The honor is the latest sign of how Ai’s fame has soared following his arrest at Beijing airport in April and subsequent 81 days in detention amid a crackdown on dissidents, lawyers, and government critics. Although freed, he remains under investigation for economic crimes and has been warned not to make public statements ….

Asked for comment, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said it would be inappropriate to consider politics in making the selection.

“I think there are many artists in China who are competent to be candidates for the magazine. If this was done with political prejudice, it would be a violation of the purpose and principles of the magazine,” Liu said.

The magazine itself disagrees, saying in its announcement of the results that Ai won “as a result of his activism as much as his art practice”. From his entry on the list itself:

… Ai’s power and influence derive from the fact that his work and his words have become catalysts for international political debates that affect every nation on the planet: freedom of expression, nationalism, economic power, the Internet, the rights of the human being.

Most important of all, Ai’s activities have allowed artists to move away from the idea that they work within a privileged zone limited by the walls of a gallery or museum. They have reminded his colleagues and the world at large of the fact that freedom of expression is a basic right of any human being. In the process, Ai has promoted the notion that art’s real context is not simply ‘the market’ or ‘the institution’, but what’s happening now, around us, in the real world.

But ArtReview’s editor denied that Ai’s selection was purely political. From Reuters:

“Of course it’s something about political activism that runs through the list this year,” he told Reuters.

“But I think it’s more about expanding the concept of art that’s not really solely contained in the privileged space of museums and galleries. It’s about how it engages with the world.

“It’s expanding the possibilities of what you can do with art and as an artist how you can use your voice.”

Ai Weiwei himself argued that it was impossible to separate his art from his circumstances and, while pleased by the accolade, told the BBC that “I don’t feel powerful at all”:

“I don’t have this concept to separate my art from my daily life. I think they are one thing to me. They are always one.

“How do you find a way to express yourself and how to communicate with others? Art is how we put our lives to deal with our living conditions.”

(Click through for audio.)

Also on the list are Asia Art Archive co-founders Chang Tsong-zung & Claire Hsu (=70th) and collector Richard Chang (73rd).

Although Ai is forbidden to travel, Internet access extends his reach beyond Beijing. The New York Times describes a recent online collaboration between Ai and photographer Max Vadukul in New York:

In an unusual collaboration with W magazine, Mr. Ai created a story line for a series of photos that were shot on location in New York by the photographer Max Vadukul as Mr. Ai looked on, art directing via Skype on a laptop computer. The photos will appear in the November issue, W’s sixth annual one devoted to art. They depict a woman, dressed in the requisite designer outfit, being captured, handcuffed and hooded on the street by two menacing figures and taken to a grim institution — a disused part of Rikers — where they watch her shower.

The scenes are reminiscent of photos Mr. Ai took of the Tompkins Square riots in the 1980s, when he lived in New York, which he used as inspiration for the project. They also unavoidably refer to his own confinement, which China’s government has forbidden him from discussing.

“It’s a very astute way of communicating with the world outside of China,” said Melissa Chiu, director of Asia Society Museum, which organized an exhibition of Mr. Ai’s New York-era photos this summer. “I think that what it does is signal that he is prepared to continue his art practice and continue his statements that really can be related to his political activism.”

Sources:

Magazine names Ai Weiwei most powerful artist – Associated Press
2011 Power 100 – ArtReview
1. Ai Weiwei – The ArtReview Power 100 – ArtReview
China’s Ai Weiwei tops annual ArtReview power list – Reuters
Ai Weiwei ‘does not feel powerful’ – BBC News
Dissident Creates by Remote Control – NYTimes.com

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The Palace Museum in Beijing has agreed to lend works of art to the National Palace Museum in Taipei for an exhibition next autumn, temporarily bringing together a small part of China’s imperial collection for the first time in 60 years, both museums said on Monday.

The art works — mainly paintings of Emperor Yongzheng, an 18th century ruler of China, and his concubines — are part of China’s immense imperial art collection, long divided by strife. The Nationalists took nearly a quarter of the collection, including most of the best works, when they lost China’s civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan.

Read also the reporter’s previous article China and Taiwan to Confer on Imperial Art Treasures Split by History via CDT.

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Often compared with New York’s Greenwich Village or SoHo, 798 Art Zone (Chinese: 798艺术区), or Dashanzi Art District, is a part of Dashanzi in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that houses a thriving artist community, among 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings of unique architectural style. It faces impending destruction from the forces driving Beijing’s urban sprawl.

The district’s popularity has exploded since the opening of BTAP and 798 Space in 2002, with scores of galleries, lofts, publishing firms, design companies, high-end tailor shops, cafés and fancy restaurants setting up. In 2003, around 30 artists and organizations had set up studios or offices in the area, with 200 more reportedly on the waiting list to move in….

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“Olympic Fine Arts 2008,” a cultural event organized by the International Olympic Committee and Chinese Olympic Committee, kicked off here Thursday morning. The organizers will invite well-known artists from over 80 countries and regions to display their works in the event, whose themes are “Sports and Olympism” and “China, the World.”

