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When You Make No Art
When You Make No Art is a collection of writings and impressions by Wen-You Cai, daughter of acclaimed artist Cai Guo-Qiang. Her writing, accompanied by photographs mostly from her own personal archive, details life growing up in the art world and her upbringing by her father. Witty and honest, Wen-You Cai writes about the particularities of her own life without losing their universal resonances.
When You Make No Art was printed on the occasion of the exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: My Stories of Painting in 2016.
When You Make No Art was printed on the occasion of the exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: My Stories of Painting in 2016.
276 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 21, 2021
Most people probably pick up this book because of its smartly named, universally relatable title: What do you do find yourself unable to make art?
Instead of any insight on how to nurture a more productive art practice, most people will be surprised to find between its covers an autobiography of Wen-You Cai, “Sky Ladder” artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s eldest daughter. Any lingering curiosity evaporates before the book even starts, with a bland foreword penned by notorious conservative lawyer Amy Chua who defended the rapist and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Interesting choice. Was it the Ivy League pedigree that sealed their friendship? One can only surmise that pure affluence secured this sisterly solidarity.
Then follows over 200 pages of excruciating navel-gazing, written in the prose of a teenager’s rambling diary. With the spirit of early Youtubers who used the GoPro camera to bask in the glow of faux celebrity, Wen-You accounts her unproductive early twenties in detail. Her journey includes spending a year living pro bono in her grandparents giant house in China to write the book and watch Netflix, enrolling in an expensive liberal arts university without any clue about what the degree would be used for, and taking trips around the world in order to reluctantly photograph her famous father’s site-specific work. Thanks to this family connection, her photographs are credited to her in such prestigious publications as The New York Times. Not once does she mention being employed outside of these personal gigs.
Total obliviousness to her superficial lifestyle does not seem to be precisely the problem; it is not simply that she is completely unaware of the massive amounts of privilege she is imbued. For example, Wen-You mentions that she feels it necessary to restrict herself in ordering at restaurants when splitting the bill with friends, so as to not burden other people with her expensive spending habits. Rather, Wen-You seems to face the pressures of being crushingly unremarkable and uninspired, despite being given every resource at her disposal. This state of being average, which most people would either be content with or could rely on the excuse of socioeconomic barriers, is worsened by per binding proximity to a celebrated celebrity dad. As she accompanies him on trips and even gives speeches on his behalf at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she is forcibly exposed to the humiliating gaze of crowds who wonder, “Who are you?”
This expectation to *be* someone or make something of herself makes Wen-You shy, awkward, and ambivalent. Reluctant to do her parent’s bidding, but entirely reliant on it as a means of survival, she spends her time living someone else’s life while longing to be absent from it all. For most people, financial instability or social stigma prevents us from art making. For Wen-You Cai, aspirations set by her family are her greatest inhibitor. This pent-up resentment at times finds release through “revenge purchases”: Wen-You buys a thousand dollar dress or fancy meal after fulfilling a family obligation. At best, some might find this sympathetic. After all, poor little rich girl didn’t ask to be born with a silver spoon in her mouth. At worst, her story feels cowardly. Why stay in an extractive relationship for its empty comforts?
The book concludes with Wen-You nonchalantly flaunting her most wild experiences, apparent benchmarks of “success” made possible only through the transaction of purchasing them with Daddy’s credit card: “By the time I was twenty-three, I had traveled to almost 30 countries, circled the globe twice, eaten a six-hour meal at Noma, the top-ranked restaurant in the world, flown on private jets, arranged private dinner parties catered by a Michelin starred chef, seen a mixologist throw flaming cocktails at my birthday party, and won numerous bids at fine arts auctions.” None of it delivers lasting satisfaction. Is this the fate of rich trust fund children who squander their monthly allowance instead of making it on their own? Empty reveries with no remorse or philanthropic obligations?
In the end, Wen-You takes over her parent’s massive SoHo loft, a relic from times when artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol risked life and limb to make their art, and finds herself ineffably alone. This isolation is demarcated by an extreme class division: all her friends have to commute an hour to Brooklyn to live with roommates.
As “When You Make No Art” reveals, it’s true that money can’t buy happiness. It can’t make you into a person of substance or talent. It can’t even produce fulfilling art. Especially when it’s Daddy’s money.
Instead of any insight on how to nurture a more productive art practice, most people will be surprised to find between its covers an autobiography of Wen-You Cai, “Sky Ladder” artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s eldest daughter. Any lingering curiosity evaporates before the book even starts, with a bland foreword penned by notorious conservative lawyer Amy Chua who defended the rapist and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Interesting choice. Was it the Ivy League pedigree that sealed their friendship? One can only surmise that pure affluence secured this sisterly solidarity.
