For Art's Sake

Here's another moral dilemma for you to ponder. The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been in the news a lot of late, having been detained by the Chinese authorities and, effectively, vanished. Nothing has been heard of him since his arrest. Now, I think we can all agree that this is quite deplorable, and that he should be released or, at the very least, allowed contact with friends, family and legal representatives. No argument there, I think. But, what if you think that his actual art work is shit? I mean, the main reason that his appalling treatment is receiving such widespread publicity is because he is a famous artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide. I'm sure that there are thousands of other detainees in China who won't have their cases highlighted simply because they don't have powerful friends in the global arts community. So, if you don't actually like his works, need you feel as concerned about him? Is your outrage really based solely upon a concern for China's terrible human rights record? If Ai Weiwei was some industrial worker, or an office clerk, would you really care as much?

Of course, the real issue here is our current obsession with celebrity. Apparently nothing is really an issue if it isn't somehow connected with somebody famous. Breast cancer didn't exist until Kylie Minogue was diagnosed with it, and clinical depression wasn't an issue until Catherine Zeta Jones admitted suffering from it. According to the media, that is. So it shouldn't be surprising that China's atrocious record on human rights only began to trouble the press and the great and the good until somebody famous in the West fell victim to it. But getting back to the original point, there's no doubt that it does affect your perception of these issues when you don't sympathise, (personally, politically or artistically), with the person at the centre of them. I always find, under such circumstances, that I have to go that extra mile to work up a full moral outrage, no matter how much I might agree with the principles involved. I remember having real problems when that fatwa was called against Salman Rushdie. Whilst it was clearly an outrageous assault on the principles of free speech and artistic freedom, I found it very difficult to get past the fact that Rushdie has always seemed, to me, a complete arse. I can't say I like his writing much, either. But what the Hell, I eventually managed to muster my moral outrage in spite of Rushdie, so maybe I'll manage it yet for Ai Weiwei.