NAME: date:

ANNOTATING THE HUMANITY OF AN ARTIST

This father and son reflect each 1.How might someone’s
other across time in profound experience with family and home
ways: in championing humanity, life reflect in art?
in the seemingly unavoidable
confrontation of the individual
and the state, and in how the
creative mind dares to confront
brute power with words and art.
Hint: “ON POETRY, you wrote: Questions?
‘My father was punished for being
a poet, and I grew up in its
consequences.’”

Ai Weiwei: Yes, I am 2. How was the condition during

comfortable underground. I WW2 affecting the condition of artists
or the art world? State two examples.
like it. It makes me look at
the world differently. I
think the physical
condition is also important.
We are in this world filled 3. How do you as an artist describe
with millions of things, but the things in your painting describe
you?
we only see some of them.
There he is, my father, and
what he likes — what is
important to him — is what
he sees. Those things he
sees, well, that’s him. How
else do you describe a
person?

Even our hope and our 4. Make a connection to the

imagination have to do art theft lecture. List 2
with our inner associations. examples how WW2 denied
When those things have artists and their movement.
been cut off, you have been
totally denied in every
direction — you’re still
alive, but you’re not
existing.
I think a great challenge to 5. Do you agree with this
our humanity is for it to statement? Why or why
encompass the wilderness, not.
just as it is a challenge to
see that the person and the
environment are one.