BWW Reviews: THE 55TH VENICE BIENNALE - What's it all About?

I can see going to Venice for the food, for Lido's beaches and for the Gondolas. Heck, I'd go to the Jersey shore for two of the three. Why would you go to Venice for Contemporary art? The 55th Venice Biennale opened on June 1 and runs through November 24th; 88 countries have pavilions including the Vatican in this art world equivalent of the world cup for soccer socialites. Is it worth the trip, who can afford to treck the art trade show route and what's it all about-Alfie?

The Tribuna of the Uffizi by Zoffany 1772-1778 offers incite into just what the art world is about; I see plenty of naked women. A few are gazing up wondering, 'when is my man coming home?' whilst they struggle angelically with the baby. Some beauties are grappling to hide that which the male artist has exposed. Others flaunt it like a world championship ring. The men are either doing the Herculean thing wrestling with the boys and showing off their pecs or they are just looking at, gaping at the art- the nudes.

So, what is the art world about? Is it the height of intellectual pursuits, the sublime combination of thought, philosophy, meaning and visual prowess to reveal more than the Sunday New York Times can? Is it to enlighten, to reveal infinite possibilities in a brushstroke? Or, is Art cheap porn, self referential masturbation and low brow social criticism with sweat and sour one line jokes and political bull worthy of at best a Senate floor hearing?

Titian's "Bacchanal of the Andrians" and a study for Seurat's "La Grande Jette"

The quintessential Venetian artists may have been Titian. His imagery, though bright and colorful is far from contemporary even for his time. This is artwork that speaks to its past, to allegory and seems to be highly moralizing. The flow of arms and gestures are pure compositional play and makes for an exciting read but leaves us without much sense of the typical day or concern of the random Venetian. A nude at the bottom right opens the doorway for us to enter this painting...please enter over the naked lady.... it is inviting. Titian' use of the figure to lock in the compositional corner brings to mind Cezanne's play to come some 200 plus years later.

Some pre, most plain and many post Impressionist would bring the subject matter down from the clouds. Regular Joes hanging out at the parks and lakes would be the high-minded goal of art. It would be important to reflect views of the average man, his lust for industrialization, for the modern, for raging trains, billowing streams of steam power and iron works emphasizing man's control over nature like the Eiffel Tour. Seurat's highly stylized pointillist masterpieces, though in reaction to the quickness and non-monumental nature of the works of the impressionists uses similar subject matter chosen by Monet, Manet, and Renoir. Front and center are the regular folks of the day in a normal earthly park setting not up in the clouds for the gods. This movement to the now as the new predates Warhol's fascination with pop culture, coke (bottles) and Marilyn.

Doge's Palace and Giorgio de Chirico's "Piazza d'Italia con Arianna"

For my aesthetic sustenance amongst the Italians of the 20th Century, Giorgio is the man. Andre Breton felt the same way and quickly lassoed DeChirico under his ropes for his international stable. DeChirico's work summarizes the lack of potency of the past and hints at the psychological over shadowing the canons of art and important artists cast over young minds. Great Greek art made over a millennium ago reclines unassumingly and yet holds sway over contemporary minds even today.

Italy was the place to be in the late 15th and 16th Century. Ok, it would have been nice to visit Albrecht Durer in German during those wild Renaissance days; But without the Euro and all that changing of currencies who would fuss? Not much has happened in the last 500 years for the Italians besides a few Ferrari's, some fancy Gelato and schmatas. Okay, Jerry, name me five Italian artists that have made the A-List in the last 100 years. The very pure east coast sea Saltz would have a tough go of it if it were not for the members of the Futurist and Art Povera, the detritus found object gang that has almost as much sway on the art world as The Champ, DuChamp does.

The best of the more modern Italians may have been the futurist. Their attempts to burn the bastions of Italy's great past, to open the doorway for a new future before the country suffocated from the fumes of past glory lost, is both scary, comical and a very serious approach to creative destruction. Though the futurist are not on the tops of the minds of many who revel in the history of art they do hold their place and will always spawn future insightful reactionary movements.

In the 1950's Kurosawa's "Rashomon" won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Jason took a similar colored Fleece many years earlier and good things did not come his way or the way of the wary Argonauts. Have past Biennale stars fallen or worse, have they gone white dwarf or black hole since their days of burning glory? A list of past participants in Venice Fairs long since forgotten, highlights important structure in most monkey's trees filled with art history's best branches. These are not the thin twigs pruned by dozens of art historians regularly at the blood bath better known as the Whitney Biennial, the American, now non-American event that never fails to foil hopes for a new aesthetic and a quantum leap forward for the art world on route to a new paradigm.

