VENICE VENICE

THE 54TH BIENNALE

SIMON D 2011

Traveling to the 54th Venice Biennale is like a rite of passage, an opportunity to see international contemporary art and artists all together in one location. It is a fantastic experience, one that I recommend and will remember for a long time. In recalling my experiences and articulating my own tourist narrative, I found it useful to consider the central theme of the Biennale ILLUMInations and its relation to light. I also consider a postmodern notion of doubling and compare artists from history with several participating artists from the Biennale.

THEMES:
1. RECONSIDERING THE GRAND TOUR
2. DEVELOPING A LAYERED SET OF EXPERIENCES 3. ILLUMInations, EXPLORATION AND LIGHT

4. CONSIDERING ARTISTS
5. CONCLUSIONS

1. RECONSIDERING THE GRAND TOUR

English aristocrats traveled to the continent to to see great artworks, architecture, learn about culture and discover new foods and wines. Essential to the Grand Tour was a visit to Venice. Venice had a reputation for decadence as well as fine crafts especially glass and lace.

The canals created a unique reflected and refracted light in Venice.

Painters of the Venetian School developed a particular style based on the exploration of this light. These artists were also challenged by contemporary materials in capturing the light. Some these artists were Bellini, Titian, Giorgione and Tintoretto (whose work was exhibited in the Biennale).

Bellini The Madonna of the Meadow 1505 Tempera on panel 67 x 86 cm. National Gallery, London, UK
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/upload/img/bellini-madonna-meadow-NG599-fm.jpg

Titian Bacchus and Ariadne 1520-23 oil on canvas 176 x 191 cm National Gallery, London
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/upload/img/titian-bacchus-ariadne-NG35-fm.jpg

Giorgione The Tempest c.1508 oil on canvas 82 x 73 cm. Accademia, Venice

http://artchive.com/artchive/G/giorgione/tempest.jpg.html

This work was exhibited in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini.

Tintoretto The Removal of the Body of Saint Mark 1562-1566 oil on canvas 421 306 cm. Accademia, Venice
http://starkwhite.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

2. DEVELOPING A LAYERED SET OF EXPERIENCES

Todays cultural tourist visits Venice with a preconceived notion of what they are going to find.
Evidence of the rich history of the Renaissance.

Great artworks held in collections.

The interesting and romantic nature of the light in relation to the canals. The contemporary, newest artwork from international artists housed in the pavilions of the Giardini and the Arsenale.

However as noted by Bruner, a 16th century traveler would not hear or see the same as a 21st century person. (Bruner 2005: 2)

There is a developed focus on the popular image of Venice, and not the real Venice. An emphasis on particularities including: the old buildings of the Renaissance.

the watery canals replete with gondolas.

the plethora of mask shops and glass shops. the romantic couples kissing.

the tourists.

This questioning gaze (Bruner 2005: 12) of feeling like Im looking at something constructed and not the real Venice contains something of the verisimilitude of the theme park, or the heritage site. How much of Venice is constructed for the tourist and how important it is for Venice to stay frozen in time?

The Biennale focuses on international contemporary art, providing an opportunity to view new works, some of which engage with the history of Venice. These artists build upon a reconsideration of the past and a focus on the particularities of Venice. All of this has an effect of a sort of doubling on the one hand there is the real Venice and the real artworks from history.

Upon this is constructed an image of Venice, and a reconsideration of and bringing of light to old artworks in the new contemporary art of the Biennale.

Visiting the Biennale as an artist today almost has the feel of a pilgrimage, a right of passage (not unlike the Grand Tours of the past) that is overlapped with a reconsideration of the contemporary and its place in history. Also an invitation to a better understanding of local contemporary art in the context of the international contemporary art scene as represented at the Biennale, housed in the pavilions of the Giardini and the Arsenale and the individual country pavilions around Venice.

Rialto Station, Grand Canal. Venice

Photograph: Simon D, 2011

Central Pavilion, Giardini

Photograph: Simon D, 2011

3. ILLUMInations, EXPLORATION AND LIGHT.

As described in the catalogue by curator Bice Curiger, ILLUMInations makes reference to light as:

A metaphor for knowledge and enlightenment.

