(Beijing, 19 May 2008) Andy Warhol abruptly left the city and the people so familiar to him, the sounds, the colors and their warmth, just over 20 years ago. The moment he was gone the world was changed. This wasn’t an arrow propelled from a bow, but the bow (and the world that held it) falling from the arrow, separated in an instant and forever. 



Everything in Andy’s life seemed pretentious, a kaleidoscope of colors and extravagance. Like a prophet who can truly see through the confines of time, long before the true arrival of the era that he prophesized, anything within his sight was magnified, duplicated over and over and thereby rendered emotionally and mentally fractured and emptied. Time and men could be equally splendid and extraordinary, and at the same time so insignificant. 



Andy was attached to that world so filled with uncertainty, even though the same world similarly distrusted him. Till the very end they shared a hard to define mutual resentment; together temporarily, and likewise forever separated, something like a remarkably original decree blurted out but swallowed back up, all it leaves behind is astonishment. 



The absurd thing is that one day in 1982, Andy arrived by happenstance in this unfamiliar nation. The people here were still drowsy under the artifice of a communist government, every face wore the same simple shyness. At these geographical coordinates, not a single person expressed interest in the artist. No one recognized that mask-like face infamous throughout the rest of the world. And although Andy made innumerable portraits of famous figures, the most famous among them was ironically the archetypical representation of this transitional national leader in China, a portrait that he painted hundreds of times. The ubiquitous portrait caused Mao Zedong to be looked upon as a god in China. However, in Andy’s rendering, the allegorical force of Mao’s portrait was made conventional, its enormity made neutral, objectified, emptied of its moral value as well as its aesthetic intent. 

China was a place unfamiliar to Andy, with a routine that he couldn’t understand. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He could only exclaim about the length of the Great Wall, and even said that the uniform dress and look of thousands embodied the fashion sensibility that he yearned for. But throughout, he never once believed that a world without McDonalds could be sympathetic or kind; as in a child’s eyes, a place without McDonalds could never be good––no matter what else it had. In an era where ping pong and pandas were revered as sacred objects, many things were certainly absent… there was no lipstick, no pop music, no neon lights, no nightclubs, no homosexuality, no personal automobiles or apartments, and of course: no luxury or corruption. That portion of the population hadn’t become rich yet. 



The world today and the world in Andy’s time are essentially the same, as astonishingly beautiful, elegant or suave, and similarly consummate. But what is different is that an Andy Warhol could never exist here, a megastar from an average, conventional family harboring democratic and humanistic values. Even though he eternally tells his indifferent story, we face a world that becomes stranger everyday… “Be careful what you ask for . . . , you just might get it.” 

Ai Weiwei January 21, 2008translation by Lee Ambrozy, excerpted from Andy Warhol China 1982, Christopher Makos, Timezone 8, 2008

Mural Painter Lee Bowerman Fine Art Historic Murals…

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