http://www.painters-online.co.uk artistDecember 2019 3
W
hat can I possibly say to sum up my recent visit to the Venice Biennale, this once-
every-other-year event i rst established in 1895 to promote Italian art before
developing into an international exhibition with countries competing to be ‘best in
show’? It’s an utterly overwhelming, totally bemusing theme park of contemporary
world art. It consists of two main parts: 90 national pavilions organised by the participating
countries, each with its own bespoke exhibition featuring an artist, or artists, commissioned to
represent the host country, scattered around the city’s public gardens and its vast former arsenal
(the Arsenale); plus a huge central exhibition entitled ‘May You Live In Interesting Times’. The
event presents world art created in myriad contemporary media (there’s so much video it’s almost
passé), on colossal scales and in forms only consumable in these vast spaces. Nobody can take
in this much art. You don’t have time for anything more than a quick walk past and through the
work. It’s relentless.
But it is a massive visitor attraction around which hundreds of thousands of tourists trek over
the summer months, every two years. I suppose the excitement, for me, was in seeing what the
world’s artists are trying to do these days and what they can make you think and feel. I’m also
intrigued by how the very idea of an exhibition on this scale and this ambition works, and what it
all means. Can it be more than a visual spectacle? Can it be a stimulus for the mind and spirit?
Can it inform, inspire and challenge our existing thoughts, or enrich our lives?
It is ultimately impossible to summarise the overarching message of all that’s on show at
the biennale, and after two days of a marathon art trek, you feel worn down and wrung out.
Everything aims to draw your attention, and none of it adds up to anything coherent. So it’s left to
a few poignant exhibits to break through the melee and touch the visitor personally. Highlights,
for me, included the French pavilion, which provides a humorous counterbalance to the heavy
emphasis on trauma, loss, climate change, politics, social issues and on and on, in much of the
artwork on show, as you walk up and around an eccentric grotto and are invited to climb into the
belly of an octopus. It’s bonkers, but also a celebration of the artist’s imagination.
I particularly enjoyed Brazil’s pavilion in which I was captivated by the two-channel music
video – part documentary, part scripted – created by the artists in collaboration with dance
groups specialising in brega, batidao do maloca and swingueria. It’s joyful, uplifting and
celebratory. Among a plethora of mechanical contraptions, dreary installations, other in-your-
face incomprehensible video presentations, I also appreciated viewing the work of artists with
more nuanced aims, such as Henry Taylor’s painted scenes of life in modern America (yes, there is
an occasional painting to bring us back to our comfort zone, although there’s so little traditional
painting on show that it stands out as dif erent!).
The event certainly of ers an intense encounter with contemporary art for the visitor
(interestingly more than half are under 26 years of age) and celebrates the freedom of expression
of the artist. But you don’t need the biennale for a good reason to visit Venice, which minus the
event is already a beguiling city for artists and the art-loving public alike.WELCOME
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Bob Brandt One Table Left, oil
on canvas panel, 23½ 23½ in
(60 60cm). See pages 43 to 45
The Venice Biennale 2019
continues until November 24.