Who is an Artist?
Ai Weiwei and Vaclav Pisvejc
Ai Weiwei, one of the world’s most famous living artists, was in the news last month but not for anything he had done or said. This time someone else had performed a dissident (or criminal?) act that turned all eyes on Ai Weiwei.
At an invitation-only opening of his exhibition, Who Am I? at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, Italy, guests were surprised when a man suddenly stepped up behind Ai’s large ceramic sculpture, Porcelain Cube, and pushed it over. It created a loud crash that sounded like an explosion, and ceramic fragments skittered across the floor. After the man was detained by gallery security and the police, the porcelain shards were gathered up and placed on the pedestal. A white sheet was respectfully draped over the remains. The perpetrator, Vaclav Pisvejc, insisted that he had just committed an artistic act. Ai Weiwei, however, was not amused but also appeared to be nonplused by the situation. He remarked that the action was “disrespectful” and hoped that no one, including the perpetrator, had been injured.
Ironically, Ai has his own history with smashing ceramics. In 1995, he purposely dropped a two-thousand-year-old Han Dynasty vase. Large prints of the three black-and-white photos that documented this action (titled collectively Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn) are featured in the Bologna exhibition. The same photographs have been exhibited in major museums around the world, sold to collectors, and become iconic images in Ai’s artistic oeuvre. When questioned about this similarity, the curator of the Fava exhibition was adamant that Pisvejc’s action was very different; “the destruction that Ai Weiwei depicts in his works is a warning against the violence and injustice perpetrated by those in power.” And, Ai’s work, he insisted, “has nothing to do with this violent, potentially dangerous, reckless, and senseless act carried out by a habitual troublemaker.”1
What I found interesting in this story is the juxtaposition of the two main characters, Ai Weiwei and Vaclav Pisvejc. Ai Weiwei is consistently referred to as a “Chinese artist and activist” or as a “Chinese dissident artist” with no further explanation needed as he already has an established international reputation in the art press and in the popular media. He has become famous for smashing ceramics, being a troublemaker, and causing controversy but no one doubts that he is an artist. Psvejc, on the other hand, is unknown, especially outside of Italy, and in these current media articles he is referred to as “a vandal,” “a habitual troublemaker,” “the Marina Abramovic attacker,” “a dangerous nuisance,” and a “Czech national” who “sees himself as a provocative performance artist.”2 No one it seems, except Pisvejc, appears to see Pisvejc as an artist.
So who is this would-be contemporary artist? To find out more, I went on-line to see what I could learn. First I checked Artfacts.net where Ai Weiwei is ranked among the top 100 contemporary artists in the world. I was surprised to find that Pisvejc, the “vandal,” also has a profile with two exhibitions listed, one solo and one group. With so few accredited exhibitions, however, he is ranked as one of a million global artists. His two exhibitions, a solo show at Pergola Arte and a group show at the Monte Carlo International Biennial, were my first leads that helped me to cobble together a more detailed profile of this artist-provocateur.
Pisvejc is a Czech citizen who moved to Florence in and around 2007. At some time prior to this he began painting portraits of famous people – artists and politicians, primarily. His paintings have a strong stylistic resemblance to some of the work of the late British artist, Francis Bacon (1909-1992). It is in Florence that Pisvejc appears to have first publicly presented himself as an artist. It is also in Florence where he found at least two advocates who supported his artistic ambition and who were willing to acknowledge him as an artist: the “great patron” Doctor Massimo Moresi and Lilly Brogi, an Italian poet and painter who is also listed as the President of Pergola Arte in Florence.3 Pergola Arte is a community “cultural centre that promotes contemporary art.”4 Pisvejc participated in at least two group exhibitions (2009 and 2010) and was given a solo show in 2010 called Vaclav Pisvejc: Un Artista Senzo Tempo [An Artist Out of Time]. This last exhibition was accompanied by a booklet about Pisvejc and his work, and a video of the opening posted on YouTube features his supporters celebrating his artistic achievements. Pisvejc’s artist’s page on Pergola Arte also features some of his portrait paintings and a short biography.