Then follows over 200 pages of excruciating navel-gazing, written in the prose of a teenager’s rambling diary. With the spirit of early Youtubers who used the GoPro camera to bask in the glow of faux celebrity, Wen-You accounts her unproductive early twenties in detail. Her journey includes spending a year living pro bono in her grandparents giant house in China to write the book and watch Netflix, enrolling in an expensive liberal arts university without any clue about what the degree would be used for, and taking trips around the world in order to reluctantly photograph her famous father’s site-specific work. Thanks to this family connection, her photographs are credited to her in such prestigious publications as The New York Times. Not once does she mention being employed outside of these personal gigs.
Total obliviousness to her superficial lifestyle does not seem to be precisely the problem; it is not simply that she is completely unaware of the massive amounts of privilege she is imbued. For example, Wen-You mentions that she feels it necessary to restrict herself in ordering at restaurants when splitting the bill with friends, so as to not burden other people with her expensive spending habits. Rather, Wen-You seems to face the pressures of being crushingly unremarkable and uninspired, despite being given every resource at her disposal. This state of being average, which most people would either be content with or could rely on the excuse of socioeconomic barriers, is worsened by per binding proximity to a celebrated celebrity dad. As she accompanies him on trips and even gives speeches on his behalf at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she is forcibly exposed to the humiliating gaze of crowds who wonder, “Who are you?”
This expectation to *be* someone or make something of herself makes Wen-You shy, awkward, and ambivalent. Reluctant to do her parent’s bidding, but entirely reliant on it as a means of survival, she spends her time living someone else’s life while longing to be absent from it all. For most people, financial instability or social stigma prevents us from art making. For Wen-You Cai, aspirations set by her family are her greatest inhibitor. This pent-up resentment at times finds release through “revenge purchases”: Wen-You buys a thousand dollar dress or fancy meal after fulfilling a family obligation. At best, some might find this sympathetic. After all, poor little rich girl didn’t ask to be born with a silver spoon in her mouth. At worst, her story feels cowardly. Why stay in an extractive relationship for its empty comforts?
The book concludes with Wen-You nonchalantly flaunting her most wild experiences, apparent benchmarks of “success” made possible only through the transaction of purchasing them with Daddy’s credit card: “By the time I was twenty-three, I had traveled to almost 30 countries, circled the globe twice, eaten a six-hour meal at Noma, the top-ranked restaurant in the world, flown on private jets, arranged private dinner parties catered by a Michelin starred chef, seen a mixologist throw flaming cocktails at my birthday party, and won numerous bids at fine arts auctions.” None of it delivers lasting satisfaction. Is this the fate of rich trust fund children who squander their monthly allowance instead of making it on their own? Empty reveries with no remorse or philanthropic obligations?
In the end, Wen-You takes over her parent’s massive SoHo loft, a relic from times when artists like Jean Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol risked life and limb to make their art, and finds herself ineffably alone. This isolation is demarcated by an extreme class division: all her friends have to commute an hour to Brooklyn to live with roommates.
As “When You Make No Art” reveals, it’s true that money can’t buy happiness. It can’t make you into a person of substance or talent. It can’t even produce fulfilling art. Especially when it’s Daddy’s money.
November 6, 2025
I bought this book at a local art fair because I was intrigued by its title, and the guy who sold it to me told me that his boss wrote it ten years ago, when she was around my current age. He said it was about an artist not wanting to make art in a family of artists, and that she felt it was her most honest work.
I was hoping to find some direction about how to cultivate an artistic practice. Instead what I got was 200 pages of exhausting nepo baby drivel.
Like. Imagine being born as the daughter of a wildly successful contemporary artist and having some ambition to be a creative yourself. You grow up in NYC and get to take a few weeks off every year to attend your dad's high profile gallery openings around the world. Somehow, you get into RISD with zero struggle and zero vision (and then get to put on an act about wanting to keep quiet about who your dad is, although I'm fairly certain everyone around you already knows but is too polite to say anything!). Then you get your photography (once again, of your dad's work!) published and credited to you in major outlets, all while you take a year off to gallivant and write a MEMOIR at age TWENTY FIVE.
It is mind-boggling. Wen-You Cai has insane access to resources, networks, and cultural capital, but instead of making something of herself, she remains uninteresting and uninspired. Consistently, it seems that her biggest problems are being the daughter of a famous person, and perhaps navigating her third culture identity against a backdrop of casual racism in early-2000s America. Even then, she is shielded from the worst of both of these things by dint of wealth, privilege and positionality.
