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COPYRIGHT 2008 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Cai Guo-Qiang, the Chinese installation and pyrotechnic artist, recently told me that as a child he had a recurrent dream of a fireworks display in Tiananmen Square at which no one was present--no crew, no audience--except him. Keep that in mind while viewing Cai's retrospective at the Guggenheim. It might tip the balance of your feelings in his favor, as it did mine. A whiff of eccentric passion complicates the character of his art, which is strenuously theatrical and weirdly political (with ambiguous stands on Mao Zedong and terrorism), calculated in content (East-West tropes are a specialty), and ad hoc in form. It also disarms my prejudice against that sort of work, as being a product more of institutional programs--biennials, inevitably--than of plausible human interests and desires. Cai, who is fifty and has had a studio in New York since 1995, is one of several international art stars--others are Olafur Eliasson, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and, as a grandfathery pioneer, Christo--whose personal wealth likely includes epic accumulations of frequent-flyer miles. He is in charge of the visual and special effects for the opening and closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics,...
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