1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows

Author: Ai Weiwei
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 055341948X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The “intimate and expansive” (Time) memoir of “one of the most important artists working in the world today” (Financial Times), telling a remarkable history of China over the last hundred years while also illuminating his artistic process “Poignant . . . An illuminating through-line emerges in the many parallels Ai traces between his life and his father’s.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, BookPage, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp. With candor and wit, he details his return to China and his rise from artistic unknown to art world superstar and international human rights activist—and how his work has been shaped by living under a totalitarian regime. Ai Weiwei’s sculptures and installations have been viewed by millions around the globe, and his architectural achievements include helping to design the iconic Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing. His political activism has long made him a target of the Chinese authorities, which culminated in months of secret detention without charge in 2011. Here, for the first time, Ai Weiwei explores the origins of his exceptional creativity and passionate political beliefs through his life story and that of his father, whose creativity was stifled. At once ambitious and intimate, Ai Weiwei’s 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows offers a deep understanding of the myriad forces that have shaped modern China, and serves as a timely reminder of the urgent need to protect freedom of expression.

Selected Poems

Author: Ai Qing
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0593240723
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
A timeless, visionary collection of poems from one of China’s most acclaimed poets—now available in English for the first time in a generation and featuring a foreword by his son, contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei One of the most influential poets in Chinese history, Ai Qing is mostly unknown to American readers, but his work has shaped the nature of poetry in China for decades. Born between the fall of imperial Manchurian rule and the establishment of the Communist People’s Republic, Ai Qing was at one time an intimate of Mao Zedong. He would eventually fall out with the leader and be sentenced to hard labor during the Cultural Revolution, when he was exiled to the remote part of the country known as “Little Siberia” with his family, including his son, Ai Weiwei. In his work, Ai Qing tells the story of a China convulsing with change, leaving behind a legacy of feudalism and imperialism but uncertain about what the future will hold. Breaking with traditional forms of Chinese poetry, Ai Qing innovatively adapted free verse, writing with a simple sincerity in clear lines that could be understood by everyday readers. Selected Poems is an extraordinary collection that traces the powerful inner life of this influential poet who crafted poems of protest, who longed for a newer, happier age, and who wrote with a profound lyricism that reaches deep into the heart of the reader.

Weiwei-isms

Author: Ai Weiwei
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400845858
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 149

Book Description
The quotable Ai Weiwei This collection of quotes demonstrates the elegant simplicity of Ai Weiwei's thoughts on key aspects of his art, politics, and life. A master at communicating powerful ideas in astonishingly few words, Ai Weiwei is known for his innovative use of social media to disseminate his views. The short quotations presented here have been carefully selected from articles, tweets, and interviews given by this acclaimed Chinese artist and activist. The book is organized into six categories: freedom of expression; art and activism; government, power, and moral choices; the digital world; history, the historical moment, and the future; and personal reflections. Together, these quotes span some of the most revealing moments of Ai Weiwei's eventful career—from his risky investigation into student deaths in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to his arbitrary arrest in 2011—providing a window into the mind of one of the world's most electrifying and courageous contemporary artists. Select Quotes from the Book: On Freedom of Expression "Say what you need to say plainly, and then take responsibility for it." "A small act is worth a million thoughts." "Liberty is about our rights to question everything." On Art and Activism "Everything is art. Everything is politics." "The art always wins. Anything can happen to me, but the art will stay." "Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it. I don't feel that much anger. I equally have a lot of joy." On Government, Power, and Making Moral Choice "Once you've tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country." "I feel powerless all the time, but I regain my energy by making a very small difference that won't cost me much." "Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice." On the Digital World "Only with the Internet can a peasant I have never met hear my voice and I can learn what's on his mind. A fairy tale has come true." "The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It's as simple as that." "The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China." On History, the Historical Moment, and the Future "If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future." "We need to get out of the old language." "The world is a sphere, there is no East or West." Personal Reflection "I've never planned any part of my career—except being an artist. And I was pushed into that corner because I thought being an artist was the only way to have a little freedom." "Anyone fighting for freedom does not want to totally lose their freedom." "Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it."

Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters

Author: Ai Weiwei
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262525747
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 513

Book Description
A richly illustrated exploration of Ai Weiwei's installation and architecture projects, focusing on the artist's use of space. Outspoken, provocative, and prolific, the artist Ai Weiwei is an international phenomenon. In recent years, he has produced an astonishingly varied body of work while continuing his role as activist, provocateur, and conscience of a nation. Ai Weiwei is under “city arrest” in Beijing after an 81-day imprisonment; he is accused of tax evasion, but many suspect he is being punished for his political activism, including his exposure of shoddy school building practices that led to the deaths of thousands of children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2009, he was badly beaten by the police during his earthquake investigations. Ai Weiwei's work reflects his multiple artistic identities as conceptual artist, architect, filmmaker, designer, curator, writer, and publisher. This monumental volume, developed in association with the artist, draws on the full breadth of Ai Weiwei's architectural, installation, and activist work, with a focus on his use of space. It documents a huge range of international projects with drawings, plans, and photographs of finished work. It also includes excerpts from Ai Weiwei's famous blog (shut down by Chinese authorities in 2009), in which he offers pithy and scathing commentary on the world around him. Essays by leading critics and art historians and interviews with the artist, drawing out his central concerns, accompany the 450 beautifully reproduced color illustrations of his work.

Ai Weiwei Speaks

Author: Hans Ulrich Obrist
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241957737
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
'If artists betray the social conscience and the basic principles of being human, where does art stand then?' Ai Weiwei - artist, architect, curator, publisher, poet and urbanist - extended the notion of art and is one of the world's most significant creative and cultural figures. In this series of interviews, conducted over several years with the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, he discusses the many dimensions of his artistic life, ranging over subjects including ceramics, blogging, nature, philosophy and the myriad influences that have fed into his work. He also talks candidly about his father, his childhood spent in exile and his criticism of the Chinese state. Together, these extraordinary discussions give a unique insight into the outstanding complexity of Ai Weiwei's thought and work, and are an essential reminder of the need for personal, political and artistic freedom.

Uncertain Manifesto

Author: Frédéric Pajak
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 168137286X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Book Description
An illustrated artist's memoir of the motivations, feelings, ideas, figures (including Samuel Beckett and Walter Benjamin), travels, and love affairs that have influenced his life. The writer and artist Frédéric Pajak was ten when he began to dream of “a book mixing words and pictures: snippets of adventure, random memories, maxims, ghosts, forgotten heroes, trees, the raging sea,” but it was not until he was in his forties that this dream took form as Uncertain Manifesto. The utterly original book that he produced is a memoir born of reading and a meditation on the lives and ideas, the motivations, feelings, and fates of some of Pajak’s heroes: Samuel Beckett and the artist Bram van Velde, and, especially, Walter Benjamin, whose travels to Moscow, Naples, and Ibiza, whose experiences with hashish, whose faltering marriage and love affairs and critique of modern experience Pajak re-creates and reflects on in word and image. Pajak’s moody black-and white drawings accompany the text throughout, though their bearing on it is often indirect and all the more absorbing for that. Between word and image, the reader is drawn into a mysterious space that is all Pajak’s as he seeks to evoke vanished histories and to resist a modern world more and more given over to a present without a past. With the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia

Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows

Author: Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101443669
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
"Ten Thousand Sorrows & Ten Thousand Joys offers a vision of lives well-led, and of love in the thick of crisis and loss. Beyond inspiring."-Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence "This beautiful book is unlike any other personal account of living with Alzheimer's disease that I have ever read . . . it offers patients and families practical insights into how they can live their lives more fully amidst the heartbreak of a mind-robbing illness."- Paul Raia, Director of Patient Care and Family Support, Alzheimer's Association, Massachusetts Chapter "A story of courage, love, and growing wisdom in the face of Alzheimer's."-Joseph Goldstein, author of One Dharma, Founder / Director of Insight Meditation Society In this profound and courageous memoir, Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle describes how her husband's Alzheimer's diagnosis at the age of seventy-two challenged them to live the spiritual teachings they had embraced during the course of their life together. Following a midlife career shift, Harrison Hobliztelle, or Hob as he was called, a former professor of comparative literature at Barnard, Columbia, and Brandeis University, became a family therapist and was ordained a Dharmacharya (senior teacher) by Thich Nhat Hanh. Hob comes to life in these pages as an incredibly funny and brilliant man who never stopped enjoying a good philosophical conversation-even as his mind, quite literally, slipped away from him. And yet when they first heard the diagnosis, Olivia and Hob's initial reaction was to cling desperately to the life they had had. But everything had changed, and they knew that the only answer was to greet this last phase of Hob's life consciously and lovingly. Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows provides a wise and compassionate vision for maintaining hope and grace in the face of life's greatest challenges. (This memoir was originally self-published as The Majesty of Your Loving.)

