Personally, I would be much more upset if the damage was impossible to undo. In the meantime, I think even Wei Wei sees the irony here.
Of course I must agree that this was an act of vandalism which will have consequences, but there is certainly a dose of comedy here as well, and I am not sure it is entirely disrespectful to Ai Wei Wei to acknowledge it.
It is if a man on the street has bumbled into an absurdist theatre and made some natural comments that leave the actors and playwright angry but the audience is snickering. We can agree that the theatre piece had some significance and still find humor in the fact that it’s misinterpretation is almost as good or (perish the thought) superior.
I’ve always wondered what makes a conceptual art work a “masterpiece.” Isn’t the point more important than the physical work? Can’t Wei Wei collect a million $ from the insurance company (cha-ching!) and dribble some paint on another Han Vase, which as you say are actually quite common.
My favorite conceptual masterpiece is John Cage’s piece of silence. I didn’t realize I was a genius until I listened to it and realized I had been humming along with it my whole life!
But enough mockery. Wei Wei has appropriated ancient chinese pottery to break it or desecrate it with disney pastel colors to say what? That the heritage of chinese craftsmanship is being whored by McDonald’s happy meal toys, and at the same time that we take the chinese legacy for ancient craftsmanship too seriously. It is difficult to see both points at once, and I may be misinterpreting the work. But frequently work has meanings the author don’t intend.
Caminero didn’t seem to understand that the work had value. He thought they were pots that had come from Home Depot. Isn’t that part of what makes these things interesting? They look so silly and cheap, how could they be ancient artifacts? Wei Wei has rewritten them forever. I wouldn’t do that but Wei Wei’s ego is certainly up to the task, and I begrudgingly applaud him. By and large he succeeds in making a very clever point.
On the other hand, if an artist uses the destructive power of smashing or desecrating the work of others (even if the makers are dead and long forgotten), we can’t worry too much when the karma catches up. In a bizarre way, it is a celebration of the work which has allowed the dialogue Wei Wei started to continue to develop.