He sees himself as a provocative performance artist; the art establishment regards him as a dangerous nuisance – and now Vaclav Pisvejc has destroyed another work of art.
At the private reception for Ai Weiwei’s solo exhibition at Palazzo Fava in Bologna on Friday evening, Pisvejc stepped up to the Chinese artist’s blue-and-white Porcelain Cube. He turned the sculpture over and off its mount, smashing it into pieces, before being wrestled to the ground by security staff and held for police.
Previously Pisvejc has scaled the Uffizi terrace, defaced an Urs Fischer sculpture and set fire to a drape that had been placed over the copy of Michelangelo’s David in Piazza della Signoria in Florence. For the latter he was sentenced to six months in prison.
In 2018 the Czech national attacked Marina Abramović with a portrait of herself, hitting the Serbian artist over the head with the canvas during a book signing. When Abramović asked Pisvejc why he had hit her, he replied: ‘I had to do it for my art.’ Abramović declined to press charges. Last year Pisvejc returned to Piazza della Signoria where he climbed naked, with the word “Censored” painted onto his body, onto the statue of Hercules and Cacus.
Ai, who said a photo of the undamaged work will be exhibited instead, in no stranger to destruction in art. In 1995 he filmed himself dropping a Han Dynasty urn in one of his most famous actions.
