Ai Weiwei, “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” 1995
An astonishingly irreverent piece of work. This triptych features the artist dropping a Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) in three photographs.
When questioned about the work, he suggested that the piece was about industry: “[The urn] was industry then and is industry now.” His statement, therefore, was that the urn was just a cheap pot two thousand years ago, and the reverence we feel toward it is artificial. One critic wrote: “In other words, for all the aura of preciousness acquired by the accretion of time (and skillful marketing), this vessel is the Iron Age equivalent of a flower pot from K-Mart and if one were to smash the latter a few millennia from now, would it be an occasion for tears?”
However, the not-so-subtle political undertone is clear. This piece was about destroying the notion that everything that is old is good…including the traditions and cultures of China. For Ai Weiwei, this triptych represents a moment in which culture suddenly shifts (sometimes violently), shattering the old and outdated to make room for the new.
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i NEED to sit by the SEA and FORGET that i’m ALIVE
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every morning i wake up & get my coffee & i recite in my head this excerpt from ‘invitation,’ by mary oliver: “it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.” & i just say it over & over again until it sticks to my mind for the rest of the day. it is a serious thing. i am alive. i am so lucky. this fresh morning i get the chance to live again & again & again
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emily dickinson
[ID: “Oh the Earth was made for lovers,” end ID]
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what’s that one movie that has you like “that’s MY movie” ?
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everyone feels robbed of ideal teenage years that don’t really exist
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a water baby - herbert james draper // the land baby - john collier
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Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins
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me in jeans and a bra: wow what a look
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An outtake of Lana Del Rey photographed by Glynis Selina Arban for Complex Magazine, 1st December 2011.
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detail of ‘faunen an einer felsküste’ by georg janny & detail of ‘nereiden’ by eduard veith .
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If someone offered me the Overlook hotel caretaker job i would take it
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