Böcker av Weiwei (Artist) Ai

An autobiography in pictures: photographs taken by Ai Weiwei that capture his emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today.Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs 1993-2003 is an autobiography in pictures. Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months, he quickly became the art world's most famous missing person. Since then, Ai Weiwei's critiques of China's repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a hero on social media to millions of Chinese citizens. This book, prohibited from publication in China, offers an intimate look at Ai Weiwei's world in the years after his return from New York and preceding his imprisonment and global superstardom. The photographs capture Ai's emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today. There is no more revealing portrait of Ai Weiwei's life in China than this.The book contains more than 600 carefully sequenced images culled from an archive of more than 40,000 photographs taken by Ai: a narrative arc carefully shaped by an artist keenly aware of photography's ability to tell stories. It includes a shattering series of photographs taken between 1993 and 1996 devoted to the final illness and death of Ai's father Ai Qing. The book is a sequel to Ai Weiwei: New York 1983-1993, a privately published book that collected photographs taken by Ai during his years on the New York art scene.

In 2006, even though he could barely type, China¿s most famous artist started blogging. For more than three years, Ai Weiwei turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary, criticism of government policy, thoughts on art and architecture, and autobiographical writings. He wrote about the Sichuan earthquake (and posted a list of the schoolchildren who died because of the government¿s ¿tofu-dregs engineering¿), reminisced about Andy Warhol and the East Village art scene, described the irony of being investigated for ¿fraud¿ by the Ministry of Public Security, made a modest proposal for tax collection. Then, on June 1, 2009, Chinese authorities shut down the blog. This book offers a collection of Ai¿s notorious online writings translated into English--the most complete, public documentation of the original Chinese blog available in any language. The New York Times called Ai ¿a figure of Warholian celebrity.¿ He is a leading figure on the international art scene, a regular in museums and biennials, but in China he is a manifold and controversial presence: artist, architect, curator, social critic, justice-seeker. He was a consultant on the design of the famous ¿Bird¿s Nest¿ stadium but called for an Olympic boycott; he received a Chinese Contemporary Art ¿lifetime achievement award¿ in 2008 but was beaten by the police in connection with his ¿citizen investigation¿ of earthquake casualties in 2009. Ai Weiwei's Blog documents Ai¿s passion, his genius, his hubris, his righteous anger, and his vision for China