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Art since 1980

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Beginner's guide
Contemporary Art, an introduction
Postmodernism
The Case for Copying
The Black Atlantic
The Black Atlantic: What is the Black Atlantic?
The Black Atlantic: Identity and Nationhood
The Black Atlantic: Toppled Monuments and Hidden Histories
The Black Atlantic: Afterlives of Slavery in Contemporary Art
Cold War Germany and after
Anselm Kiefer
Shulamite
Bohemia Lies by the Sea
An interview with Anselm Kiefer
Sigmar Polke, Watchtower series
Gerhard Richter
The Cage Paintings (1-6)
Uncle Rudi
Betty
September
Art in the AIDS era
David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (One Day This Kid . . .)
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (billboard of an empty bed)
Masami Teraoka, American Kabuki
Sue Coe, Aids won’t wait, the enemy is here not in Kuwait
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Horn Players
Keith Haring, Subway Drawings
Pepón Osorio
En la barberia no se llora (No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop)
Badge of Honor
Post-Cultural Revolution China
Luo Zhongli, Father
Zhang Daqian, Panorama of Mount Lu
Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn
The Case for Ai Weiwei
Xu Bing, Book from the Sky
Xu Zhen – ‘Artists Change the Way People Think’
Apartheid-era South Africa
Marlene Dumas, Models
The story of Ernest Cole, a black photographer in South Africa during apartheid
Jane Alexander, Butcher Boys
Santu Mofokeng, Train Churches
William Kentridge, drawing from Tide Table (Soho in Deck Chair)
Sue Williamson, For Thirty Years Next to His Heart
Young British Artists and art as commodity
Jeff Koons, Pink Panther
The YBAs: The London-based Young British Artists
Tracey Emin, My Bed
Chris Ofili, The Holy Virgin Mary
Damien Hirst, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living
Marc Quinn, Self
Hans Haacke, Seurat’s “Les Poseuses” (small version), 1884-1975
Pictures generation and post-modern photography
Alfredo Jaar, A Logo for America
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Your gaze hits the side of my face)
Jeff Wall, A View from an Apartment
Sally Mann, Blowing Bubbles
The Pictures Generation
Cindy Sherman
Untitled Film Still #21
Untitled #228
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman Feeding Bird), from The Kitchen Table Series
Joel Sternfeld, On This Site—The Stonewall Inn
Stan Douglas, Every Building on 100 West Hastings
Will Wilson interview about The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange
Annie Leibovitz, Queen Elizabeth II
Trevor Paglen, The Black Sites—The Salt Pit, Northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan
Chris McCaw, Sunburned, GSP #166, Mohave/Winter Solstice
Revisiting histories
Betye Saar, Liberation of Aunt Jemima
Nari Ward, We the People (black version)
Kara Walker
An interview with Kara Walker
Kara Walker, Darkytown Rebellion
Kara Walker, A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby
Kara Walker, Fons Americanus
Alison Saar, Topsy and the Golden Fleece
Kerry James Marshall
An interview with Kerry James Marshall about his series Mementos
Kerry James Marshall: Mastry
Kerry James Marshall on his process
Clarissa Rizal, Resilience Robe
Tenzing Rigdol, Pin drop silence: Eleven-headed Avalokiteshvara
Thornton Dial, Blood and Meat: Survival For The World
Titus Kaphar, The Cost of Removal
Omar Victor Diop: Black subjects in the frame
Wendy Red Star, 1880 Crow Peace Delegation
Yee I-Lann, Picturing Power #6…
Roger Shimomura, Diary: December 12, 1941
An interview with Fred Wilson about the conventions of museums and race
Ken Gonzales-Day, Erased Lynching Series
Kenseth Armstead, Surrender Yorktown 1781
Lam Tung Pang on “A day of two Suns”
Michael Rakowitz: Haunting the West
Abdoulaye Ndoye, Ahmed Baba
Mapping and migration
Julie Mehretu, Stadia II
Doris Salcedo, Shibboleth
Doris Salcedo: Third World Identity
Raúl de Nieves, Beginning & the end neither & the otherwise betwixt & between the end is the beginning & the end
Julie Mehretu, HOWL, eon (I, II)
An interview with Alfredo Jaar
Jamie Wyeth, Kalounna in Frogtown
Yto Barrada, Ceuta Border, Illegally Crossing the Border into the Spanish Enclave of Ceuta, Tangier
Zineb Sedira – ‘The Personal is Political’
Suchitra Mattai, Exodus
Borderlands
Tanya Aguiñiga, Metabolizing the Border
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Border Tuner
Postcommodity arts collective
Richard Misrach, Border Cantos
Minerva Cuevas, Crossing of the Rio Bravo
Jaime Carrejo, Border/Land
Guadalupe Maravilla, Requiem For My Border Crossing
Figuration, the body, and representation
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How did Lucian Freud present queer and marginalized bodies?
Lucian Freud, Standing by the Rags
Identity Politics: From the Margins to the Mainstream
Stephanie Syjuco, The Visible Invisible
Renée Stout, interview about Fetish #2
