Reconstructions

Moving from public artwork in Germany to a monumental work in China, this chapter begins with Cai Guo-Qiang’s reworking of a model revolutionary sculpture of the Cultural Revolution period called the Rent Collection Courtyard (RCC). While the original RCC told the story of peasant class oppression at the hands of an evil landlord through figurative sculptures, Cai’s reworking moved it out of a representational mode and into the realm of conceptual art. Cai’s reworking focused on form, leading to a more ethereal and fluid appreciation of life’s cyclical flow. It is in relation to such questions of energy flow that the chapter returns to the original work and to the Maoist “one big concept” to show how energy is channeled toward outward displays of political intensity.