By: Ethan & Connie Cao
Ai WeiWei, one of the world’s most famous contemporary artists, has turned his attention away from photo, clay, and video, and towards….Lego!
AI WeiWei’s work brings attention to the situation of poverty and worldwide issues in a different variety of ways. He created some photos and art with the weirdest materials such as iron collected after an earthquake. Now, Mr. Ai Wei Wei is recreating a painting by Claude Monet with lego. He wanted to do this because he wanted to suggest contemporary digital technologies which are central to modern life and in reference to how art is often disseminated in the contemporary world.
Claude Monet was a famous French artist who painted hundreds of pictures of water lilies in his garden. One of the most famous is called Water Lilies 1914-26. Monet worked on it from 1914 to 1926. It’s a huge painting, made of three separate panels. Together, the panels are nearly 42 feet (12.7 meters) long. In Ai Wei Wei’s artwork, Instead of adding colors with brushes, Mr. Ai uses 22 different colors of Lego blocks. The painting is around 49 feet (15 meters) long and covers a whole wall of the museum. It’s Mr. Ai’s largest Lego artwork ever. In all, it contains about 650,000 Lego bricks. So much right?
Mr. Ai used lego pieces that were donated by stores and people across the world to create a version of the famous painting. Mr. Ai’s version of Monet’s painting is on display at the Design Museum in London, from April 7 to July 30. It’s called Water Lilies #1.
Now, that his first lego painting is done, there is a great chance Mr. Ai will create new pieces from other famous paintings and many people are looking forward to seeing them.