1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: The story of two lives, one nation, and a century of art under tyranny

Product Information

However, he’d been so deeply affected by his experience in the camps that he never felt comfortable in this elite school. The collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 mired the country in turmoil, but it also stirred in its youths new possibilities for the future.

People can change) reading on the subway while making little notes in the margins about the necessity of sacrificing ones’ self for artistic expression, while literally attending NYU.

According to the officer, Ai’s high profile has made him an expedient tool for Westerners to attack China, but “pawns sooner or later all get sacrificed.

One of his father’s earliest works, written in Paris, describes his fellow exiles “loving freedom, hating war / In a fury over these things / In anguish over them / Working up a sweat / Tears in their eyes”. Dabei holt er aus und erzählt uns die Geschichte seines Vaters, dessen Verbannung unter Mao an die äussersten Rände China zu einem Leben in den widrigsten Umständen Ai Weiweis Charakter nachhaltig prägte und stählte. Throughout his life, Ai has sacrificed almost every creature comfort and stability in pursuit of his artistic freedom (and the right of others to enjoy the same) against overwhelming odds, enduring a fallen-apart marriage, an art studio bulldozed before his eyes, hostile 24/7 surveillance by Chinese police and state, and much more. But “to me the loss of the freedom to express myself was itself tantamount to captivity,” and soon Ai Weiwei was tweeting about his prison experiences.

I love going to museums but I’m not very knowledgeable about art, and particularly ignorant about modern art. As a child living in exile during the Cultural Revolution, Ai Weiwei often found himself with nothing to read but government-approved comic books. The RA is a unique institution, an independent charity with a mission to be a clear, strong voice for art and artists, where art is made, exhibited and debated. An illuminating through-line emerges in the many parallels Ai traces between his life and his father’s. Inspired by the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac and their associated human characteristics, Ai Weiwei masterfully interweaves ancient Chinese folklore with stories of his life, family, and career.

It features extensive visual material to trace Ai’s development from his early New York days right through to his recent practice. Red Guards put banners outside their shack that read, “Expose Ai Qing’s True Counter-Revolutionary Colors! The way that Ai père et fils sought justice, truth, freedom, and liberty in the face of the party’s myriad oppressive attacks makes them of a kind.

The first part of the book felt disjointed and detached, as though he were writing about someone and something that was foreign to him.