The second exhibition documented on Artfacts is the sixth edition of the Monte Carlo International Biennale in 2014. The Monte Carlo version of an art biennale is not at all like the curated mega-exhibitions of contemporary art that are regular events in cities like Istanbul, Gwangju, and Toronto. The Monte Carlo biennale is simply an art competition where artists apply to participate. According to the event literature, 2,300 artists applied for the biennale that year and a jury of “art historians, gallerists, collectors, international journalists and editors” selected 65 artists from “the United States, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Albania, and the Czech Republic.” The artworks were presented for only four days in the historic Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo and viewed at a gala event that appears to have been attended by an elite crowd. The documentation for the Biennale focuses on pictures of who attended rather than on the artists or their work. The artworks, mostly paintings in a wide variety of styles, were hung Salon style on temporary walls and easels. Pisvejc’s portraits appear in the background of one of the photographs.5
By 2010, painting was not enough for Pisvejc, as journalist Costanza Baldini notes in his biography posted on his WordPress website. It was around this time that he added performance interventions to his oeuvre. At first, these actions appear to have been humorous stunts that Baldini describes as “amazing and fun.”
In August 2010, for example, he exhibited his paintings on the walls of the Accademia Gallery in Florence and also put them in the hands of tourists who were queuing up to enter. Then he hired a small army of Senegalese recruited at the San Lorenzo market to take his paintings around on a bicycle last summer. He also placed his paintings on the Louis Vuitton showcase in the center of Florence [translated from Italian by Google].6
These actions earned Pisvejc a feature article in the la Repubblica newspaper where the author positively described Pisvejc’s contribution to beautifying Florence with his contemporary art and actions.7 One project in particular, an installation on Sant’ Orsola, did not include his paintings but gained Pisvejc even more positive recognition from the media, general public, tourists, and officials. Sant’ Orsola was an abandoned and derelict convent that dated back to the 14th century. City officials had been pondering how to save the historic building and were trying to find sponsors to fund its restoration. In 2013, Pisvejc covered the exterior of the building with fake American dollars as a way to bring attention to what he claimed are the “negative consequences of capitalism.” Images of this work proliferated on the internet as tourists added photos to their social media and called Pisvejc a “street artist.”
After a few years, the paper dollars fell off and Pisvejc looked for another way to make a statement about the building. At the time, there was a proposal to locate a music academy in the building. Pisvejc created a neon sign that spelled out “Sant’ Orsola” using music tablature symbols. Again, Pisvejc was praised and recognized for his work.
Portraits, however, continued to be the mainstay of Pisvejc’s practice, particularly portraits of famous people. The portraits were painted from media photographs and beginning in 2011, Pisvejc began to use the portraits to get closer to the portrayed person. His Blogspot website includes a record of photographs taken from 2011 to 2021 showing him standing next to his sitter as he holds the portrait. In a photo from 2016, he is pictured beside Ai Weiwei holding his portrait of the artist.
In 2018, Pisvejc’s projects took a more violent and destructive turn. In January 2018, he sprayed red paint on a controversial Urs Fischer sculpture that had been placed on temporary display in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The sculpture was loathed by many in Florence and Pisvejc claimed to be responding to this reaction. The owner of the sculpture sued Pisvejc for damages. The case came before the court and Pisvejc’s defender, the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, argued that Florence did not deserve to be defiled by such an ugly sculpture and that Pisvejc’s action was itself contemporary art since it was antagonistic and controversial. “So in the end,” he concluded, I don’t see what this gentleman has done wrong.” [translated by Google from Italian].8 Pisvejc was acquitted of the charge in 2020 based on a legal technicality rather than on Sgarbi’s artistic defence.9
In September that same year, the performance artist Marina Abramovic was attending a book signing at the Palazzo Strozzi. Pisvejc approached her with a portrait he had made of her and then hit her over the head with it. Abramovic asked him why he had done this to her. His only explanation was: “I had to do it for my art.” The intervention was documented with a photo that Pisvejc posted on his Blogspot website along with his other famous people photographs.
