Duchamp Sunflower Seed Analysis

Duchampian Sunflower Seeds Ai Weiwei's photograph titled Profile of Duchamp, Sunflower Seeds represents the face of the French-American painter Marcel Duchamp. This photo was taken in 1983 as a re-imagining of Duchamp's Self Portrait In Profile that was completed in 1958, by utilizing a coat hanger. The photograph's present location is the Moriss and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver, and is one of the series of Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs, 1983-1993. The artist personally picked 227 black-and-white photographs for the exhibition, out of 10,000 negatives that are kept at Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing. All photographs are presented in chronological order that creates a sense of telling a narrative of the artist's immigration to United States, which was totally a new experience to him during the Cultural Revolution in China. The exhibit starts from the left side of the entrance of the gallery and the installation of the display sort of reminds the veiwers a maze-like path as they follow the pictures along. No one image is crucial than the others and all together represent a single work of art. Ai's work of photography has provided an imposing …show more content…
The medium used for the original work is torn and pasted paper on velvet covered paperboard and the artwork itself is classifed as a drawing. However, Ai approaches re-imagining of the surrealist concept of collage by using the material, coat hanger and sunflower seeds and distorting the coat hanger into a shape of the profile, which is done in a sophisticated manner. The sunflower seeds are very outstanding because they are printed in black-and-white, and the background of wooden floor creates a stylish skin pattern for Duchamp's face. The composition of itself is almost likely to be observed as a design artwork because of its simplicity and clearity in terms of the way in which they are