Andy Warhol and Ai Weiwei, it turns out, have plenty in common.Like Warhol, Mr. Ai surrounds himself with stray cats, has a fondness for neon-tinted floral arrangements and takes pleasure in subverting hallowed cultural touchstones.
Both men have also made a mint turning everyday objects into sought-after commodities. And Mr. Ai, like Warhol, compulsively records his life and surroundings — Warhol had his tape recorder; Mr. Ai always has his iPhone, which he uses almost hourly to post a deluge of images to Instagram and Twitter. But the two men are conjoined by something more significant: They are both unrepentant iconoclasts and gleeful disrupters of art world conventions. Warhol scandalized with his soup cans in 1962; three decades later, Mr. Ai defiled neolithic Chinese pottery with tutti-frutti-colored paint, and he once famously smashed a Han dynasty urn just for the heck of it. Read more
Both men have also made a mint turning everyday objects into sought-after commodities. And Mr. Ai, like Warhol, compulsively records his life and surroundings — Warhol had his tape recorder; Mr. Ai always has his iPhone, which he uses almost hourly to post a deluge of images to Instagram and Twitter. But the two men are conjoined by something more significant: They are both unrepentant iconoclasts and gleeful disrupters of art world conventions. Warhol scandalized with his soup cans in 1962; three decades later, Mr. Ai defiled neolithic Chinese pottery with tutti-frutti-colored paint, and he once famously smashed a Han dynasty urn just for the heck of it. Read more
