Ai Wei Wei & Andy Warhol in Melbourne

Words about words from the Exhibition Andy Warhol and Ai Wei Wei at the NGV Melbourne

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then words speak more. As I wandered through the Andy Warhol and Ai Wei Wei exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, I was compelled to photograph a set of quotes, written in bold white on a blue background.

Entering the National Gallery of Victoria, in contiguity with the iconic water wall, an arched glass facade where water slowly slips down from the ceiling to the floor, I was met with the dazzling sculpture of myriad Swaroski crystals by Ai Wei Wei. Supposedly, it cost a sizeable sum. My visit began here, in the Atrium space, where another sculpture with the bicycle as theme hung from the ceiling.

Going into the exhibition, along with the art of Wei Wei, the politics are on display, and his brush with the law. Like a child, he tells of his mistreatment by the police of his country, through video recordings taken with hidden cameras. His sore body is there for all to see. I peered into his videos, at him sitting smug, but not unkind, with his cats, at the documentary style videos of the plight of people, such as those affected by the collapse of a school building, and the children lost.

It seems that Ai Wei Wei’s heart is in the right place. I got this impression even when I recently read about him playing the piano on a European beach, where refugees are landing in tatters. When a single person transcends barriers to make a statement, it’s admirable..

Looking at an Andy Warhol piece, is an experience of deja vu. In fact, I felt like I was seeing artwork that I had seen many times before. If there is an artist whose work embodies the fate of the image in the technological age, which Walter Benjamin wrote about in the first half of last century, it is Warhol. The fate is that of reproducibility, copied over and over so as to erase its original and through the means of mass media enter into the collective domain as a popular item. Warhol, with his series of portraits of known and less known people showed that even fame can be reproduced, and with the iconic pantry item - the can of soup - a product of the consumerist age, showed that even food is a commodity. I imagine it so removed from its source to be stripped of its capacity to nourish.

I was struck by Warhol’s thoughts accompanying the set of portraits of Jacqueline Kennedy, in which he recounts how he thought the response of the media to the assassination of her husband, the then President of the United States, John F. Kennedy was focused on inducing a state of sadness in each and every person in the country.   

So after Ai Wei Wei’s critical art pieces and videos, along with Andy Warhols statements about power, boredom, fame, the coercion of the media and the fact that there is little freedom of expression - I came across words that presumably they had spoken. 

Ai Wei Wei:

“I’m impressed with people who can create new spaces with the right words.”

“Writing one’s feelings can be simple, but can also be a difficult thing.”

Andy Warhol:

“The sounds of phones and buzzers and camera shutters and flashbulb pops and the Moviola going and slides clicking through viewers, and most of all the typewriter and the voices off the tapes being transcribed - all those things were reassuring to me.”

I guess the words speak for themselves!

Silvana Tuccio
April 2016