Hasta La Ideas

Seemingly plagued by controversy, so much for a positive run from start to finish again for Ai Weiwei. Last week, you’ll recall we told you about the opening of his huge exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, which put to use 100 million sunflower seeds hand-painted in his native China. For its first few days the seeds were accessible to the public to pick up, walk on, or even steal a couple. Since then, the Tate has decided to rope off access to the piece, citing safety concerns over the dust kicked up as people walked around on it. Said the NY Times‘ Roberta Smith in her review of Weiwei’s installation, where she says she saw it both before and after it had been closed. “…the piece looked like an upper-respiratory disaster waiting to happen,” she writes, having seen “little clouds of dust” following the visitors around as they wandered. She also explains what exactly the dust is, a certain type of liquid clay that doesn’t quite stick strongly enough to withstand the wear and tear the original concept required. And while Smith thinks this locking down of the piece, barring interaction, has damaged its core draw, the Guardian‘s Jonathan Jones thinks the opposite, saying, “So what if we’re not allowed to get down on the Turbine Hall floor…This vast, grey sea of humanity is made for thinking about, not touching.” For whatever it’s worth, we think assembling 100 million of anything and sticking it all in one gigantic room is impressive even just in photos. So roped off or otherwise, we’re still impressed.

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