OLI SCARFF/GETTY IMAGES
“Zhang Xiaogang, Yue Minjun, Zeng Fanzhi, Xu Bing, Liu
Xiaodong,” Ai lists off casually,
as if he were taking attendance
instead of denouncing China’s
power art players.
Seated in a yoke-back chair traditionally used by China’s elite, Ai
leans forward to say this, the most
animated physical gesture he
made that morning. His words are
more dynamic. For years, China’s
most controversial artist has flung
unabated criticism at the govern-
ment for its posture on democracy
and human rights. Authorities
put him into jail for nearly three
months in April last year, offering
no immediate explanation why,
interrogating him on his political
activities and later accusing him
of tax evasion. “It was inhumane,
dark, and so hopeless,” he says, in
heavily accented English.
Ai, 55, can come off grumpy:
unsmiling and wary-eyed. But he
quickly relents to his gentler attributes — a waggish sense of humor, calm speech patterns and a
fondness for lost animals. At any
given point over the past 12 years,
“A lot of people
think I just
copy others,”
Ai says. “The
police accused
me of the crime
of stealing
other people’s
work, the
example being
‘Zodiac Heads’
[pictured],
created by the
Ching Dynasty.
They said, ‘How
can you do
work exactly
like that?’
But it’s not.
Copying is the
modern way of
learning, I think.
By copying,
originality
will emerge.”