Ai Weiwei Reimagines Monet's Water Lilies in LEGO at Le Havre

For the centenary of Claude Monet's death, Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has created two monumental works titled "Water Lilies · Ai Weiwei · 2022" using 650,000 LEGO bricks. Each panel measures over fifteen meters in length, totaling fifty square meters of contemporary reinterpretation. The works are displayed at the MuMa - Musée d'art moderne André Malraux in Le Havre, facing Monet's original 1910 painting "Water Lilies" that was donated to the city and long forgotten in the museum's reserves. Ai Weiwei, an architect and global figure of engaged art, visited Normandy for the first time, following in the footsteps of Monet, whose works he has contemplated for twenty years at the MoMA in New York. The LEGO bricks—industrial, serial, globalized, and childlike—create a pixelated effect: from a distance, they resemble Monet's late Water Lilies with broken pinks, water greens, and muted blues; up close, they reveal a coarse industrial surface. The work also pays homage to Ai Weiwei's father, poet Ai Qing, who studied in Paris in the 1930s and was deeply influenced by Impressionism before being silenced by the Chinese Communist regime upon his return. The exhibition runs from June 5 to September 27, 2026, at 2 bd Clemenceau, Le Havre.