Being particularly unique in Venice as it is reflected and refracted in the water of the canals.
A process that makes exploration possible, exploration of the codes of the traditional genres of painting, sculpture, photography and film. A strategy to focus on the institution of the Venice Biennale. (Curiger 2011: 42-63)

4. CONSIDERING ARTISTS

AMALIA PICA PIPILOTTI RIST VESA-PEKKA RANNIKO JAMES TURRELL ANGEL VERGARA LECH MAJEWSKI ALI ASSAF LYNDAL JONES

AMALIA PICA

Amalia Pica School Sheets in Adjusted Scale, 2011

Photograph: Simon Degroot, 2011

Amalia Pica Venn Diagrams (under the spotlight), 2011. Installation with spotlights, motion sensors and text, variable dimensions
Photograph: Simon Degroot, 2011

AMALIA PICA
Pica explores what it means to understand ones culture and the role of childhood education in establishing that understanding. Also the role of education in developing adult prejudices. Pica explores the overlapping of knowledge using light and a process of inclusion and exclusion as represented in Venn Diagram. Sally OReilly describes in Frieze magazine, how Venn diagrams were banned from the curricula in Argentina, where Pica went to primary school because they were considered to encourage subversive thought. (OReilly

2011: 175)

PIPILOTTI RIST

Pipilotti Rist Non Voglio Tornare Indietro, 2011. Video projection on venduta oil painting, Anonymous Venetian Master (Apollonio Domenichini?): Venduta with Canal Grande with Santa Maria di Nazareth, Santa Lucia and Scuola dei Nobili
Photograph: Simon Degroot, 2011

Apollonio Domenichini? The Master of the Langmatt Foundation Views, (active Venice c. 1740-1770) oil on canvas 55.9 x 90.2 cm
Photograph: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5279701

PIPILOTTI RIST
Named after Pipi Longstocking, Rist employs an almost childlike anarchy in her work. Rist uses replicated Renaissance oil paintings as projection surfaces. Overlapping a Renaissance oil painting of the Grand Canal with sensuous fleshy videos of the human body. Rist draws attention to the effect the water makes to create the unique nature of the light in Venice and the influence it has had and continues to have for artists. Rist also touches on something interesting in her decision to use a replicated oil painting upon which to project, it enforces the previously mentioned doubling.

Pipilotti Rist. Video 54th Biennale. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO-BrMi5y8A

VESA-PEKKA RANNIKO

Vesa-Pekka Ranniko Storage, A Prologue to Venice Biennale 2011, 2011 Video projection, dimensions variable.
Photograph: Simon Degroot, 2011

VESA-PEKKA RANNIKO
While Rist projects videos onto paintings, Vesa-Pekka Rannikos installation is a projection of a painting. Storage, A Prologue to Venice Biennale 2011, is a video recorded inside the Finnish Pavilion is re projected inside the same space, showing us the filmed painting as it hangs on the same wall from which it is now removed. These works suggest an emphasis on light as not only a projecting, but a recording device. focus on the specific particularity of space in the Finnish pavilion, its presence in the creation of the work.

JAMES TURRELL

James Turrell Reathro (pink) Light, dimensions variable.

Photograph: http://imgongyu.blogspot.com/2010/05/about-timeless.html

JAMES TURRELL
Manipulating light to create a monochrome homogenous environment that, according to the catalogue entry, swallows all the architectural elements in a wall of colour. Like much monochrome work, these pieces have an element of the religious, of the somewhat spiritual or revelationary.

ANGEL VERGARA

Angel Vergara Feuilleton Video screens, dimensions variable.

Photograph: Simon Degroot, 2011

ANGEL VERGARA
Angel Vergaras exhibition Feuilleton has an emphasis on the political and socio-cultural nature of media images centering around the theme of the seven deadly sins. Curated by fellow Belgian artist Luc Tuymans. Vergara appropriates images from the media, especially supplementary images from the section of the French newspaper called the Feuilleton. Attacking the images with paint and brush, Vergara illustrates the futility of painting to affect social change.

LECH MAJEWSKI
Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted religious and genre scenes in 17th Century Belgium. The artist depicted landscapes populated with peasants occupied with rituals of village life. The Way To Calvary (1564) depicts Christ on his way to Calvary where he is to be crucified. The painting also refers to the brutal politics of the Reformation experienced during Bruegels time.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder The Way to Calvary, 1564. Oil on oak, 124 x 170 cm
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Pieter_Bruegel_d._%C3%84._007.jpg

In January 2011, Polish artist Lech Majewski completed The Mill and The Cross a film based on the paintings of Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel, specifically the work The Way To Calvary. Majewski utilized CG and 3D technology and spent three years weaving an enormous digital tapestry composed of layer upon layer of perspective, atmospheric phenomena and people (Gibson 2011) From the film, Majewski created The Bruegel Suite a set of video pieces for exhibition in the 54th Biennale.

Lech Majewski The Mill and The Cross (film still), 2011.
http://www.themillandthecross.com/files/1%20Rutger%20Hauer%20THE%20MILL%20&%20THE%20CROSS%20dir.Lech%20Majewski.jpg

The Way To Calvary by Breugel, painted in 1564 conceivably might have brought to life the episode of Jesus on the way to his crucifixion.

The Mill and The Cross by Majewski, created in 2011 brings to life the same story to a new audience using new technologies.
Majewski has brought light and life, electricity to a painting that had previously been only lit by candlelight.

