Well, I waited six months to get a haircut, so I suppose I’m not one to criticize a hedge. But I’m confused. Wouldn’t you think that the so-called most beautiful city in the world would do a little more to keep itself presentable? I know my mother would.
Granted, we all know how you just go along thinking everything is fine… you’ll fix your hair/mop the floor/write that thank-you note just any day now…and then suddenly something snaps and you realize that your hair is a freaking mess, etc. etc. The jig is up.
In the case of this hedge, nobody seems to be responding to the jig. Maybe wild-haired hedges are just the latest trend, or something related to the Biennale which is just through the park ahead. But company’s coming to town (and some is already here — I’ve seen the yachts). Tomorrow is the first day of the Venice Film Festival, and if there were ever a time to trim that hedge, I’d think the time would be now. Actually, yesterday. ACTUALLY, a week ago.
But what, as I often ask myself, do I know? I never trimmed my bangs to suit my mother, so it’s clearly just as well I was never responsible for a hedge.
Oh, did you want to see that statue? Sorry, come back later. No, I don’t know when. Later.It’s clear at the end of this row that somebody with a hedge-clipper, or machete, had made a good start. But they got a day off, or had to take their kid to the dentist, or something broke the momentum (or the tool), and here we are.Or it might have been around the time when the hedge finally realized it was never going to play Hampton Court Palace, or the Redberry Maze, or the Laberinto Katira, and just let everything go.
The Biennale: A thing, and people looking at it, photographing it, pondering it, or discussing it without pondering.
For a thing that essentially doesn’t interest me, I seem to be unable to resist mentioning it. Each year the prologue (fancy word for “the few days preceding the opening”) to the Biennale changes the neighborhood rhythms, not to mention the scenery, as participants, journalists, and assistants of all sorts and levels permeate our corner of Castello. Saturday the sun was finally shining, and there was an atmosphere of a pleasant kind of updraft out and about.
The Biennale — this year it’s dedicated to Architecture — will run from May 20 to November 26. Whether I personally like it or not is absolutely immaterial to everybody, including me. It Is. And if you think art (or this year, architecture) is the point, you may be mistaken. When the city government hits “total” on the municipal calculators six months later — yes, half of the entire year — it’s clear that the Biennale has become one of Venice’s main sources of income.
Venice has survived for centuries by selling things, and this international event is the latest in the very long sequence of commercial activities and products. Basically, Venice now sells itself, or what I call Being in Venice. The subcategories are “looking at things,” “eating food,” “sleeping somewhere.” Sub-subcategory: “getting around in vaporettos and taxis and big lumbering tourist launches or on foot clogging streets and bridges.” Any visitor to Venice is part of this dynamic — the Biennale just concentrates it in a spectacular way. My comments are not opinions. Having an opinion on the Biennale would be like having an opinion on gravity.
Setting the scene: the fondamenta di Ca’ di Dio in front of the Arsenale vaporetto stop. It’s an excellent position and if I had time I’d try to find out how much it cost the artist to use this space, because it must be one of the most desirable locations in the city. Sharp-eyed readers will remember last year’s gold cube…
Opening day is May 20 and it will run to November 26. It seems like it just closed and yet somehow here it is again. Last Saturday the neighborhood had a sort of swirly atmosphere. Not entirely unpleasant – at least you see some new people and discover whatever is trending in the world of fashion. One hopes that some of these outfits do not represent actual trends.
I actually like this; just thought I should let you know.There seems to be no angle at which this piece looks bad. Excellent work, Mr. Roggi.
As usual, though, the title of the work is beyond gnomic. Here is the tag, you can work it out however you like. The subtitle, which I think belongs to the group of three pieces, translates as “The seed of rebirth.” The primary word is an arty rendition of “genesis.” At least I think it is.Here the airborne couple is part of a quite fabulous olive tree.
“The Roots of Rebirth.” If you pass by, I hope you will admire not only the roots, but the gleaming little bronze olives scattered among the leaves.This is the third work of the trio of Genesys. You have to look hard to find it.That little golden golf ball (fine, it’s bronze and it’s not for golf, I know that) is called “The energy of life.” And speaking of things that aren’t, this isn’t architecture, either. So the “Biennale of Architecture” is open to all sorts of definitions, or definitions don’t matter, which also works, I guess.We certainly needed the downpours of the past few days, but nobody calculated the drainage situation on the fondamenta. We now discover that it is not reliably flat. Could we imagine this puddle as part of the work of art? Why not?
Speaking of definitions, one of the primary points of all these works is to entitle your work or show, as far as possible, in the most cryptic possible way. Yes, the word means something; no, it’s incomprehensible here. That’s what makes it art, you peasant.
