Ai Weiwei sculpture destroyed by serial vandal

Blue and white debris scattered on the ground: here lies Porcelain Cube (2009). This Friday, September 20, a man deliberately reduced to pieces This large hand-painted porcelain sculpture signed Ai Weiwei (born 1957). The scene took place in front of stunned guests, in the middle of the opening of “Who am I?”, an exhibition of works by the famous Chinese artist at Palazzo Fava in Bolognathe day before it opened to the public.

In the video recorded by a security camera, we see the troublemaker climb onto the base of the work and throw the latter to the groundbefore grabbing one of the pieces of debris and brandishing it triumphantly. The man is then immediately pursued, caught and immobilized by museum security while waiting for the police to arrive.

“It is with regret that I must comment the act of vandalism “That struck the work of Ai Weiwei, a great artist and a dear friend,” Arturo Galansino, curator of the exhibition and general director of the Palazzo Strozzi foundation in Florence, said in a message to AFP. Ai Weiwei “was concerned about whether anyone had been hurt, and asked to take the remains of his work away,” he said. The debris has since been replaced by a photograph of the sculpture before degradation.

Previous targets: works by Marina Abramović and Urs Fischer

The culprit – a 57-year-old Czech named Vaclav Pisvejcwhich is defined as “a protest artist”according to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera – is not at his first attempt. In 2018 in Florence, he had attacked Serbian performer Marina Abramović by smashing a painting over his head, and spraying red paint on a bronze sculpture by Urs Fischer, Big Clayinstalled in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, in Piazza della Signoria. In 2022, still in this famous square, he had set fire to a black sheet which covered, as a sign of support for Ukraine, the famous 1910 copy of the David by Michelangelo (1501–1504), causing 15,000 euros of damage to the latter – which earned him a fine and six months in prison – and had smeared with yellow and blue (colors of Ukraine) the lion of contemporary artist Francesco Vezzoli. In 2023, he returned to the scene, this time to climb, the word “censored” painted on his naked body, the statue Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandinelli (1525–1534).

A gesture in response to Ai Weiwei’s?

Several of Ai Weiwei’s works revisit the traditional chinese porcelain blue and white, born 1,000 years ago, to question our relationship with the past, tradition and Chinese culture. For example, the artist has created vases that from a distance look like classical antiques, but are actually decorated with contemporary scenes involving migrants. In one of his most famous works, a triptych of three photographs dating from 1995, he stages himself dropping an old vase of the Han Dynasty to let it break on the ground. A iconoclastic gesture which shows him freeing himself from the weight of traditions.

Was the Czech referring to this artistic act by the Chinese visual artist? In 2014 at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami (PAMM), another man claiming to be an artist had broken a $1 million vase which was part of an installation by Ai Weiwei that included these 1995 photos and antique Chinese vases repainted in bright colors. “I did it for all the local artists who have never been exhibited in local museums,” the vandal explained at the time. “It was a spontaneous protestI saw the photo of Ai Weiwei dropping an ancient Chinese vase and breaking it. I took it as a provocation from Weiwei to do the same.” Explanations that the Chinese artist had judged “unfair.”