In addition, renowned Chinese artists will be invited to produce pieces for a related exhibition and contest. Works will include Chinese painting, oil painting, print art, sculptures and digital art. A panel of Chinese and foreign art experts will evaluate the submitted works….[Full Text]

[Image: Launching ceremony, from BOCOG via Xinhua]

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(Image from Studio360)
- Original audio and more culture related audios here

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Your first reaction upon meeting Yue Minjun might be, yes, it is indeed he! The face with the enigmatic, jaw-breaking grin, perhaps the most recognizable image in contemporary Chinese painting, is a self-portrait.

“Yes, it’s me,” Mr. Yue said in a recent interview, and he smiled, though in a gentler, less face-splitting fashion than the man in his paintings ” the one who drifts Zelig-like past various familiar backgrounds making a sardonic, or perhaps ironically despairing, comment on the passing scene….[Full Text]

(Image: Yue Minjun in front of his artwork at his studio in Beijing, via NYT)
- Read also Behind The Smile via CDT
- See a slideshow of Yue’s paintings via NYT

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…Since the early 1990s, Minjun’s works, both paintings and sculpture, have featured figures wearing the same facial expression–a wide, oddly enigmatic smile. The eerie, tongue-in-cheek image is meant to provoke a reaction beyond laughter; it serves as commentary on modern-day China.

The characters seem happy, but are they really? Like Communist propaganda posters that depict workers toiling away in communal bliss, Minjun’s art asks us to consider what lies behind the smile. The artist has said that his subjects are grinning with their eyes closed because he doesn’t want them to see the world around them….[Full Text]

- See also the news video by CNN below:

(...)
Read the rest of Behind The Smile – Nina P. West (36 words)

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[Click to see the original video]

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Ballerinas with machine guns will grace the stage for the first performance at China National Grand Theatre, when the spectacular arts complex opens its doors on Tuesday.

The Red Detachment of Women(Á∫¢Ëâ≤®òÂ≠êÂÜõ) ballet is one of seven shows that will be put on during a trial of the silver, egg-shaped building designed by the French architect Paul Andreu….[Full Text]

[Image: Workers clean the floor outside the National Grand Theatre in Beijing to prepare for its opening. Photograph: Xing Guangli/AP]

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Keeping pace in modern technology has prevented contemporary Chinese artists from dying before the West learned of them.No wonder the stock market is lagging, and the money is being invested in Chinese art. On June 21 at Sotheby’s, Chinese artists, which most will not have heard of, set records. Yue Minjun’s (Â≤≥ÊïèÂêõ) “The Pope” set a world record for a contemporary Chinese work at $4.3 million. Zhang Xiaogang‘s “The Bloodline” did okay at $2 million plus.

China has had no tradition of contemporary art or contemporary art museums. In considering accomplishments, or lack of, in Chinese contemporary art, one needs to remember that China is maybe where the West was in 1885-1900. By that time, art was making great advances in Europe. Every American artist that could scrape together $2 rushed off to Paris….[Full Text]

[Image: Yue Minjun's "The Pope," 1997. Selling at $4.3 million, it set a world record for contemporary Chinese painting, via Knox County Times]
- Read also related previous report here via CDT

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(...)
Read the rest of Slideshow: Fine Art Show – Chinese Oil Paintings – Beautiful Women (0 words)

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When people talk about the “dirtier” side of China’s economic development they usually mean air and water pollution. But there’s more to it than that, as a gallery show currently on in Shanghai demonstrates.

Liu Jianhua is a sculptor who first caught the art world’s attention in the mid 1990s with his headless figures in traditional Chinese dress skewering the West’s exotic perceptions of China. Now he’s turned his attention to rubbish. His latest work, “Export-Cargo Transit” — an installation composed of several individual works — consists of plastic, paper and metal scrap imported into China from Western countries and Japan….[Full Text]

[Image: Liu Jianhua and his latest work, via WSJ]

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When the exhibition “Inside Out: New Chinese Art” opened at Asia Society and P.S. 1 in 1998, it caused a stir because it both did and did not meet expectations of contemporary art from China.

The show had plenty of Mao portraits, but they came with jokes: Mao behind bars, Mao in Pop colors, with beauty marks and a flower in his teeth. There was also calligraphy, but it was messed-up calligraphy: illegible, computerized, used to write nonsense characters, fake language….[Full Text]

[Image of Zhang Huan via NYT]

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In a biopic released in 1994, Gong Li played Pan Yuliang, the late female painter known in China more for her legendry life than her artistic achievements. The scene that she sketched in a public bathroom caused a big stir in China then. Nine years later, another beautiful actress, Michele Lee, brought the painter to life again in a TV drama.

But Pan, who started from a brothel and wound up in Paris as a lonely painter haunted by impoverishment and nostalgia, is not as pretty as many assume, at least not in her self-portraits. Through November 15, 200 of her works, including 10 self-portraits, will be on exhibition in the Capital Museum. Half of them have never been publicly shown before….[Full Text]

[Image: Huang Xiuying, vice-curator of Anhui Museum, explains one of Pan Yuliang's self-portaits to visitors, via China.org]

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