In another destructive prank in 2022, Pisvejc set fire to a drapery that hung over the 19th century replica of Michelangelo’s David in Piazza della Signoria. The statue had been covered as a sign of mourning for the Ukraine. The fire was extinguished quickly but burned long enough to cause extensive damage to the marble and the statue required €15,000 worth of repairs. Pisvejc was charged and sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to pay for the damage.10
In the reports of these three incidents, the references to Pisvejc as an “artist” begin to fade and in the last report, Pisvejc is referred to as a “serial provocateur.”
Pisvejc’s story is typical of an artist’s trajectory towards recognition in the art world, at least in the beginning. It is also a story of failure to understand and meet the expectations of the contemporary art world. Arriving in Florence, he connected with individuals who supported his artistic ambitions by buying and exhibiting his portrait paintings. His advocates, however, no matter how much they appreciated his work and were willing to accept him as an artist, were very localized and had no power to gain Pisvejc attention in the social circles that support artists like Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. Even the Monte Carlo International Biennale did not expand his recognition as it was unlikely to have attracted major curators, gallerists or collectors close to the contemporary art centres of New York, London or Paris. Moreover, Pisvejc’s chosen metier, portrait painting, is rarely a highly valued genre in contemporary art especially when it so closely resembles the style of an established late artist. To be successful with this genre an artist needs a singular style and a carefully crafted narrative that “intellectualizes”11 the meaning of the portraits in relation to some other social values (for example, Kehinde Wiley or Yan Pei-Ming). Pisvejc, nor his Florentine advocates, appear to have provided such a rationale.
Recognizing that the contemporary art world admires and valorises controversy, Pisvejc then changed his tactic and began conducting public interventions, an artistic method that Ai and Abramovic have both performed successfully in their practices. Pisvejc, however, again missed the mark by not understanding the type of actions that are valued in the world of contemporary art. Again, he and his advocates did not provide convincing justifications for his interventions. Pisvejc’s most successful projects were his two installations on the Sant’ Orsola building. Both of these projects found resonance with the public because they were visually inspired and they addressed a civic value that many could embrace. More importantly, the two projects directed the viewer to consider the building and the issue rather than Pisvejc himself. What Pisvejc appears to not understand is that art is made not only by the artist, but more importantly by the institutions, art professionals, and the public. Others, besides the maker, must believe in the value of an object to make the object art and the maker an artist.
Ai Weiwei’s exhibition, Who Am I? at the Palazzo Fava in Bologna, provides a good lesson for Pisvejc on how to communicate and meet the expectations of the art world. While the title and exhibition image appear to focus on the person of the artist, the promotional text is careful to provide a larger meaning to Ai’s work:
the exhibition draws inspiration from a dialogue between the artist and an artificial intelligence, highlighting Ai Weiwei's conflict between tradition and innovation. His relentless pursuit of truth, combined with his ability to use a wide range of media to communicate provocative and complex ideas, makes this exhibition a pivotal event in the contemporary art scene.12
According to this explanation, Ai’s exhibition is significant not only for the physical objects he makes but also for how the artist, through the objects, considers contemporary issues such as “artificial intelligence,” “tradition and innovation,” and “complex ideas.” Pisvejc’s destructive intervention at Ai’s exhibition, on the other hand, is bereft of any justification. Instead, Pisvejc’s final act that evening said it all. After he destroyed Porcelain Cube, Pisvejc held up a piece of the sculpture over his head and stood on the pedestal as if he himself was the work of art.
Isa Farfan, “Man Smashes Ai Weiwei Sculpture in Italy,” Hyperallergic (September 24, 2024): https://hyperallergic.com/952833/man-smashes-ai-weiwei-sculpture-in-italy/
Roberta Shapiro and Nathalie Heinich. 2012. “When is Artification?” Contemporary Aesthetics, Special Volume 4, Artification. http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=639
Too true!
I'm late to reading this but that was SO interesting Marie. What a unique story! The vandal made my blood pressure rise ha. He does seem to me as someone who has mental health issues....whether stemming from lack of success in the art world or not. And with the assault of Maria Abromovich he is someone people are going to have to be more concerned with and put up security against. It's a sad outcome.