This week we are in the run-up to the inauguration/starting gun on the Biennale, now back in full force after some Covid side-effects such as lockdown.
Our neighborhood and near environs are absolutely pullulating with people dressed in weird ways, sitting together staring at their phones, drinking lots of spritzes and laughing. If the forecast is fulfilled (never a sure thing), a fierce northeast wind and lashings of rain and low temperatures will put a crimp in the laughing and spritzing on Friday and Sunday, but Saturday, the official opening day, should be sunny and bright. I do hope it works out that way, partly because I never know how far to trust the forecast and it would be interesting to see if they nabbed it this time.
One forecast I can make with total certainty, though, is that there will be inexplicable things strewn around the city that purport to be art. You already know this from past editions. If you think they’re art, they don’t need to be explicated, or you invent your own explication, or you repeat somebody else’s. If you don’t think they’re art, you’re on your own.
Yesterday morning we came upon a piece that, while less off-putting than the phallic column of gold in campo San Vio a few years back, still made Lino and me think assorted non-artistic thoughts.
My thoughts were these: I know it’s a cube. I know it’s made of gold. I know it weighs 130 kilos (286 pounds). I know that it required several rent-a-security-guards. I’m pretty sure I know that the cube-creator (Cubist?) takes his or her work seriously; he’d have to, considering that the current price of 130 kilos of gold is $8,078,590. But I do not know if it is art. And another thing I don’t know — though not knowing will not disturb my sleep — is why?
The Golden Calf meant life and death. The Mask of Agamemnon sends chills down the spine. The Sican beakers at least were useful as well as beautiful. The Panagyurishte Treasure is a cultural symphony.
And what have we to contribute, in the year 2022, to the multi-millennial history of goldsmithing? A cube.
I wish I had grandchildren just so I could tell them I had seen it.
14 Comments
Everything is Art
But…… it is good Art or Bad Art ?
An experienced Artist once told me this .
Ken
Was he (or she, or they) a p*ss-artist?
Not at all, a good Artist/craftsman ….. that is to say, me .
kenboydart.blogspot.com
To mangle some myths: Surely a latter-day Moses will issue from the adjacent Church of St George in San Vio brandishing a sword to slay this golden Mammon of unrighteousness!
Thanks for keeping us up to date with this exciting event, Erla.
“Making sure to photograph the cube from its good side” is my favourite comment in your whole wonderful piece.
Something is off. One cubic foot of gold weights 1,206.1082 pounds. Gold plated maybe
It has been presented as solid gold and I am not in a position to verify it. This discrepancy has to be lumped with everything else labeled “Biennale,” or caveat emptor.
The split second as I understood “photographing a cube from the good side” was wonderful. The photos always appear once I click Comments, it must boot something for my tech system. Then I had a good time looking up cube jokes and haiku and let’s just leave it at that.
Only in Venice!
Looking back, some of the very silliest things I’ve seen have been strutting around the Biennale.
– And, to be fair, one or two really interesting things. Loved the skull made out of cookingutensils, and also the really shiny rhino. – And there must’ve been others.
See Anish Kapoor is doing “his thing” again this year.
Whatever happened to talent and ability?
(Emperor’s very old clothes?)
Back in geometry class, I rolled my eyes and wondered why we had to learn all those terms, asked what use they might ever be.
And now I know.
🙂
My dearest memory of a Venice Bienniale was being given entrata gratuita by the young man at the kiosk because it was my birthday, and a Big Birthday, at that. (One of the few benefits of advanced age.) My memory of the art that year is rather less golden, except for Lorenzo Quinn’s sculpture of gigantic hands reaching out of the Grand Canal to hold up the Ca’Sagredo Hotel. A comment on rising water and in support, so to speak, of efforts against climate change.
A definition of “goldbrick” is something that appears to be valuable but is actually worthless.
Thank you, Merriam-Webster Webster.
Dear G-d…I have only been in this dazzling city 8 or 9 times and always overwhelmed by its physical environment and omg a church or a corner Madonna in a cage, or the barnacles clinging to boats, ordering a coffee where centuries of fellows have, seafood to die for, sweet reserved good humor, dignity, majestic…and to come on some f..kin travesty of art has always been perplexing & distressing…and I’m an sculptor…I feel my artistic contribution would be best served by piling my stuff on a barge, setting it alight & sending it down the Grand Canal & out to the lagoon
The last picture of the Cube is fantastic! Talk about making something out of nothing.