Does the Venice trade show offer some hope?

Let's explore the snipets listed on the Biennale website championing the winners. Yes, there are best in show medals similar to dog show treats. Can you ever tell which is the better pure breed in these canine classics? It will be just as hard with the art world all primed and propped for the show.

The Golden Lion for Best National Participation went to Angola in her rookie year for the curators and artist who together reflect on the irreconcilability and complexity of the site. Is this the goal of art- to comment on the location of an art exhibit and where the art is housed. Is the art world smiling upon itself and constantly gazing in the mirror and asking, " Mirror, mirror on the wall , who is the fairest of them all,'

A quotation by Kandinsky about the 1978 expo is revealing:' "great abstraction, great realism" provided the starting point for the Art Exhibition....."From nature to art, from art to nature".' Almost 40 years has passed since Vassily's comment yet it seems like the art world has moved many millenium away from Nature and Art and dug in deeply and happily focusing on herself to pump her up and to sound more esoteric. The emperor has been adding reams of light lace to his new clothing.

A special mention was made of Lithuania and Cyprus for an original curatorial format that brings together two countries in a singular experience. Do you think any of the regular folk of Lithuania and Cyprus feel like cousins, does Delta offer a two for one travel plan for these countries?

Japan received special mention "for the poignant reflection on issues of collaboration and failure." I once worked with an artist on a project, it was a failure, award please.

Am I doing justice to any of these nations? No. Do the countries pavilions do justice to their people, their thoughts and their concept of art? No. Is art for the masses, should it reflect their beliefs or is it a hope for something better than the common man can come up with on his way home on the LIE in traffic after 40 hours of drudgery per week for 50 weeks per year for 40 years till death do us part?

Sara Sze's Triple Point at the US Pavilion in Venice was curated by Carey Lovelace and Holly Block. Ms. Block was behind Art in General for over 20 years and for the last 6 years is the Executive Director of the Bronx Museum. She has received important accolades from Barry the Bomber, that outside free shooting basketball player turned President of the United States, when her museum was awarded a Presidential grant outcompeting MOMA and other mega-weights in the museum world. Ms. Block is one of the brilliant eyes, ears and heart of the art world and has left an icredible bloom of art in her path. My guess is Holly will run the old 'New Museum' and step up the ladder in time when the curatorial chief of the New Museum, Massimiliano Gioni moves up to MOMA. Mr. Gioni is in charge of the main show, 'The Encyclopedic Palace' for Venice this year. He is being groomed and pruned for one of the top spots in the corporation. DC may come calling for either of these two.

A few years ago, Ms. Sze was the prestigious winner of a MacArthur grant - The genius award as it is referred to, along with the string-less $500,000 to do with as she pleases. As contemporary as Ms. Sze's work is her art draws me back to Italy's past great art movements of the 20th century. Ms Sze's creates motion filled installations of detritus, city objects, common plastics and more gone beautiful and sophisticadily. They swim and move through the lines of inner force they secrete. The objects are readily recognizable and the viewer has a level of comfort of familiarity with the pieces Ms. Sze has revisioned and repurposed. As the Impressionist brought home the subject matter of high art to the common man, Ms. Sze has done so with common materials of her day, of our day and in this sense brings to mind the work of the Arte Povera movement in Italy of the later half of the 20th century.

A Sze installation and the Futurists Boccioni's 'development of a bottle in space' from 1912. 100 years separate these works. Often the progression of aesthetic developments does not evolve up following a linear line but travels the unpredictable path of a dazed and drunken tsetse fly. This random walk regularly circles back upon itself.

At times Ms. Tse's work does exalt industrial development as the Impressionist's did and yet in another way you can have a poignant but sad sense of what we have come to build and destroy in our cultures.

Why do folks go to Museums in the first place? Is it to see the more, to see why we are alive? Museums are vaults of cultural pasts. The art objects are the relics and are often fought over and plundered during war in an attempt to own and rewrite history. Are we leaving a balloon dog as our cultural heritage- Someone pop the Koons please.

Yes, it will take a lot of time off and a bunch of inherited money to make the Venice sojourn. It would take even more dough to rise to the occasion and buy or commission a piece by one of the young stars. Who can afford this? Where would you put a room sized installation in a one or two bedroom apartment?

Walk any art trade show today and you will be amazed at how much nudity is shown. Is this only natural and would Darwin know best why we are doing this? What is the purpose of art in culture and what is the relevance of art in your daily lives? Do you want answers, so do I.

It is worth restating that many of the great artists did show at the Venice Biennale, albeit many years after their best work. Makes you wonder who is doing the important work today and when will we get a chance to see it.

To post a comment, you must register and login.