Ai Weiwei is a Chinese artist, curator, architectural designer, social commentator, and activist. His Sunflower Seeds installation in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern is made up of millions of small works, each apparently identical, but actually unique. Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Porcelain is almost synonymous with China and, to make this work, Ai Weiwei has manipulated traditional methods of crafting what has historically been one of China’s most prized exports.
Juliet Bingham, Curator, Tate Modern says: "Ai Weiwei's Unilever Series commission, Sunflower Seeds, is a beautiful, poignant and thought-provoking sculpture. The thinking behind the work lies in far more than just the idea of walking on it. The precious nature of the material, the effort of production and the narrative and personal content create a powerful commentary on the human condition. Sunflower Seeds is a vast sculpture that visitors can contemplate at close range on Level 1 or look upon from the Turbine Hall bridge above. Each piece is a part of the whole, a commentary on the relationship between the individual and the masses. The work continues to pose challenging questions: What does it mean to be an individual in today's society? Are we insignificant or powerless unless we act together? What do our increasing desires, materialism and number mean for society, the environment and the future?"
William S. Rubin writing in 1961 noted that Catholic critics were retroactively citing Paul Gauguin as an important precusor of the revival of sacred art. Rubin thought this inappropriate as, although Gauguin made a number of paintings with manifestly religious subject matter (many of which are included in Tate Modern's current Gauguin exhibition), they were conceived from the point of view of the nonbeliever. There are many paradoxes and ironies surrounding Gauguin's sacred themes, as they are catagorized in the Tate exhibition, some of which are noted in the exhibition guide.
Firstly, in his conversation and writings, Gauguin presented himself as fiercely opposed to the Christian Church. Nonetheless, his art was pervaded by religious themes and imagery, frequently drawing upon the Old and New Testaments for source material as well as the myths and belief systems of other cultures. Gauguin began to address sacred themes when he was working in Brittany, possibly influenced by the Catholic artist Emile Bernard. Among the distinctive qualities of the region that he wanted to capture was its deeply ingrained Catholic faith. The Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) 1888 powerfully conveys the faith of the women experiencing the vision through Gauguin's painting style, with clearly defined outlines and bold colouring that resembles stained glass (an approach known as 'Cloisonism' after a medieval technique for decorative enamel work) which means that the painting cannot be experienced simply as a quasi-anthropological study.
Secondly, Gauguin often paints Christ as having his own features in order to suggest that he has experienced suffering and betrayal at the hands of critics and artists that is in some fashion synonymous to the suffering of Christ. While there is undoubted arrogance and challenge in this stylistic technique, the genuine emotion that it calls up in Gauguin and which he translates onto canvas genuinely offer insight into the Agony in the Garden.
Finally, Gauguin was bitterly disappointed to discover on arrival in Tahiti that missionaries had been successfully converting the islanders to Christianity for more than a century, leaving little trace of the old traditions. He set about reconstructing the lost myths in his art, devising imaginative references to deities such as Hina, the goddess of the moon, and Tefatu, the god of the earth. He carved his own wooden idols and included them in his paintings, in which they resemble time-worn artefacts. In his art, at least, the Tate guide argues, ancient myth becomes part of everyday Tahitian life. However, the reality that ancient myth was not actually part of everyday Tahitian life lends these paintings an air of unreal ideality which differs from the real force and power of the Catholic faith which he depicted in Brittany.
As such, Gauguin's paintings with Christian subject matter continue to excite and inspire artists working with such themes, dspite Rubin's reservations.
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James MacMillan - Veni Veni Emmanuel: III. Dance - Hocket.
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