Preview the film trailer: http://vimeo.com/24904606

Michelangelo Caravaggio Narcissus, 1599. Oil on canvas, 92 x 110 cm

http://www.artble.com/imgs/2/e/d/116588/narcissus.jpg

ALI ASSAF
Reconsiders a work of Carravaggio, bringing light and life to a previous inanimate and still painted work using the technology of film as with the work of Majewski.
Assaf poised on the edge of a river-bank, watches as detritus slowly flows down the river, everyday items including a box, a document, photographs and scraps, until the water is barely visible. (Platt 2011) Assaf returned to his home of Basra after a lengthy self imposed exile to find his city in ruins. These themes are analogous to the city of Venice, a city where buildings are also slowly crumbling and where waterways are also subject to continued pollution

Ali Assaf Narciso, 2010 Video installation 400 x 400 x 280 cm.

International travel to Venice and the Biennale has also highlighted particular domestic similarities and differences. Some of these differences might relate to what is referred to in the catalogue as a heterochronic vision of history (Bourriaud 2011: 46).

Heterochrony refers to changes, over evolutionary time, in the rate or timing of developmental events8
Usually applied to biological evolution, what this means in relation to the artwork at the Biennale is that not all participating countries have the same approach to artistic involvement and presentation to an international audience. This goes a far way to explaining the interesting effect of mixed reactions to some work.

By understanding the personal circumstances being brought to viewing an artwork, it is easier to negotiate and begin to understand whether we identify with a work or not.

Engaging with artworks from other nations also starts to bring into focus an understanding of domestic practices in relation to an international audience and encourages an appreciation of the local personal narrative and its place in relation to meta-narratives.

LYNDAL JONES
Lyndal Jones represented Australia in the 49th Venice Biennale. She presented a video installation titled Aqua Profunda life at the deep end. Jones also incorporates her own personal narrative, the title is taken from a sign at her local swimming pool where local Italians swim, that combines Italian and Latin, for Jones it embodied the multiculturalism of Australia. Jones exhibited footage taken from a ferry in Sydney Harbour and a vaporetto in Venice.
Fitzroy Pool
photo Lyndal Jones http://www.realtimearts.net/data/images/art /32/3245_gallasch_jones_aqua.jpg

Lyndal Jones Aqua Profunda, 2001. Video installation.

http://www.realtimearts.net/data/images/art/24/2446_nichols_jones.jpg

Polly Sutton describes the work in terms of metanarratives, it is about multiculturalism in Australia, about migration, about movement and about the waters that are the confluence between continents (Sutton 2001).

5.

CONCLUSIONS
Visiting Venice and the Biennale has been a singular experience that has exposed and made real the works of international artists. The particularities of Venice not only include the watery canals, but something more. This something more is what I have tried to explore and bring light to by looking at the artists above. An attempt to describe what I have called a doubling or verisimilitude of Venice.

Bringing to life and into the light history and historical artists in a reconsideration of the work is an approach displayed in the exhibitions of Pipilotti Rist, Lech Majewski and Ali Assaf.

Also by becoming aware of our own backround and past, much like the observations in the art of Amalia Pica, it is easier to challenge preconceived ideas and prejudices. Considering exploration and associations to a particularity of light, brings into focus locations, similarities and differences between the local and the universal. This is explored in the work of Vesa-Pekka Ranniko, James Turrell, Angel Vergara and Lyndal Jones.

As a cultural tourist the travel experience engages all five senses in a much more complex way than a recounted narrative. However the narrative as a reconstruction of the travel experience is in itself a sort of doubling. The retelling becomes like the reconsideration of the work of old masters, it brings light and life to the still images of the photo album.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Edward M. Bruner, The Role of Narrative in Tourism, Berkeley conference, On Voyage: New Directions in Tourism Theory, October 7-8, 2005, p. 2. Ibid, p. 12. Bice Curiger ILLUMInations, ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale Catalogue, Venice: Marsilio, 2011, pp. 42-63. Sally OReilly, Facts and false memories; nostalgia and ciphers of experience, Frieze, issue 140, 2011, p. 175. Michael Francis Gibson, Lech Majewski, 2011, online, http://www.lechmajewski.com/html/bruegel_suite.html,viewed 3 Sept 2011. Susan Noyes Platt, Venice Biennale 2011 Part I: The Iraqi Pavillion, Art and Politics Now, 2011, online, http://www.artandpoliticsnow.com/tag/ali-assaf/, viewed 3 Sept 2011. N. Bourriaud, The Radicant, New York: Lukas and Sternberg, 2009, p. 184. Cited in B. Curiger, ILLUMInations, 54th Venice Biennale catalogue, Venice: Marsilio, 2011, p. 46. S. Rice, Heterochrony, Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Yale University, n.d, online, http://www.webpages.ttu.edu/searice/hetero.html, viewed 3 Sept 2011. Polly Sutton, 49th Venice Biennale 2001: Lyndal Jones, Global Art Projects, 2001, online, http://www.gap.net.au/job-detail.aspx?ID=53, viewed 3 Sept 2011.