The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Ai Weiwei · an installation of about a hundred million sunflower seeds of porcelain, each modelled and painted by hand in Jingdezhen, China, poured as one level field across the floor at the east end of the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London · the Unilever Series commission for 2010, on view from 12 October 2010 into May 2011, the surface closed to walking within about two days of opening · the unit scored is the installation as made and as recorded: the field no longer stands, and what stands now is its record and its portions, divided since, sold and acquired, Tate among their holders, each whole in fabric and each a part of the one field
Mode
Installation made for one hall: the readymade reversed, a thing that looks manufactured made by hand a hundred million times and laid as one field
Mythos
The one and the many; the grain beyond counting; the sun and its sunflowers, the people turned toward the ruler; the seed as germ and as food; ash
Phase
The Unilever Series commission for the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in 2010; on view from 12 October 2010 into May 2011, closed to walking within about two days; since divided into portions
Presentation
About a hundred million porcelain seeds, each modelled, painted and fired in Jingdezhen, poured as one level grey field across the east end of the hall, seen from its edge and from above
Register
Quiet, grey and level; a plain seen from its edge, then a single painted seed in the hand
Scale
A hundred million objects, one field, one hall; each object the size of a seed
Governing Proposition
Across the floor of the Turbine Hall lies a level grey field, and from its edge or from the bridge above it reads as gravel, or as ash. Close to, or in the hand, each grain is a sunflower seed of porcelain, modelled and painted by hand in Jingdezhen, the city of China’s imperial porcelain, and there are about a hundred million of them. The wager of the work is that a multitude that looks manufactured can be shown to be made of individuals, one hand and one seed at a time, and that whoever finds the one inside the many will see the mass, the market and the state differently. For two days the public walked on it; for the rest of its run it was seen from the edge.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
Ai Weiwei, born in 1957, made Sunflower Seeds for the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in London as the Unilever Series commission for 2010. It opened on 12 October 2010 and was on view into May 2011. It consisted of about a hundred million sunflower seeds of porcelain, the figure given with the work, each modelled by hand, painted by hand and fired in Jingdezhen, the city of China’s imperial porcelain. They were poured as one level grey field across the floor at the east end of the hall. A documentary film on the making of the seeds was shown beside the installation. The film is context, as are the smaller heaps and editions of seeds Ai has shown in galleries before and after, and none of them is scored.
The unit scored is the installation as made and as recorded. The field does not stand. It has since been divided: portions have been sold, some by weight, and others acquired, and Tate keeps a share. Each portion is whole in its fabric, since fired porcelain is about as durable as a material can be, and each is a part of a work that stood whole once, in one hall, for one run. What stands now is the record of the field and those portions. The making by the Jingdezhen workshops is credited to the work, as all one work.
Little can be taken away. Without the hand the seeds are industrial casts, and the claim that the mass is made of individuals collapses into a pile of product. Without the painting the seed is a blank; the few strokes are what make each one a seed and each one different. Without porcelain the work loses Jingdezhen, the material China sent to the world long before “Made in China” was a phrase. Without the sunflower seed it loses its two Chinas. Without the multitude there is a craft object. Only the number gives: a hundred million was set by the hall, and a smaller room would have carried the same argument with fewer.
Movement II
The work has two distances. From the bridge, or from the edge of the field, it reads as gravel: a grey plain, level and clean-edged, laid under the height of the hall. It reads as land, as ash and as crowd at once. Close to, or in the hand, a single seed appears, modelled to the shape of a husk, painted with a few strokes so that the stripes of a real seed are suggested, and unlike any other. The work is the passage from one distance to the other, and it stages that passage as a discovery.
The elevation is of extent. Earlier commissions in the hall rose into its volume; this one lay down in it, and a quantity past counting under that height is the mathematical sublime, the mind failing to hold a number it can see. The second height is the reversal of scale, from the plain to one small thing finely made among a hundred million like it. Both are met in one register, grey and quiet, and met once. The encounter that would have renewed them, walking on the field and sinking into it, did not last.
What the passage discloses can be stated. What looks like mass production is made by hands, one seed at a time; the cheap multitude of the global market is labour, and that labour is invisible at the distance from which a market sees. The individual stands inside the mass of a state that addresses its people as a mass. And a thousand years of craft, the porcelain of emperors, has been put to the making of the meanest thing. These hold. But the eye at the edge cannot see the hand-making, and much of what the work discloses arrives by the caption and the film rather than by the field.
