Ai Weiwei's Path From Cultural Prankster to Enemy of the State

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37421/ai-weiweis-path-from-cultural-prankster-to-enemy-of-the-state/

It takes a government as lawless and paranoid as China's to give an artist the kind of popular relevance that Ai Weiwei now has. The detention of Ai — we still don't know his whereabouts, though authorities have issued a one-sentence statement that they are investigating him for "economic crimes" — has become an international cause célèbre, splashed across news channels and sparking high-profile diplomatic reactions.

Of course, there is something exotic about this story that feeds the furor. In our neck of the woods, artists — even very political artists — are tolerated as either Cassandras or clowns. Art in general functions as a zone of imagined freedom, whose outsize, libertine character is in exact inverse proportion to any consequences that it might have for the artist.