Colin Gleadell asks if buyers have figured out that there are just way to many of Ai Weiwei’s Sunflower seeds:

For anyone keeping track of the price of sunflower seeds, Sotheby’s has a one-ton installation by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, laid out like a carpet, with an estimate of £370,000 to £490,000. This seems cheap compared with the much smaller 100 kg work which Sotheby’s sold last year for £350,000 ($560,000). But then maybe people have worked out that there an are awful lot of sunflower seeds available. Apart from the 150- ton installation at Tate (of which Tate now owns about 8 per cent), these are various piles of seeds, priced by weight, each of which come in editions of 10.

Joseph Beuys Suit Sells for $96,000 (Telegraph)

The Financial Times did a quick video with Ai Weiwei at his home and studio compound. During their visit we discover that the artist has been issuing IOUs to the numerous supporters who stepped forward to help pay the tax bill government officials claim he failed to pay.

In the room with us are a group of volunteers who are using traditional Chinese brushes to write names in beautiful calligraphy on ornate documents that look like receipts.

It turns out these are IOU notes for the 30,000 Chinese citizens who have sent Ai a combined total of around Rmb9m (£900,000) to help him pay a tax bill that the government slapped him with when it finally released him from what independent lawyers say was an illegal detention without charge.

“Tax crimes should be investigated by the tax bureau, not through secret police detention,” Ai says. “Everyone understands that mine is a political case and tax has just been used as an excuse to justify their actions.”

As with almost every aspect of his life, Ai has turned his detention and subsequent tax charges into a spectacular and intricate piece of performance art, of which the beautiful IOU notes are just one part.

At Home: Ai Weiwei (Financial Times)

The Christian Science Monitor reports that Ai Weiwei has seen an outpouring of support from ordinary Chinese eager to help defend him against the government’s tax fine:

Thousands of individual donors swamped dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s Internet account Friday, offering to help him pay a $2.4 million tax bill he was handed earlier this week, in a striking show of defiance against the government.

“It’s amazing,” Mr. Ai said in an interview. “This has become a big movement.”

More than 1,600 supporters had pledged or paid more than 400,000 RMB ($63,500) by mid-afternoon on Friday, just a few hours after the wave of donations began to surge, the artist said.

In defiant gesture, Chinese surge forward to help Ai Weiwei pay tax bill (Christian Science Monitor)

The Kunsthaus in Bregenz / Austria explores the architectural work of Ai Weiwei with a solo show titled Art / Architecture. While not as widely presented as his artistic oeuvre, Ai Weiwei’s work in the field of architecture is extremely important for the artist because of the collaborative – that is social and political – aspect of it. [...]

VernissageTV also met with the director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz, Yilmaz Dziewior, who talks about the idea behind the show, the concept of the exhibition, the significance of Ai Weiwei’s architectural work, and the supporting program.

Ai Weiwei’s release from custody has not ended his conflict with the Chinese state. Today’s New York Times details the issue:

In a telephone interview, Gao Ying, Mr. Ai’s mother, said two tax bureau officials came to the door of his studio on Monday with documents claiming that his company, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd., owed nearly 5 million renmimbi, or $770,000 in back taxes and an additional 7.3 million renmimbi, or $1.1 million, in penalties. She said he refused to sign the documents.

His family insists that Mr. Ai is neither the chief executive nor the legal representative of the design company, which is registered in his wife’s name. “If it is Weiwei’s responsibility, he will gladly take it, but he has no reason to pay for something he is not responsible for,” Ms. Gao said. “As his mother I think the authorities should get the facts straight first.”

Reached on his cellphone Tuesday night, Mr. Ai said his studio did not agree with the figures contained in the documents but he declined to elaborate.

Attorney for Released Chinese Artist Seeks Review on Taxes (New York Times)

The New York Times points out that Ai Weiwei’s release today is a victory for those who spoke out in protest against the government’s actions. Ai is out on “bail.”

It generally means that prosecutors have decided to drop charges against a suspect on certain conditions, including good behavior, and to subject him to monitoring over a period of time during which charges could be reintroduced.

“This is a technique that the public security authorities sometimes use as a face-saving device to end controversial cases that are unwise or unnecessary for them to prosecute,” Jerome A. Cohen, a scholar of the Chinese legal system, said in an e-mail. “Often in such cases, a compromise has been reached in negotiation with the suspect, as apparently it has been here.”

Mr. Cohen said Mr. Ai’s release “is very good news and perhaps the very best outcome that could have been expected in the circumstances of this difficult case.”

Liu Xiaoyuan, Mr. Ai’s lawyer, said in a Twitter post that as long as the taxes were paid, Mr. Ai would probably remain free.

Dissident Chinese Artist Is Released (New York Times)

Eric Gibson takes a strong stand in the Wall Street Journal on the AAMD’s weak position over Ai Weiwei’s detention in China:

Instead the organization took two months to speak out, not addressing the Ai issue until June 10, and then only as part of a press release reporting on the proceedings of its annual conference. And it was no clarion call in defense of the beleagured artist. Instead, buried about halfway down was a terse, two-sentence statement that would have made Neville Chamberlain blush: “First, AAMD maintains the conviction that freedom of expression should be upheld in all societies; Second we believe it is vitally important to continue cultural exchanges, dialogue, and collaboration with China.”

Translation: Pity about Mr. Ai, but the blockbusters must go on.

Lest there remain any question about where Mr. Ai’s plight figures in AAMD’s set of priorities, that statement was third on a list of four news items contained in the release. The first two dealt with—stop the presses—diversity in museums.

He’s right, of course. Then, again, his own corporation has a long history of having accommodated the Chinese government as a strategic necessity.

US Museum Directors to Ai Weiwei: Drop Dead (Wall Street Journal)

Holland Carter explains how Ai Weiwei found a position critical of China’s government that was protected until the uprisings in Africa and the Middle East caused China’s harshest crackdown:

To anyone familiar with China’s hardball official politics, Mr. Ai’s aggressive words sounded suicidally aggressive and the silence from the government in Beijing was perplexing. But at this juncture, both parties were almost ceremonially enacting ancient roles. In Chinese culture, going back to Confucius, there has been a tradition of individual scholars and intellectuals denouncing rulers for wrongdoing that was bringing disharmony to society, and particularly if that wrongdoing was injurious to innocence.

Examples of such face-offs recur in traditional literature and painting. And often, but not always, the self-sacrificing honesty of the accuser has rendered him immune to retaliation.

An Artist Takes Role of Cina’s Conscience (New York Times)