Ai Weiwei LEGO Self-Portrait

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When Ai Weiwei (b. 1957 in China) makes a self-portrait it becomes political. But it is equally playful and full of references to art history. LEGO Self-portrait from 2016 is made up of actual LEGO pieces. We have all played with them as kids and we all know what great opportunities they constitute in enabling the physical construction of a fantasy. But when Ai Weiwei sought out to purchase large quantities of LEGO for his artistic projects, the company was afraid of losing large parts of the Chinese market and Ai Weiwei was declined. Never short of ideas, the artist placed dumpsters all around and had people donate their old LEGO to him. Of course, LEGO had to excuse themselves, realising that it was utterly short-sighted to turn down the artist. Nevertheless, Ai Weiwei’s LEGO works carry a special combination of dead seriousness and joyful playfulness that is hard to find elsewhere. The format and the colours are hard to ignore as a great homage to the king of pop art Andy Warhol, and especially Warhol's printed oeuvre.  There is a political agenda to pop art that is often forgotten. There was a strong will to move art out of the white gallery cube, to the people and to other areas of everyday life. The Ai Weiwei LEGO Self-portrait embodies all that. The technique is based on a toy spread around the globe, now intertwined with commercialism and the cynism of profit and yet, the work is a beautiful reminder of the most overwhelming artistic movements of the 20th century and the incredible impact art has on life.