Comments on: Venice, Redux http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/2013/02/22/venice-redux/ Mon, 20 May 2013 19:52:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Maureen Mullarkey http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/2013/02/22/venice-redux/#comment-84 Maureen Mullarkey Sat, 23 Feb 2013 14:37:24 +0000 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/?p=242#comment-84 The analogy with world fairs is appealing but not quite accurate. The Biennale—like Documenta, Art Basel or any of the art fairs—exist largely as advance agents for dealers and collectors. In the main, they display goods for an audience that views art as an asset class. Publicity ensures its reception as an art event. The Biennale cannot be comprehended unless it is first seen as an investment tool couched in the rhetoric of connoisseurship.

]]> By: Rachelle http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/2013/02/22/venice-redux/#comment-83 Rachelle Sat, 23 Feb 2013 12:43:29 +0000 http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/maureen-mullarkey/?p=242#comment-83 Installations that occupy entire buildings can make a considerable impact on those who visit those pavilions. The entire environment is controlled. Venice Bienalle is somewhat like a world’s fair, in that you visit Egypt and Japan and France. Multiple mediums are used: decoration, film, audio-visual screens. The French pavillion was built like a huge projector with one having to walk through a maze of moving film. In one room a screen featuring the pictures of babies in black and white, a counter over the screen, stating how many are being born, In the other room, reached by walking through the maze again, of faces of the elderly, this time the counter stating how many are dying. No one person could have this in their homes. It is not that kind of art.

Pavillions at world fairs are created to marvel, to excite, and to awe. It is possible to create something different.

]]>