53rd Venice Biennale Day 10
Nov 17 2009
Day 10 Monday 9/28 US - Bruce Nauman, the Ghetto, the Lido, party at Ca’Giustinian.
Today was our last day, and I wanted to tie up some loose ends as well as doing a little informed site seeing. The US Pavilion this Biennale, organized by the Philadelphia of Art Museum, was essentially a Bruce Nauman retrospective, Topological Gardens, and was spread over not just the Giardini, but two sites at the University, the IUAV (the former convent of the Tolentini) and the Ca’Foscari (the gothic palace of the Foscari). Nauman is a stunning artist who has written the agenda in both form and content for much late C20th contemporary art, and his inclusion in the Biennale for the USA, neatly exemplifies the dilemma for an art exhibition that is organized, necessarily as a biennale is, on geopolitical lines. While the financial muscle of the USA gives it an inbuilt advantage in displaying US artists, it has another advantage. Both in terms of high culture (contemporary art) and low, the USA has claim to be the primary engine of world culture. Thus when an artists such as Richard Prince (at Foundation Pinault; see day 9) can work mining popular culture, that work is both accessible (because we all have at least a some knowledge of US popular culture) and meaningful (because he is a thoughtful and authentic artist), as well as at the same time culturally specific. Much in the same way that Ming Wong’s project at the Singapore Pavilion (see day 8) is inaccessible and virtually meaningless because it examines a popular culture (the film of Singapore) that is essentially un-popular. Nauman, who’s work encompasses much of what we now know to be contemporary art, is working within forms that are exclusively American; his is the luxury that is contemporary art IS American art. For those of other nations, the challenge to find an authentic visual expression, a contemporary gammer and syntax of art that is their own. Their own not through subject matter, but through the language of art itself.
Notwithstanding that, Topological Gardens, spread across 3 sites of topological Venice demonstrated Nauman's extraordinary power and command of space, while again benefiting from working in media that allowed a plein air presentation (see day 9). Released from the rather stuffy confines of the American Pavilion in the Giardini, these twin installations both in historic spaces at the University were allowed to breathe, giving life to Nauman’s dialogue on what it is be human, and to experience our existence over both time and space. I realized that what to like about Nauman’s work that his culture allows him is the luxury to be oblique and open-ended. His work, like the best art, believes that the value of art lies in formulating questions, not giving answers. As R ob Pruitt demonstrates, (see day 8: perhaps to too great an extent for my liking) contemporary art is not part of the solution: to be really relevant it, should be part of the problem.
For our last day, we again indulged in the luxury of some sightseeing; up into the Canneregio and to the Jewish Ghetto, the original. Ghetto originally meant slag, the by-products of metal smelting, and it was on these islands that the Jews were allowed to settle, corralled in gated communities, patrolled by guards they them themselves paid for. However, as the historic plaques pointed out, at least in Venice they were allowed to live within the city, unmolested and practice law, usury and medicine, where for moist of the rest of Europe they were ruthlessly persecuted.
The Ghetto is tiny; it was hard to believe that 1000’s once lived there; with the ghetto restricted as all buildings in Venice to a height of 8 stories, the Jews simply built their rooms with low ceilings, to cram more stories into the same space, creating a self-fulfilling image of hunched, black clad figures inhabiting what was almost a literal anthill. Today, this first ghetto has become a popular tourist site, run by Lubervitcher immigrants, who offer holidays, tours and ceremonies from the original ghetto: history is once again conquered.
Next was full vaparetto trip from the Canareggio all the way over to the Lido (to run an entire bus line is a tourist trick I learnt when first living in London; you do really get to see a whole lot more). What a shock to see cars again! As well as regretting that we hadn’t packed swimsuits as we paddled in the warm waters of the Adriatic, we were also able to follow up on the sculpture project that we had first seen at San Servelo (see day 6); the Open 12. Most of the work was from regional artists, but was a useful corrective to the exalted work of the biennale. We were also impressed with the openness of the Lido, marking it as a possible cheaper and just as accessible place to stay in Venice for a next visit.
That night we attend an informal party at the new headquarters of the Biennale organization at the Ca’Giuistinian on the Grand Canal, just down from our hotel, and right opposite the Punta dela Dogana. This was grand affairs, and it was fun to mingle with what we fondly imagined to be art world glitterati, as those self-same glitterati imagined us to be mysterious foreign guests…. I rather miss these private opening events (they don’t really seem to happen in Minneapolis), and one certainly felt to be amongst the privileged few to sip on a glass of prosecco and nibble on canapés in a private mansion on the Grand Canal in one of the most fascinating cities on earth.
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