Movement III
In the imagery of the Mao era the leader was the sun and the people were sunflowers turned toward him. The seed is also the snack shared in hard years. The work carries both Chinas, and it builds one archetype outright: the one and the many, a multitude composed of individuals, which is what the object physically is; the grain beyond counting, the sand of the sea and the seed of a promised people, made of objects rather than stated. The sun and the sunflower are alluded to, borrowed from political iconography, and the seed as germ is a meaning porcelain cannot have. The field’s colour, which many viewers read as ash, is evoked too. The particulars stay particular: Jingdezhen, a snack, a hall in London.
Behind the work stand the readymade and its descendants, the floor works of Minimal art and the scatter pieces of the 1960s, and the spill of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a mass of small things the public may take from. By 2010 the Turbine Hall commission was itself a genre of spectacle, with Eliasson’s sun and Salcedo’s crack in the floor behind it. The departure reverses the readymade. Not a manufactured thing chosen, but a thing that looks manufactured, made by hand a hundred million times, so that the readymade’s indifference to making is overturned and making becomes the content. The stake was real, a town’s labour on one throw in a hall where the work could read as gravel; the form, small units on a floor, was decades old.
One law governs the whole: the one inside the many, the individual as the unit of a mass that hides it. The single seed, a thing for the hand made by one person, and the field of a hundred million, gravel from the bridge, obey it alike. Material, number, colour, the snack and the political image each make the same move. The law holds without breach, and its range is real, from the hand to the hall and from a snack to a state; but it is one idea, and once seen it covers a small territory.
Movement IV
Visitors were at first invited to walk on the seeds, to lie on them and to play. Within about two days Tate closed the surface to walking, because the friction of feet raised porcelain dust judged a hazard to health. For the rest of the run the field was seen from its edge and from above. The work had been designed with the body on the field, and for almost all of its life its form was not the one it was made for. The closing was the museum’s decision, not a failure of the making or of the idea; it is weighed as a loss of an element the work was made with.
The form is still the instrument. Heap the seeds and they are a commodity in a warehouse; spread them level and they are ground, a plain, a population, and the viewer stands above the field as a state stands above its people. Make them large and the seed becomes a sculpture rather than a unit; at life size each is a thing for the hand, which is the scale of the discovery. What the form lacks is composition: a level spread has no arrangement for the eye to learn, and the number is the hall’s. The making is the argument, and the artistic decisions are few: the object, the material, the number and the spread.
This is what holds the work below Tier IV. Its making, its disclosure, its swerve and its form stand at or above 8.0; the axes of depth, archetype and survival stand below, its reach is wide in presence and moderate in practice, and its whole stood for one run. The Weather Project (7.7), made for the same hall seven years before, stands level with it: the seeds disclose more and swerve further, the sun elevated more and redirected the commission more. The Gates (7.4), a mass public installation also removed, stands below it on every axis but the inner law. Fountain (8.0), the tradition the seeds invert, holds the reorganisation and the reach. For the Love of God (7.5), made like the seeds by other hands, stands whole where the field does not.
Movement V
In April 2011, while the installation was still on view, Ai was detained by the Chinese authorities and held for 81 days. The detention is not part of the work, but it bears on its stake and on its reception: a Chinese artist already under pressure had staged the people as individuals before the world. The work made Ai the most visible Chinese artist in the world and an emblem of art against state power, and the grey field and the single seed in a hand are widely known. Much of that reach is presence. A line of artists taking this work as a starting point is not shown, and the use of mass craft labour and of the outsourced multiple runs on, but not demonstrably from it.
After the run the field was divided, and portions were sold by weight. The afterlife obeys the work’s law against its grain: sold by the kilogram, the individuals are a mass again, which is the condition the work disclosed. The questions it has sustained for sixteen years are real: whether it criticises “Made in China” or celebrates it, whether the employment of the artisans is its ethics or its irony, what a population is to the state that counts it, and how far its meaning is the artist’s detention. Return to the object yields the single seed, and then the same again; much of the discussion concerns the artist, China and the market rather than this field.
The orders the work holds are labour, the state, history, the global market and hunger, and they are held in each seed: the hands of a town, the people as a mass, a thousand years of porcelain and the Cultural Revolution, the commodity, and the snack of hard years. There is no family in it, no nature beyond the image of a plant, no sacred order and no single person but the anonymous many. It is a larger world than most single objects hold, bounded by one gesture. Each seed survives, and the field it belonged to does not. A visitor who held one, in the first two days, held a hundred millionth of a plain, made by one hand.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged by subtraction, part by part. Take away the hand and the seeds are industrial casts, and the work’s one claim, that the mass is made of individuals, collapses into a pile of product. Take away the painting and the seed is a blank; the few strokes make each one a seed and each one different. Take away porcelain and the work loses Jingdezhen, the material China sent to the world long before “Made in China” was a phrase. Take away the sunflower seed and it loses its two Chinas, the people as sunflowers turned to the sun and the snack shared in hard years. Take away the multitude and there is a craft object. What gives is the number: a hundred million was set by the hall, not by the argument.
