Trying To Shatter Tradition

S. Brent Plate meditates on Ai Weiwei and the paradox of iconoclasm:

In the modern age, as art has become sacred, the smashing of the artistic tradition becomes itself an iconoclastic act. One of Ai’s great works is a large-scale, three-panel photo artwork from 1995 titled Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn. It is iconoclastic, smashing an object of the past and by extension smashing the tradition itself.

[Last] week, Ai’s artwork [was] back in the news. On Sunday, Dominican-born artist named Maximo Caminero walked into the Pérez Art Museum in Miami and smashed one of the vases that was part of Ai Weiwei’s Colored Vases display. Caminero’s complaint? That local galleries put all their time and effort into international artists of high esteem, and forsake the locals. Here’s the thing:

iconoclasm is itself an iconic act. One image replaces another. Ai was careful to have his iconoclastic act documented, skillfully shot on camera and reproduced for many to see. Likewise Caminero did not sneak into the gallery under cover of night to do his smashing; he went in the middle of the day on Sunday and was sure that others were watching (we are waiting for the video surveillance footage of Caminero to emerge and watch that go viral). Tradition is itself a series of creative and destructive acts, stability and instability; the icons are the tradition as much as the images of iconoclasm. Nothing stays the same.