Journey to the Heart of Aikido

Author: Linda Holiday
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1583946608
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 377

Book Description
Journey to the Heart of Aikido presents the teachings of Motomichi Anno Sensei, one of the few remaining direct students of Morihei Ueshiba, the legendary founder of Aikido. After a lifetime of practice and teaching in Japan, the United States, and Europe, Anno Sensei conveys through his teachings Aikido's essential spirit of love, harmony, gratitude, and purification with simple authenticity and eloquence. Author and translator Linda Holiday--herself a senior instructor of Aikido--brings to life the intimacy of this communication through translated discourses on the deep practice of Aikido and candid dialogues between Anno sensei and Western students. Journey to the Heart of Aikido includes Linda Holiday's vivid account of her adventure as a young woman studying Aikido in the mystical region of Kumano, Japan, in the 1970s, and a poignant telling of Anno sensei's life and his first-hand experience of training with Aikido's founder. An essential resource for the global Aikido community, Journey to the Heart of Aikido also offers spiritual teachings relevant to all contemporary seekers, touching a wide range of themes such as the meaning of martial arts, the integration of body and spirit, the truth of interconnectedness, and the practice of peace, offering all readers insight into the profound spiritual questions at the heart of life.

Everything Sad Is Untrue

Author: Daniel Nayeri
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1646140028
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
A National Indie Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year A New York Times Best Book of the Year An Amazon Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editors' Choice A BookPage Best Book of the Year A NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year A Today.com Best of the Year PRAISE "A modern masterpiece." —The New York Times Book Review "Supple, sparkling and original." —The Wall Street Journal "Mesmerizing." —TODAY.com "This book could change the world." —BookPage "Like nothing else you've read or ever will read." —Linda Sue Park "It hooks you right from the opening line." —NPR SEVEN STARRED REVIEWS ★ "A modern epic." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review ★ "A rare treasure of a book." —Publishers Weekly, starred review ★ "A story that soars." —The Bulletin, starred review ★ "At once beautiful and painful." —School Library Journal, starred review ★ "Raises the literary bar in children's lit." —Booklist, starred review ★ "Poignant and powerful." —Foreword Reviews, starred review ★ "One of the most extraordinary books of the year." —BookPage, starred review A sprawling, evocative, and groundbreaking autobiographical novel told in the unforgettable and hilarious voice of a young Iranian refugee. It is a powerfully layered novel that poses the questions: Who owns the truth? Who speaks it? Who believes it? "A patchwork story is the shame of the refugee," Nayeri writes early in the novel. In an Oklahoman middle school, Khosrou (whom everyone calls Daniel) stands in front of a skeptical audience of classmates, telling the tales of his family's history, stretching back years, decades, and centuries. At the core is Daniel's story of how they became refugees—starting with his mother's vocal embrace of Christianity in a country that made such a thing a capital offense, and continuing through their midnight flight from the secret police, bribing their way onto a plane-to-anywhere. Anywhere becomes the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy, and then finally asylum in the U.S. Implementing a distinct literary style and challenging western narrative structures, Nayeri deftly weaves through stories of the long and beautiful history of his family in Iran, adding a richness of ancient tales and Persian folklore. Like Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights in a hostile classroom, Daniel spins a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE (a true story) is a tale of heartbreak and resilience and urges readers to speak their truth and be heard.

Magritte

Author: Alex Danchev
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0307908208
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 480

Book Description
The first major biography of the pathbreaking, perpetually influential surrealist artist and iconoclast whose inspiration can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé—by the celebrated biographer of Cézanne and Braque In this thought-provoking life of René Magritte (1898-1967), Alex Danchev makes a compelling case for Magritte as the single most significant purveyor of images to the modern world. Magritte’s surreal sensibility, deadpan melodrama, and fine-tuned outrageousness have become an inescapable part of our visual landscape, through such legendary works as The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe) and his celebrated iterations of Man in a Bowler Hat. Danchev explores the path of this highly unconventional artist from his middle-class Belgian beginnings to the years during which he led a small, brilliant band of surrealists (and famously clashed with André Breton) to his first major retrospective, which traveled to the United States in 1965 and gave rise to his international reputation. Using 50 color images and more than 160 black-and-white illustrations, Danchev delves deeply into Magritte’s artistic development and the profound questions he raised in his work about the very nature of authenticity. This is a vital biography for our time that plumbs the mystery of an iconoclast whose influence can be seen in everyone from Jasper Johns to Beyoncé.