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拍品专文
Executed in 2014, the year of the artist’s historic exhibition at Alcatraz Prison in the San Francisco Bay Area, Coca Cola Vase exemplifies Ai Weiwei’s biting wit as he toys with questions of artistic value. The sculpture is part of the homonymously titled series in which Ai painted the famous Coca-Cola logo, an iconic symbol of American capitalism and a testament to globalisation, atop vases dating from the Han dynasty. Emblazoned in a vivid red, the letters stand in stark contrast to the cream-toned earthenware that lies beneath. Ai’s transformation of an ancient Chinese object using contemporary advertising strategies captures a striking confrontation between past and present. In Coca Cola Vase, the collision of high art and mass culture simultaneously frees the vase from its original context and asks viewers to consider how exactly worth is determined.
Ai began his Coca Cola vases in 1994 shortly after he returned to China following twelve years living in the United States. It was in New York that his interest in modern and post-war art movements developed and where he was first introduced to the work of Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) was one of his favourite books. Although Neo-Expressionism was the movement du jour, Ai found himself drawn to more conceptually driven approaches, such as the use of the readymade and appropriation as an aesthetic strategy. Like Warhol’s serialised screenprints or Duchamp’s urinal Fountain, Coca Cola Vase interrogates the construction of meaning and cultural significance as it operates between multiple registers.
After Ai moved back to China, he endeavoured to learn more about his country’s history. It had become clear to the artist that, having grown up during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, he had a limited understanding of the past. Over the course of a decade, Ai dedicated himself to researching Chinese history, using artefacts to investigate ideologies, materials, and artisanal practices, all the while amassing his own large collection of ceramics. ‘Luckily,’ he reminisced, ‘I slid into a period of time when a tremendous amount of ancient artefacts underground were discovered during China's rapid development’ (quoted in P. Adesina, ‘Ai Weiwei interview: Everyday objects that reveal the truth’, BBC, 8 April 2023). In 1995, Ai famously dropped one of these Han dynasty urns, capturing the act in a series of black-and-white photographs. The destruction of one artwork to make another is a similar gesture to that which created Coca Cola Vase. For the new sculpture to exist, a radical reimagining of value must take place. In a society that views antiquities as treasures and consumer products as disposable trifles, Ai’s work asks his viewer to cast aside previously held judgements regarding how these distinctions are made.
Ai began his Coca Cola vases in 1994 shortly after he returned to China following twelve years living in the United States. It was in New York that his interest in modern and post-war art movements developed and where he was first introduced to the work of Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) was one of his favourite books. Although Neo-Expressionism was the movement du jour, Ai found himself drawn to more conceptually driven approaches, such as the use of the readymade and appropriation as an aesthetic strategy. Like Warhol’s serialised screenprints or Duchamp’s urinal Fountain, Coca Cola Vase interrogates the construction of meaning and cultural significance as it operates between multiple registers.
After Ai moved back to China, he endeavoured to learn more about his country’s history. It had become clear to the artist that, having grown up during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, he had a limited understanding of the past. Over the course of a decade, Ai dedicated himself to researching Chinese history, using artefacts to investigate ideologies, materials, and artisanal practices, all the while amassing his own large collection of ceramics. ‘Luckily,’ he reminisced, ‘I slid into a period of time when a tremendous amount of ancient artefacts underground were discovered during China's rapid development’ (quoted in P. Adesina, ‘Ai Weiwei interview: Everyday objects that reveal the truth’, BBC, 8 April 2023). In 1995, Ai famously dropped one of these Han dynasty urns, capturing the act in a series of black-and-white photographs. The destruction of one artwork to make another is a similar gesture to that which created Coca Cola Vase. For the new sculpture to exist, a radical reimagining of value must take place. In a society that views antiquities as treasures and consumer products as disposable trifles, Ai’s work asks his viewer to cast aside previously held judgements regarding how these distinctions are made.