“Were those Churchill’s?” I don’t think the tourist who asked that question (she was looking at the pair of handcuffs on the bed of the room where Winston Churchill was born) realised that, among the showcased Churchill memorabilia and period furnishings, there was an interloper exhibition: Ai Weiwei’s takeover of Blenheim Palace. Often blending in amongst its surroundings, at times the exhibition itself is almost imperceptible — but, for anyone appreciative of rule-breaking modern art, utterly unmissable.
Let’s start with the basics. Weiwei takes full advantage of the existing materials of the Palace’s decoration, and these are the buildingblocks of the exhibition: marble of neo-Classical beauty, looking back to a civilisation that defined the West; and porcelain which capitalises on the Chinoiserie trend from the Seventeenth Century onwards, subjugating an Oriental style to European ideas of the East. This is not to forget gold: the fierce and wise golden heads of the twelve animals of the Zodiac overlook a dining table laid with a gold-plated service set, and in turn are overlooked by elaborate frescoes that glint with gilding. Multiple layers of fusion make use of both the tangible and the conceptual: the art is informed by Blenheim Palace itself, its history and its pre-existing associations, and not least its exterior of visual harmony, which masks the dark underside of empire, inherited privilege and conflict.
Although always challenging, the exhibition does not have to be enjoyed only on the level of political subversion. There is simple and very joyous beauty created when the unexpectedly natural is brought into a highly artificial environment. Among the Grecian-style marble urns and busts were marmoreal representations of grass blades, also on pedestals. Nods to previous exhibitions are appropriate for a cultural giant such as Weiwei: this time his sunflower seeds are domesticated, stuck together to make stools.
The themes of the exhibition are wide-ranging and should not be pinned down, but commoditisation in post-revolutionary China is one — think the Coca-Cola logo printed onto a Hang Dynasty vase and the replacement of grand red carpets by wool textiles based on a strip of dirt road in the countryside — of many expressions of the clashes between disparate cultures and eras.
A general rule seems to apply that fun and disdain is being poked “not at the buildings themselves, but at the power behind them”, as I overheard one visitor insisting as she gazed at the notorious self-taken photos of Weiwei giving his middle finger to prestigious locations throughout the world. Blenheim could easily have been one of these. It might even border on being staid, grand, and sombre, due to the amount of traditional respect accorded it, were it not for those whose predominant memory of the place is racing around the hedge maze when they were small, who can probably recognise the good that breathing new life into its atmosphere does, rather than taking offense at Weiwei’s attitude of nothing here being sacred.
Hosting this exhibition with great openmindedness is the Duke of Marlborough, founder of the Blenheim Art Foundation, which facilitated Weiwei’s transformationof the space. With his passport confiscated, the exhibition had to be realised from a great distance, through models, plans and drawings of the Palace and grounds. Weiwei’s dissident status and past imprisonment in China throw the handcuffs into a new light: they’re not just designed to provoke, but also bring fear and suppression into the space. Worryingly, I never actually found the marble surveillance camera detailed in the exhibition leaflet…
Still, watching visitors interact with the exhibition was part of its joy for me. This was encapsulated by one of the last pieces, which there was clearly something enticing about. This was 25 bubbles of blue porcelain situated in the pristine green lawn, judging by the number of people who leaned down to capture their own distorted reflections on camera, and of kids who leap-frogged over them, riotously disregarding completely the ‘Please Keep Off’ signs.
