Art without Enlightenment

There is a striking disparity in news reports coming from China about the treatment and presentation of art.  On the one hand, the German government sponsored a long-term exhibit at the Beijing National Museum entitled Art of the Enlightenment which cobbles together an assortment of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German paintings all under the rubric "Enlightenment," a term no art historian would use to classify styles or movements.   There is no "art of the Enlightenment" per se, yet such a classification has been created in order to address the larger question of reason, science, progress and (maybe) political rights.  Paintings from Berlin, Dresden and Munich were brought together in Beijing with the German foreign office spending 10 million Euros and the foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, speaking at the opening.  Seems like a traditional form of cultural exchange in the name of high diplomacy. 

http://www.faz.net/s/RubEBED639C476B407798B1CE808F1F6632/Doc~E3E2D4BB9DF1642F99CAFC732E3950706~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

In the same week the very prominent contemporary artist Ai Weiwei, who has exhibited at the Tate in London and at Dokumenta in Kassel, mentions in an interview that he will set up a studio in Berlin.  He also speaks out in other interviews against the government's tendency to "disappear" outspoken critics, i.e. people who post on blogs and social media against official policy.   That very same week in which the Art of the Enlightenment exhibit opens, Ai Weiwei is stopped by police from travelling to Hong Kong, and then disappears.  Lisson Gallery in London announced last week that they would exhibit a new work by Ai Weiwei: marble versions of the security cameras that the government had placed around his studio.   

Enlightenment has its sinister sides, as anyone who has read Adorno/Horkheimer and Foucault knows.  It also has the particular meaning in Chinese political history as a term used describe the corrections taken against people who did not conform to the Communist Party's official position.  Ai Weiwei's arrest, the government shut down of his studio and its interrogation of his circle all directly demonstrate that this harsh form of Enlightenment is far more alive than any cosmopolitan eighteenth-century version.   Two years ago he had been arrested and beaten so severally that an emergency operation had to be undertaken on his head in a Munich hospital.  Where he has been taken now is anyone's guess.  The contrast between the officially sanctioned exhibit and the treatment of contemporary artists is brutal.

http://www.faz.net/s/RubEBED639C476B407798B1CE808F1F6632/Doc~EA77F168A24EC4E2B972B14402A95BC2B~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

Here  are a bunch of English language links:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/04/artist-missing-after-bloc_n_844750.html?ref=fb&src=sp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/apr/05/ai-weiwei-china-eu-dialogue