I think that the stupidest part of all this is that she seems to be aware of her own mediocrity, but refuses to do anything about it. She harbours ambitions of becoming a fashion designer all her life, but then gets reality checked when she starts her apparel design course at RISD. She describes walking into the room and feeling like she doesn't fit in at all, and then has a panic attack after observing her peers' excitement about breaking into the very industry that she has functionally grown up in. It feels like Wen-You Cai is carefully eliding the fact that she is absolutely terrified to compete with people who are obviously more talented than her. She knows she's outmatched, and her immediate response is more cowardly than pitiful when she proceeds to call her dad, sobbing, before running as far away from fashion as she possibly can without dashing his expectations.
Frankly it is disappointing that the reason Wen-You Cai makes no art at 25 is because she feels like she can't match up to her father's expectations, because it's clear as day that all he wants to do is support her ambitions, whatever they may be. Instead of rising to the challenge, the book ends with Wen-You simply flexing a Crazy Rich Asian lifestyle that she has done nothing to earn, while making a throwaway remark about how her friends are all "starving artists with a clear trajectory of continuing their sole passion of making art". I think it is just profoundly untruthful and tone-deaf for this book to market itself as witty, self-deprecating, and honest.
Most of us make no art because we have jobs and responsibilities that curtail us. Most of us persevere anyway, because we think we have something that's worth saying. Does not at all seem to be the case with this lady.
p.s. Hire a line editor at least. The entire book, INCLUDING the updated foreword of the third edition, is riddled with distracting typos and grammatical errors.
I was hoping to find some direction about how to cultivate an artistic practice. Instead what I got was 200 pages of exhausting nepo baby drivel.
Like. Imagine being born as the daughter of a wildly successful contemporary artist and having some ambition to be a creative yourself. You grow up in NYC and get to take a few weeks off every year to attend your dad's high profile gallery openings around the world. Somehow, you get into RISD with zero struggle and zero vision (and then get to put on an act about wanting to keep quiet about who your dad is, although I'm fairly certain everyone around you already knows but is too polite to say anything!). Then you get your photography (once again, of your dad's work!) published and credited to you in major outlets, all while you take a year off to gallivant and write a MEMOIR at age TWENTY FIVE.
It is mind-boggling. Wen-You Cai has insane access to resources, networks, and cultural capital, but instead of making something of herself, she remains uninteresting and uninspired. Consistently, it seems that her biggest problems are being the daughter of a famous person, and perhaps navigating her third culture identity against a backdrop of casual racism in early-2000s America. Even then, she is shielded from the worst of both of these things by dint of wealth, privilege and positionality.
I think that the stupidest part of all this is that she seems to be aware of her own mediocrity, but refuses to do anything about it. She harbours ambitions of becoming a fashion designer all her life, but then gets reality checked when she starts her apparel design course at RISD. She describes walking into the room and feeling like she doesn't fit in at all, and then has a panic attack after observing her peers' excitement about breaking into the very industry that she has functionally grown up in. It feels like Wen-You Cai is carefully eliding the fact that she is absolutely terrified to compete with people who are obviously more talented than her. She knows she's outmatched, and her immediate response is more cowardly than pitiful when she proceeds to call her dad, sobbing, before running as far away from fashion as she possibly can without dashing his expectations.
Frankly it is disappointing that the reason Wen-You Cai makes no art at 25 is because she feels like she can't match up to her father's expectations, because it's clear as day that all he wants to do is support her ambitions, whatever they may be. Instead of rising to the challenge, the book ends with Wen-You simply flexing a Crazy Rich Asian lifestyle that she has done nothing to earn, while making a throwaway remark about how her friends are all "starving artists with a clear trajectory of continuing their sole passion of making art". I think it is just profoundly untruthful and tone-deaf for this book to market itself as witty, self-deprecating, and honest.
Most of us make no art because we have jobs and responsibilities that curtail us. Most of us persevere anyway, because we think we have something that's worth saying. Does not at all seem to be the case with this lady.
p.s. Hire a line editor at least. The entire book, INCLUDING the updated foreword of the third edition, is riddled with distracting typos and grammatical errors.
May 15, 2023
Reads like a very long series of MySpace blog posts by a 22 year old bc that’s what it is. Should’ve stayed online and free.
This shouldn’t have been published as a book and I shouldn’t have bought it, but I wanted to support the art bookstore it was in. Not sure why it’s considered an “art book” lmao
This shouldn’t have been published as a book and I shouldn’t have bought it, but I wanted to support the art bookstore it was in. Not sure why it’s considered an “art book” lmao
October 3, 2023
This joke of a book is seriously worth it only to realize that money can’t buy you substance, and talent isn’t genetic!
Read
June 21, 2025the faildaughter diaries :-/
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews