Artist Smashes Ai Weiwei Vase to Protest Museum’s Snub of Local Artists

[Recursion]

http://hyperallergic.com/109783/artist-smashes-ai-weiwei-vase-to-protest-museums-snub-of-local-artists/

Miami-based artist Maximo Caminero, 51, hurled himself into the media spotlight when he dropped a vase that was part of Ai Weiwei’s According to What? retrospective currently at the Perez Art Museum Miami. The shattered item was one of 16 vases that make up “Colored Vases” (2006–12), which was created by the Chinese artist from what are believed to be ancient Chinese vases.

Caminero visited the museum on Sunday, February 16, and proceeded to destroy part of the work.

...

The artist told Miami New Times that “he had no idea Weiwei’s work was worth $1 million. ‘I didn’t know that it was that amount,’ he says. ‘I feel so sorry about it, for sure.’”

“I wanted to draw attention to the fact that there are many foreign artists like myself and others who have been here thirty years and have never received attention or support from MAM or now PAMM and other local museums,” he continues. “We are all taxpayers here and PAMM used $200 million of public money on its building and opened with Weiwei’s work to draw attention to itself and as always continues to ignore local artists.”

(Ai Weiwei did a famous piece called "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn"...)

[Scootaloo]

1. I'm sure being a vandal and a dick will help the cause

[Fumesucker]

2. Great artists are often only recognized after they are conveniently dead

[JVS]

3. meh.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. I can understand his point, it is perfectly valid.

Not sure if this show was appropriate, but I'm willing to hear him out.

[DonCoquixote]

5. it is one thing for him to have a point

another to actively destroy art to make it. On the one hand, America doe shave a lot of great art that only seems to get attention after people are dead, but on the other hand, there is other art that does deserve to be shown in America, because frankly that is where America will have a chance to learn about other cultures'.

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. It seems that, in his opinion, his action was both a statement and an homage.

As for that last bit, puh-lease. As if. Just where do you think you live?

[DonCoquixote]

7. I live somehwere

That needs to learn about other cultures and sometimes learns them at Museums, but may not if people think some local clown will break stuff to make a "statement and an homage." Let's rip the Mona Lisa while we are at it.

[El_Johns]

9. Supposedly the broken pot is worth a million or so -- because it's actually some ancient pot that

the artist dipped in paint.

The show includes a collection of vases, dipped by the artist in paint, that Ai has represented as from the Han Dynasty. That would make them more than 2,000 years old.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/18/3943647/local-artist-apologizes-for-smashing.html#storylink=cpy

But if its value is its age, that has already been destroyed by being dipped in garish paint.

If its value is the garish paint, that's totally subjective and I don't buy it.

I don't really think they're from the Han Dynasty either. You just don't have a lot of Han dynasty pots that you're allowed to paint in kiddie colors.

Personally I'd break them all. The art world is basically run by the rich and its a joke on all of us.

[El_Johns]

8. Personally not impressed by weiwei's dipped ancient pots as 'art'. IMO weiwei already damaged them

by dipping them in cheap paint.

[snooper2]

13. well, the asshole that did the damage has his own art online

He only wants 28K, for this- LOL

link to assholes work/bio
http://maximocaminero.artelista.com/en/

[no_hypocrisy]

10. I was expecting Caminero to claim that destroying the $1 million Chinese vase

was an act of art in of itself as deconstruction.

[badtoworse]

11. What an asshole.

[marions ghost]

12. Ai Wei Wei himself broke vases

to make a statement about art. I imagine he would actually appreciate this artist's doing the same. But the curators won't.

It is true that America does not support local (living) artists well at all. So that makes it the place of museums to do the job as best they can. But I would give this museum a chance to do that. Public museums ARE the way that art can be accessible to all. You don't have to buy art to appreciate it.

But this is a Dark Ages for the arts in general. So I understand people involved in it going crazy.

[Brickbat]

14. The vase is not worth a million dollars.

That's a number the police officer taking the report pulled out of his ass to cover himself.

[Recursion]

15. Museums often overestimate auction appraisals

It kind of becomes a status contest. That said, Ai Weiwei' stuff has been doing really well at auctions lately.

[marions ghost]

17. Right

...ridiculous.

[Generic Other]

16. video of the act