Score: 7.9 / 10
What the work brings into the open can be stated, and it is a social condition, not a mood. What looks like mass production, a uniform grey of things, is made by hands, one seed at a time; the cheap multitude of the global market is labour, invisible at the distance from which a market sees. The second disclosure is political: the individual inside the mass of a state that addresses its people as a mass. The third is in the material: the porcelain of emperors put to the making of the meanest thing. These hold, and the work stages the discovery. Held at 8.0 because the eye at the edge cannot see the hand-making, so much of the disclosure needs the caption and the film, and because closing the floor took away the hand that was to find it.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The elevation is of the mathematical kind: a quantity past counting, laid flat under the height of the Turbine Hall, a grey plain that reads at once as land, as ash and as crowd. The hall is used, not merely filled: earlier commissions there rose into the volume, and this one lay down in it, so the sublime is of extent rather than of height. A second summit is the reversal of scale, from the field to one seed in the hand, a small thing finely made among a hundred million like it. What holds the axis is range and frequency: one register, grey and quiet, met once from the bridge or the edge; and after the second day the bodily encounter that would have renewed it, walking on the field and sinking into it, was withdrawn.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Archetype is built in one structure and evoked in several. Built: the one and the many, a multitude composed of individuals, which is what the object physically is; the grain beyond counting, the sand of the sea and the seed of a promised people, made of objects rather than stated. Evoked: the sun and its sunflowers, the imagery in which Mao was the sun and the people turned toward him; the seed as germ and as food; and ash, the field’s colour. The particular stays particular: Jingdezhen, a snack, a hall in London. Held below 8 because the deepest pattern, ruler and people as sun and sunflowers, is borrowed from political iconography and alluded to, and germination is a meaning porcelain cannot have.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The inheritance: the readymade and its descendants; the floor works of Minimal art and the scatter pieces of the 1960s; the spill of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, a mass of small things the public may take from; and the Turbine Hall commission itself, by 2010 a known genre of spectacle, with Eliasson’s sun and Salcedo’s crack in the floor behind it. The departure reverses the readymade: not a manufactured thing chosen, but a thing that looks manufactured, made by hand a hundred million times, so that making becomes the content. The stake was real: a town’s labour on one throw, in a hall where the work could read as gravel, and a Chinese artist already under pressure staging the people as individuals before the world. Held at 8.0 because the form, small units on a floor, is decades old.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Change the form and what the work knows changes a great deal. Cast the seeds and the knowledge of labour goes. Heap them and they are a commodity in a warehouse; spread them level and they are ground, a plain, a population, and the viewer stands above the field as a state stands above its people. Make them large and the single seed is a sculpture rather than a unit; at life size each is a thing for the hand, which is the scale of the discovery. The form is the instrument. Held at 8.0 because the visual form is given rather than composed, a level spread with no arrangement for the eye to learn; the number is the hall’s; and the body on the field, part of the design, held for two days of a run of about seven months.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Evidence over promise: sixteen years, so the axis is partly forecast. The questions sustained are real and several. Is the work a critique of “Made in China” or its celebration, and is the employment of the artisans its ethics or its irony? What is the individual in a mass, and what is a population to the state that counts it? What does a work about individuals become when it is sold by the kilogram? How far is its meaning the artist’s detention, which came during its run? Return to the object yields one second thing, the single seed, and then the same again, and much of the discussion concerns Ai, China and the market rather than this field. A real well, not yet shown to be deep.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The field is Chinese contemporary art and international installation of the 2000s and 2010s. Intrinsic force: a real but partial reorganisation, the readymade inverted into the hand-made multiple, labour itself made the material of a monumental installation, and a Chinese artist’s critique of mass and state carried by the means of Chinese craft rather than by Western forms; much of it is the culmination of Ai’s work of that decade, not a first move. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it made Ai the most visible Chinese artist in the world and an emblem of art against state power, in a season when the state detained him, and the grey field and the seed in a hand are widely known. Redirection of practice is less shown: wide in presence, moderate in practice.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, at sixteen years. Form: the work as made, a hundred million seeds as one field in one hall, does not stand and cannot be shown again as made. It has been divided, portions sold by weight and others acquired, Tate keeping a share. A portion still carries the idea and can be laid as a field or a heap, but the scale that made the plain, and the hall, were defining. The walking was lost within two days and is record only. Presence: wide, and leaning on the artist’s fame and on the events of 2011, which is presence, not proof. Fabric: fired porcelain, about as durable as a material can be; each seed survives, and the fabric charge is nil. The division and the lost walking take the figure well below what the span alone would give.