I’m giving my brain a small holiday — what the British traveling public knows so charmingly as an “away day” — and not trying to string thoughts together. Or even to have very many thoughts, frankly. Once I start, I usually discover that my brakes are unreliable.
But looking around is always a treat, to one degree or another, and Lord knows we don’t lack for material here.
Benches — not enough, but still usable — line the viale Garibaldi, the perfect spot of summer shade where people can sprawl and eat and nap. Lino calls the area the “refectory” or the “dormitory,” depending on what we see going on. We sit there too, sometimes, when we can find a bench, of which there should be more. But that’s not the real subject. Here, Exhibit A: Deterioration. All the benches are tormented by now, but this is reaching a dangerous extreme. (Note: I do not blame either eaters or nappers for this. It’s The Elements, of which we have so many.)But wait! Has the world gone mad?In this case, madness is not at work, but men detailed to spruce up the place, like you do before company comes. “Company” in this case I surmise is the Biennale of Architecture, which is opening just a few steps away on Saturday, May 28. They’ve also cut the grass in the small areas behind the benches. Where will it end?And speaking of observing, did you ever notice the half-moon window over the water entrance of many palaces? That was the window of the gondolier’s apartment. If you had a palace you also had a gondola (sometimes more than one), and at least one gondolier. He had to bunk somewhere, so the space closest to the boat was the perfect spot. Lest you think they all had to be abnormally short, the floor of the apartment was sometimes below the level of the window –here you can see that the brown facing indicates how low the floor was.Different palace, but here we get a look at how the apartment would look from the inside. It happens that this palace is being used as a nursery school. Most Venetians didn’t have plastic castles blocking the entrance to the canal.But back to the madness. Let’s visit the fountain on the Zattere. I remember when it was built, something like 15 years ago. Its astonishing inefficiency was immediately obvious, but what’s really astonishing is that it has been left that way ever since. Perhaps you can see the curving jets of water. If not, never mind. You can certainly see the water which the jets are flinging far and wide. Obviously the force of the flow has not been diminished in order to make the jets fall into the drains at the foot of the pedestal. Or, the drains haven’t been moved. In any case, this is what you have: Sloshy ground in the summer, and sometimes ice in the winter. And waste. Bonus points to the designer for putting a drain instead of a basin — occasionally a helpful soul will put a plastic bowl or old ice-cream tub beneath the falling water so that dogs can drink too. Whenever we see anything that is somewhere between inadequate and wacko, we say it must have been designed by “the architect of the fountain at the Zattere.” And people worry about acqua alta?Oh, sorry — are we in your way?This is almost impossible to top. Elephants in Venice! (And people worry about tourists?). This photo is in an unidentified window on Barbaria de le Tole. Sorry about the reflection, but some sleuthing reveals that the Circo Togni came to Venice in all its glory at some date in the Fifties. I’m impressed by all the people who act like this is as normal as the Fourth of July parade in Wahoo, Nebraska. But maybe they’re thinking that Venice is as normal as Wahoo.
Here’s the link, in case the clip hasn’t come through: https://youtu.be/6MEwe6XL_ck
My “away day” is over now, leaving room for “back-here day,” which will be tomorrow.
I haven’t been able to decode this construction. There is a bucket inside the wicker sphere, and a batch of ropes, and a piece of fabric. Make of it what you will.
“Biennial” means “every two years” in, I suppose, every language from Amharic to Tongan. Even in Italian.
But in Venice, “Biennale” has come to mean “The Voltron of international modern art exhibitions put on every single year to draw more people here for longer so they’ll, you know, spend money.”
The original event was inaugurated in April 30, 1895 and was dedicated solely to art. Back then, that meant painting and sculpture. But scheduling it to skip a year meant losing momentum, and limiting it to painting and sculpture was dangerously droll.
By now some Venice Biennale opens every spring, so they have worked around the logistical and etymological complications of “bi” by having created an assortment of choices — there is, alternatively, the Biennale of Art, Architecture, Dance, Music, Theatre, and the Venice Film Festival, which has always been once a year, though I suppose if there were a way to have one every four months the city would rejoice.
