“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in A Defense of Poetry in 1821. A radical, Romantic humanist, Shelley passionately believed that artists of all stripes could inspire the masses to rise up against oppression. When the Chinese government seized artist Ai WeiWei, they acknowledged the power of Ai’s art [...]
Posts Tagged ‘China’
Things to ponder : 8 April 2011
Posted in Things to ponder, tagged A Defense of Poetry, Ai WeiWei, China, Shelley, Tate Modern, Things to ponder on April 8, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Chinese sunflower seeds
Posted in What I'm looking at, tagged Ai WeiWei, China, sculpture, Sunflower Seeds, Tate Modern on January 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I recently caught Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern in London: Each seed has been individually sculpted and painted by specialists working in small-scale workshops in the Chinese city of Jingdezhen. Far from being industrially produced, they are the effort of hundreds of skilled hands. Poured into the interior of the Turbine [...]
How small acts can change the world
Posted in Serendipity, tagged China, John Simpson, Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize on October 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
On the day that Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, John Simpson, world affairs editor at BBC News, has written a wonderfully appropriate piece on how individuals can change the world: “At a single day’s trial last December, Mr Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison after having helped [...]