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Judged to the same anchors as every medium, with the making by the Jingdezhen workshops credited to the work. The command is high and load-bearing: each seed modelled to the shape of a husk, fired, painted with a few strokes so that the stripes of a real seed are suggested and no two are alike, and fired again, at a count no workshop had attempted for one object; the grey-white and the black matched over a hundred million units, so that the field reads at once as one colour and as many. The making is the argument, since the work claims to be made, not produced. The placing was exact, a level field with a clean edge. Held at 8.1 because the artistic decisions are few and the visual form beyond the single seed is a level plain.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the single seed, a thing for the hand, sculpted and painted by one person, and the field of a hundred million, which reads from the bridge as gravel or ash. They obey one law: the one inside the many, the individual as the unit of a mass that hides it. Material, number, colour, the snack and the political image each make the same move. The afterlife obeys the law too, against the work’s grain: sold by weight, the individuals are a mass again, which is the condition the work disclosed. Held below 8 because the range, though real, from the hand to the hall and from a snack to a state, is governed by one idea that, once seen, covers a small territory; and the visitor’s body on the field was briefly part of the law, then outside it.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The orders held are several, and they are integrated in one object. Labour: the workshops, the hands, the economy of a town. The state: the people as a mass, the imagery of the sun and the sunflower. History: a thousand years of Jingdezhen porcelain, the Cultural Revolution, the export trade. The global market: “Made in China”, the commodity, and later the work’s own sale by weight. Food and hunger: the seed as the shared snack of hard years. These are held, not listed, because each seed carries all of them. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve is what is absent or only implied: no family, no nature beyond the image of a plant, no sacred order, no single person but the anonymous many. A larger world than most single objects hold, bounded by one gesture.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.1, then The Unconcealment, The Swerve and The Living Form at 8.0. A making by the Jingdezhen workshops that is itself the argument, a hundred million seeds each modelled, painted and fired, matched so that the field reads as one colour and as many; a disclosure of a social condition, the hand inside the mass the market sees and the individual inside the mass the state addresses; a reversal of the readymade, in which a thing that looks manufactured is made by hand and making becomes the content; and a form in which the level field turns a commodity into ground and population, and the seed at life size is a thing for the hand.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: labour, the state, history, the market and hunger are held in each seed, and there is no family, no nature beyond the image of a plant, no sacred order and no single person but the anonymous many. Next above it, The Bottomless Well at 7.4: real questions, and a return to the object that yields the single seed and then the same again. Then The Sublime, The Archetypal Deep and The Imperishable at 7.6: a sublime of extent met once in one register, its bodily renewal withdrawn; a deepest pattern borrowed from political iconography; and a hall-scale field divided into portions. These hold the work below Tier IV: one idea, finely made, whose form was its own for two days and whose whole stood for one run.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.1, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Unconcealment at 8.0, The Swerve at 8.0, Pressure on Tradition at 7.7, The Archetypal Deep at 7.6 and The Imperishable at 7.6 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Bottomless Well, 7.4, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 92.8, an average of 7.733 that displays 7.7. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.7, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the work in outline and in its documented history, from reproduction and report, from the accounts of its making and of its run, and from the critical literature; the field was not stood at for this reading, and its physical particulars are known less well than its form and its history. The work scored is the installation made for the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London, as the Unilever Series commission for 2010: about a hundred million porcelain sunflower seeds, each modelled, painted and fired by hand in Jingdezhen, China, poured as one level field across the floor at the east end of the hall, on view from 12 October 2010 into May 2011, as made and as recorded. Visitors walked on it for about two days, after which Tate closed the surface to walking because of porcelain dust. The field no longer stands: it has been divided into portions, sold and acquired, Tate keeping a share, and these are weighed as its survival, not as other works. The loss of the walking and the division of the whole are weighed on survival, and noted on the form as the form the work actually had. The making by the Jingdezhen workshops is credited to the work. The documentary film shown beside the installation, Ai’s other uses of seeds in smaller heaps and editions, and his detention in April 2011 for 81 days are context and evidence of stake and reach, and are not scored. No words are quoted but the title; no statement of the artist’s is quoted. Facts and figures that could not be verified are not given or are stated as open, among them the closing date of the run, the work’s place in the numbering of the commissions, its weight, area and depth, the number of workers and the length of the making, the number of strokes painted on each seed, the date, weight and price of any sale of a portion, the size and date of the share Tate holds, which other collections hold portions, and the earlier works of the artist’s most often named as its forerunners.