I don’t think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn’t be nervous about that.
AI WEIWEIIn China, we don’t have any contemporary art museums. Until a few years ago, we didn’t even have a gallery.
More Ai Weiwei Quotes
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I never really read Allen Ginsberg poetry, even though I have a book he gave me.
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The relationship between the Chinese government and me is like a Cold War.
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These folks are creative and ironic, and the government can ultimately not control what is going on in their heads.
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I never had a sense of home.
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Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.
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This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.
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The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum.
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By participating in the society we live in, we understand our conditions and the way we relate to the world.
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Everything is art. Everything is politics.
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There’s no single artwork I even want to mention or that I can even really think about it to have any feeling, to be proud of it.
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Now I’ve come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable.
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I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.
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If there is no free speech, every single life has lived in vain
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I’m an artist who is always looking for what is possible. I’m always looking to extend the boundaries.
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The whole Chinese system – not just the political leadership, the military too, the whole power structure, our education system, the whole of society – is suffering from being cut off from the free flow of information.
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We are not on – even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.
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I think I’m just a traveler. When you walk across a river and there’s no bridge, you build one. I’m used to having to deal with Chinese Communist ideology.
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In my life, I often make so-called major decisions by very quick, immediate responses.
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I think China is laughing about the results of the presidential elections. China, Russia, they all laugh about it.
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In my case, I was stuck there for quite a while. New York is large enough to be a very abstract city, so nobody cares.
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The world is not changing if you don’t shoulder the burden of responsibility.
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A clear understanding of such differences will help the rest of the world understand China and all that is happening to the nation.
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Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.
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It is not an easy job to govern China, I am aware of that.
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Everyone thinks the Chinese government selected me. Never ever. I was selected by Herzog and de Meuron.
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Just look at the statistics: Each university has tens of thousands of applications for students who want to be in art school, but they can only accept a few hundred.
AI WEIWEI