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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: The story of two lives, one nation, and a century of art under tyranny

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Ai Weiwei wryly observes, “Never forget that under a totalitarian system cruelty and absurdity go hand in hand.

In the relatively open climate of the 1990s Beijing art scene, he was chosen to represent China at the 1999 Venice Biennale. With uncommon humanity, humbling scholarship, and poignant intimacy, Ai Weiwei recounts a life of courage, argument, defeat, and triumph. Yet it is evident that his father’s persecution, first under the Nationalists in the 30s and then as a “rightist” during the Cultural Revolution, had a profound effect on Ai’s character. Howard Brenton's play is based on Ai Weiwei's account in Barnaby Martin's book Hanging Man, in which he told the story of that imprisonment - by turns surreal, hilarious, and terrifying. Eine eindrückliche Lebensgeschichte, die nicht nur zeigt, wie sich ein berühmte Person sondern auch wir im kleinen für die Menschenrechte überall auf der Welt einsetzen können.Once an intimate of Mao Zedong and the nation's most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei's father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as "Little Siberia," where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. He eventually dropped out, and admits, “I resented having to stretch a canvas over a frame, and I never liked the smell of oils and turpentine. This beautifully illustrated volume explores the inextricable link between Ai Weiwei’s art and his politics. Ai Weiwei's sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing.

Do not bet on that happening anytime soon: last month, a coterie of blue-chip galleries opened pop-up shows in a Beijing free-trade zone. His show Trace, first displayed in 2014 in the old penitentiary on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, consisted of Lego portraits of 176 people from 33 countries who’d been imprisoned for speaking out. It was in New York that Ai held his first solo show, the intriguingly titled Old Shoes, Safe Sex, at a small SoHo gallery.Like the author’s brilliant installations and films, the book is an impassioned testament to the enduring powers of art—to challenge the state and the status quo, to affirm essential and inconvenient truths, and to assert the indispensable agency of imagination and will in the face of political repression. It was from behind bars that Ai Qing composed his first masterpiece, “Dayanhe, My Wet Nurse,” a tender tribute to Big-Leaf Lotus and her countless Chinese countrywomen who toil and perish in obscurity. In 1957, the year of Ai Weiwei’s birth, China’s leader, Chairman Mao, launched the Anti-Rightist Campaign, a purge of intellectuals whose work was deemed critical of the state. In this beautifully illustrated and deeply philosophical graphic memoir, legendary artist Ai Weiwei explores the connection between artistic expression and intellectual freedom through the lens of the Chinese zodiac.

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