Once More Into the Culture Wars
To assert one’s inner life in a time of reactionary politics is a radical act.
Jason Stopa February 22, 2020
In 1995, Ai Weiwei purchased a 2000-year-old ceremonial urn. The artist reportedly paid several hundred thousand dollars for it. He titled the work “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn,” and as the title would suggest, Ai then dropped and shattered the vessel. By appropriating a work of symbolic Chinese history, he effectively purchased a cultural artifact, only to destroy it.
This act of willful destruction naturally caused an uproar. When pushed for answers, the artist quoted Mao Zedong, stating, “the only way of building a new world is by destroying the old one.” It is arguable that Ai’s gesture eradicates a piece of history in a rather minor way; the Han Dynasty remains with or without the vessel.
What this illustrates, however, is our collective desire for a historical do-over, to perform historical tensions, making the past an ongoing present to be reckoned with. The United States is no stranger to this. The country has been thrust into the culture wars for a second time. Contested memorial sites, erected long after the Civil War ended, have become flashpoints with historical and artistic intersections.