Wangechi Mutu
Wangechi Mutu, Preying Mantra
Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us
Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present
Rineke Dijkstra, Odessa, Ukraine, August 4, 1993
An interview with Maryam Hoseini
Jordan Casteel paints her community
Luchita Hurtado’s body of work
Shirin Neshat
Rebellious Silence, Women of Allah series
‘Dreams Are Where Our Fears Live’
Kehinde Wiley
Rumors of War
Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps
Yinka Shonibare, The Swing (After Fragonard)
Figures & Fictions: Santu Mofokeng
Kiki Smith, Lying with the Wolf
Catherine Opie
Self-Portrait/Cutting
Figure and Landscape series
Stefanie Jackson, Bluest Eye
Ellen Galagher, DeLuxe
Ah Xian artist interview
Takashi Murakami
Will Wilson, Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange
Lorna Simpson – ‘Everything I Do Comes from the Same Desire’
Amy Sherald, Precious Jewels by the Sea
Michelle Browder, Mothers of Gynecology
Douglas Coupland, Terry Fox Memorial
Social practice
Guerrilla Girls, ‘You Have to Question What You See’ (interview)
Ai Wei Wei, Remembering and the Politics of Dissent
Ai Wei Wei, Kui Hua Zi (Sunflower Seeds)
Tania Bruguera, The Francis Effect
Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International
Theaster Gates on collecting
Danh Vo Interview: Art Should Estrange
Lida Abdul – ‘A Beautiful Encounter With Chance’
Public memory and the politics of place
An-My Lê, 29 Palms
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Native Hosts (Arkansas)
Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii
Kerry James Marshall, Our Town
SAAM: Nam June Paik, Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, 1995
Do Ho Suh, Rubbing/Loving
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice (Equal Justice Initiative)
Krzysztof Wodiczko, Monument
Adel Abidin, Memorial
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Trade (Gifts for Trading Land with White People)
What's in a map? Jaune Quick-To-See Smith's State Names (2000)
Daniel Libeskind, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, UK
Graciela Iturbide, Photographing Mexico
Contemporary Native American Architecture
Birdhead – ‘We Photograph Things That Are Meaningful To Us’
Artist Richard Bell – ‘My Art is an Act of Protest’
Yatika Starr Fields and mural painting
Contemporary politics and classical architecture
Landscape and ecology
Stéphane Couturier, Fenetre, Eastlake Greens, San Diego
Maya Lin, Silver Upper White River
Courtney Leonard, ARTIFICE Ellipse, 2016
Sebastião Salgado’s Kuwait
Michel Tuffery, Pisupo Lua Afe (Corned Beef 2000)
James Turrell, Skyspace, the way of color
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Earth’s Creation
Roger Minick, Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park
Binh Danh, Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite CA, May 31, 2012
Thiebaud, Ponds and Streams
Noel Harding, The Elevated Wetlands
Artist Dale Harding – ‘Environment is Part of Who You Are’
Mel Chin, Paydirt
Digital culture
An interview with Jamian Juliano-Villani
Meriem Bennani’s Exploded Visions
Art, Race, and the Internet: Mendi + Keith Obadike’s Black.Net.Art Actions
Cao Fei, Building “RMB City”
Shahzia Sikander, The Last Post
Assemblage and materiality
Assemblage
Magdalene Anyango N. Odundo, Symmetrical Reduced Black Narrow-Necked Tall Piece
Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits”
Damián Ortega, Alias
Abraham Cruzvillegas, Autoconstrucción
Rebecca Belmore on Rising to the Occasion
El Anatsui
El Anatsui, Untitled
El Anatsui, Old Man’s Cloth
Mickalene Thomas on her Materials and Artistic Influences
Fred Wilson: Beauty & Ugliness
Kohei Nawa, PixCell-Deer#24
Zheng Chongbin on “I Look for the Sky”
An interview with artist Ogawa Machiko
Lares Feliciano, Memory Mirror installation
Mona Hatoum – ‘Nothing Is a Finished Project’
Jesús Rafael Soto, Houston Penetrable
Artist Profile: Sopheap Pich on Rattan, Sculpture, and Abstraction
Who is Rachel Whiteread?
Artist interview with Lee Bul about Willing To Be Vulnerable
Ellen Gallagher: Cutting
Shan Goshorn (Eastern Band Cherokee), Sealed Fate: Treaty of New Echota Protest Basket
Richard Zane Smith (Wyandotte Nation), Wyandotte Feast Pot
Marilyn Spoon, Bandolier Bag
Rina Banerjee, commerce out of the Earth
Spirituality and transcendence
Mariko Mori, Pure Land
Bill Viola, The Crossing
Bruce Nauman, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths
Jack Whitten on Mapping the Soul
Lee Ufan
Richard Mayhew, Indigenous Spiritual Space

The Case for Ai Weiwei

by The Art Assignment

Speaker: Sarah Urist Green

Additional resources

Ai WeiWei: A Voice of Dissent on ArtUK

Ai WeiWei’s website

Ai WeiWei on Art21

Cite this page as: The Art Assignment, "The Case for Ai Weiwei," in Smarthistory, August 2, 2017, accessed June 8, 2023, https://smarthistory.org/case-for-ai-weiwei/.

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