The vaporetto-dock posters are a festival of code words. “Renewal: A Symbiotic Narrative”. I will be wondering about it till November. You can see it at the pavilion of the People’s Republic of China.“Consenting Cities”It says “Still,” but I read “rhinoplasty.” Titles that lead you nowhere leave you to make up your own wild stories. The leaning tower of sinus? Someone pushed a ziggurat up my nose?We’ll all be looking up “diachronic” now, to find out what such an apparatus might be. Or look like.Radials? I’m briefly intrigued by a group or enterprise going by the name “Sbagliato.” It means “mistaken,” or simply “wrong.” Probably not intrigued enough to go see what Radials might be, though.
More architectural items are being set up in the two little parks along the fondamenta dei Sette Martiri.
It’s too soon to know what the creator of this item has titled it. No, I am not imagining a pig in a python.I will be interested to discover if there is a work of art beneath the tarpaulin, or if this is the work. Either one is fine with me. I’d have titled it “Diachronic,” but it’s already taken.It wouldn’t be the Biennale without some extraordinary performance piece out in the road on the way home. Better yet, a piece that is being filmed. If the performance doesn’t make you curious, you’ll almost certainly pause to see what the crew is up to. Please admire the important microphone. You should know that the only sound to be heard was the random blackbird call, and people walking by, talking. A dog barking, maybe. Was that part of the performance? So many questions.We see a man, evidently Muslim, in the position of prayer, next to a rolling suitcase. His hands wear fingerless gloves. Something about immigrants, I guess? The silence reveals nothing. Two solid minutes of it. Art? I guess so. We can’t call it diachronic, anyway.
A brief article in the Gazzettino Saturday added a few details about this artefact, which I pass along.
It’s called “Castello Cube.” I hadn’t realized it had a name, it seemed such a generic object. Not that the name is any less generic.
The creator goes by the nom de guerre Niclas Castello. Now I begin to comprehend. And it is being shown in Castello! It’s almost like destiny.
His real name is Norbert Zerbs. I myself would have totally kept this name. Be proud of your heritage, Zerbs!
The cube sat on the riva Ca’ di Dio for 24 hours, it says here, so that would also explain the security guards. There were ten of them.
It weighs 186 kilos (410 pounds) of 24-carat 999.9 fine gold. I’ll admit that for some reason I didn’t want this to be true. I was telling Lino that it was probably an empty cube made of iron sheets covered with gold leaf. Nope. It is precisely what it appears to be: A block of solid gold.
Never before in history has this much gold been worked into one artwork.
The value of this mass of metal is about 12,000,000 dollars.
Zerbs’s net worth is listed at 51,000,000 dollars.
I notice how many facts about this object have to do with quantities. Don’t know why this seems to fascinate people. A man in Alaska told me that a tourist looking at Denali once asked him how much it weighed.
It was displayed in Central Park in New York City last February.
An art historian named Dieter Buchhart made the following declaration (I translate): “It is a conceptual work that seems to have arrived from another world and now is standing on the paving-stones of Venice, without a pedestal.”
I’m as keen on conceptual works as the next person, even if the concept eludes me, but here’s a concept: By all means bring us a cube of gold that seems to have arrived from another world. Just stop talking drivel.
“The artwork is exhibited in public places so that it is accessible to everyone,” said another expert, “and people have the opportunity to rediscover art in the open space.”
I’ll tell you what — you’d need 186 kilos of self-confidence to put something you call art into an open space in a city that is composed almost entirely of art. I might discern something artistic about it if it were standing, say, in an acre of alfalfa, or drifting on a raft down the Monongahela river. But placing an object purporting to be art in Venice takes nerves of tungsten carbide.
Anyway, it’s gone now, continuing its quest to find a pedestal.
These golden objects are also made by hand and can be bought any day at the Pastificio Serenissima on the Salizzada dei Greci. Their weight is measured in grams.
The scene is the riva Ca’ di Dio in front of the Arsenale vaporetto stop.
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.
I add this image in case you’ve forgotten this 2017 contribution to the world of art. I’m glad it’s not up to me to explain it to whoever created the Scythian pectoral.Your eyes don’t lie: It is a cube made of gold.
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.
“Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee….” she may have thought briefly before moving on.Making sure to photograph the cube from its good side.The cube is the only regular hexahedron and is one of the five Platonic solids. It is the only convex polyhedron whose faces are all squares. The cube is also a square parallelepiped, an equilateral cuboid and a right rhombohedron. Might as well learn something while we’re out here standing around. It’s certainly geometry. But is it art?
