Describe Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads and explain why it was created.
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: The ideal answer should include:
1. Ai Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads are 12 bronze sculptures of creatures from the Chinese zodiac.
2. The heads are based on the remnants of an eighteenth-century fountain from an imperial retreat in Beijing, and Ai Weiwei evokes their function by placing each of them atop a column that resembles a spout of gushing water.
3. The majority of the original eighteenth-century heads vanished when the imperial palace was destroyed by French and British troops in 1860 and the rest were declared national treasures.
4. Ai Weiwei created Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads in response to a 2000 art auction in which three of the lost heads appeared for sale.
You might also like to view...
Art has several functions, including (choose the best answer):
a. serving as a profession in society b. providing economic benefits to the artist c. protesting social injustice d. decorating museum walls e. all of the above
The human-animal representations used by Olmec religious practitioners are thought to symbolize which of the following?
A. Gods of the underworld B. Transformations to wrest power from supernatural forces C. The dance of life D. The creation of the Olmec dynasty