After leaving Parsons, Ai attended the Art Students League of New York from 1983 to 1986 studying with Bruce Dorfman, Knox Martin and Richard Pousette-Dart. After dropping out he made a living drawing street portraits and doing odd-jobs. It was during this time he gained exposure to the works of Andy Warhol and Jasper Johns. He began creating conceptual pieces by altering readymade objects. One of Ai's first pieces to be exhibited was in New York City in 1988, it was a wire coat hanger bent into the shape of Duchamp's profile and a violin with a shovel handle in place of its neck.(1). The father of the dealer who put on the exhibit paid $500 for the coat hanger piece and still has it hanging in his living room.(8).
Ai's father had become ill and with little market for his work Ai decided to return to Beijing in 1993. China at this time was in the midst of balancing increased modernity with its cultural heritage. Ai began creating works that irrevocably transformed centuries-old Chinese artifacts. He painted a Coca-Cola logo onto a Han dynasty urn and took pieces of Ming and Qing-era furniture, broke them down and reassembled them into various non-functional configurations.(2).
Besides painting and sculpture Weiwei also creates his art with wood, photography, video and music and architecture. He also collaborated on three books between the years 1994 and 1997 that promoted avant-garde Chinese art. These books were published outside the official government channels and became signposts for China's underground art community. Further increasing Ai's public profile was the exhibition he co-curated in 2000 in which deliberately outrageous art was shown as an alternative to that years Shanghai Biennale.(8) It was around this time he built his first building which became his studio complex. He turned to architecture and four years later founded the design firm FAKE to realize his projects which emphasized simplicity through the use of commonplace materials.
