Unfortunately I was too late to walk over Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds. I didn't get there till Sunday, the news having broken on Thursday that the Tate had decided to ban people from walking through the work, due to the Health & Safety risks incurred by the porcelain dust created from so many people visiting the show.
I suspect most people would be more than happy to wear a mask and even pay for it, so I'm inclined to think the closure is more to do with the amount of thieving going on...
I don't mind too much. The idea is mind blowing enough on its own.
Jonathan Jones writes in The Guardian here: "There is more to art than interaction, after all. Personally I quite like just looking at stuff. The imperative to slide down slides or lie on the floor to see yourself in a reflective ceiling has always seemed to me a distracting eccentricity of the Turbine Hall installations. The reason Ai Weiwei's work is among the very best of them is because he wants to make us think – about the individual in the crowd, the ocean of humanity, the incalculable numbers of people on this earth – and their fragility underfoot. That last point is obviously weakened when you can't get close.
"Surely this might have been foreseen? And is there a solution? Porcelain is fragile. Maybe visitors could simply be requested to remove their shoes? Perhaps in future the Tate should get the site-specific art experts Artangel to help with these commissions. Artangel have organised events involving toxic substances that passed health and safety. Anyway, this remains a serious and imposing work of art. Why not contemplate it like a philosopher standing on the shore imagining the immensity of the grey sea?"
The photo above by Tim Ireland accompanies a Guardian report by Mark Brown here.
No comments:
Post a Comment