History of art and design: Chapter 1

Ai WeiWei, born in 18 May 1957, is a Chinese artist and activist. 

He is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film and social and cultural criticism.

He was commissioned as the artistic consultant for design, for the Beijing National Stadium of 2008 Summer Olympics, also known as the ''Bird's Nest" Stadium.

The picture above is Ai WeiWei's design, "Bird's Nest" Stadium. He doesn't like anyone who shamelessly abuses their profession, when the media ask him why he participated in the designing of the "Bird's Nest" Stadium, he answered that he did it because he love design. From his words, I assume that he doesn't like his design to be commercialize, he just design it because he love it.

Ai WeiWei likes to do something others dare not do. That's why he was arrested on 3 April 2011.  There are some photo of himself nude with only a toy hiding his modesty – with a caption『草泥马挡中央』 ("grass mud horse covering the middle"). The term possesses of a double meaning in Chinese: one possible interpretation was given by Sheridan as: "Fuck your mother, the party central committee" (a pun of the similar sounding 『肏你妈党中央』).

Until now, it has been 77 days since Ai WeiWei disappeared. Most of the art works by Ai Wei Wei are special and contain his thinking and creative. Every art work from him have their own meaning, let‘s have a look with his design and try to understand the meaning that he trying to convey.

Chapter 1: History of Art and Design : Q/A

1. What do you want from this course?
I hope that i could understand about the history of art and understand more about their works. Sometimes we may not understand what is the meaning of some works, after I learnt this subject, i wish i could understand it better and appreciate it with a proper way.

2. What do you want to be doing in 5 years? 10 years? 20 years?
In 5 years, i hope that i could exert my skill in the field of design and apply what i have learnt properly. In 10 years, I get a good result in this field. In 20 years, I owned a company(no matter is it involve in art or design) and   having a better life.

3. What do you hope to get from this particular class?
I hope to gain some knowledge and find out my interest toward history because i always felt that it is boring.

4. Is history of art and design necessary do you think for your larger goals?
I think it is not so necessary but it is not a loss for us to learn it because from the past, we learn and get the experience so it still useful to us in somewhere.