The opening weekend of the annual Biennale, of whatever sort, as I have chronicled in other years, is a spectacular spasm of art objects and art people in the zone of the Giardini, where the national pavilions are. You have to pay to see what’s in there, but for these few triumphant days the neighborhood is bestrewn with art of the performance and/or concept variety. Or something.
Your eyes do not deceive you — this is a young woman folded into a net several feet above the ground. The day after, the chrysalis was empty, leaving just a big clump of tangled twine strung up there. More art.I regret to report that I didn’t linger for the final performance so I don’t know what it entailed. Perhaps the young woman de-cat’s-cradled herself back to earth in some way. Or maybe disappeared. Anyway, what she did had a title, which I appreciate. The wicker sphere didn’t bother giving itself a name.On the other side of the Viale Garibaldi from the twine-entangled girl was this. Was it a visual echo? That’s all I can think of. That, or this is the Maypole Dance of the Huldufolk.
It’s hugely entertaining to see this gathering of the art clans in their startling garb, as well as the blithe spirits who come to demonstrate their feats of skill and daring. They’re here to exhibit something about themselves, about the world, about what’s wrong with the world, about what’s wrong with everything, about I don’t really know what the heck what.
I dimly recall that perplexed unenlightened viewers used to be sneered at because they didn’t understand the work before them — peasants! But now I have the impression that artists have ceased to concern themselves with being understood. If these artists were people who had undergone years of therapy, I’d think that this state of mind represented progress.
As it is, I don’t know what it represents. My grasp of the convoluted symbolism now in vogue is extremely feeble, and certain exotic forms of irony are evidently beyond my mental or emotional capacity to comprehend, much less appreciate.
But I’m cool with all this now. If they don’t care about being understood, I’m not worried about not understanding.
These women understand art, especially the lady on the right, who is in touch with her inner Peggy Guggenheim.And these women two steps away understand a whole lot of other things.
Two thoughts have taken up permanent residence in my brain.
One: That much of contemporary art has gotten trapped in the Dadaism Room and can’t get out. (The room has no doors, being Dadaist and all, ha ha).
Here’s the five-second rundown on Dada, helpfully summarized by Wikipedia:
The term anti-art, a precursor to Dada, was coined by Marcel Duchamp around 1913 when he created his first readymades.[2] Dada, in addition to being anti-war, had political affinities with the radical left and was also anti-bourgeois.[3]
The beginnings of Dada correspond to the outbreak of World War I. For many participants, the movement was a protest against the bourgeoisnationalist and colonialist interests, which many Dadaists believed were the root cause of the war, and against the cultural and intellectual conformity—in art and more broadly in society—that corresponded to the war.
Dada activities included public gatherings, demonstrations, and publication of art/literary journals; passionate coverage of art, politics, and culture were topics often discussed in a variety of media.
So if it seems that art and politics and social causes have thrown themselves into a hot-tub together and are drying off in the Biennale, there is a long history of this already. Nothing new going on here, folks, sorry.
The usual procession of extreme luxury yachts came to the Riva degli Schiavoni. Little me thinks I’m looking at boats that cost too much. I wonder what a Biennale artist sees?
Two: That much of the art seen here, and anywhere else these artistoids go, doesn’t refer so much to culture as it does to other art. It’s the visual equivalent of novels that are really about language. Conclusion: As it gets broader and covers more conceptual territory, art is becoming shallower and shallower. Western culture itself may be in the process of shallowization, but art is only making it worse.
Paul Gauguin noticed something of this already happening in the late 1800’s: “The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience,” he observed. “Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
We wandered, baffled and bemused, around and through the throngs over the weekend, and below are some examples of what we saw on Friday and Saturday (Opening Night!). The Biennale will go on till November 22; this divertissement gets longer each year. If they continue at this rate, eventually it will just be simply the “Ennale.”
A couple stops to examine (and admire?) the fragments scattered on the ground. Again: If you have to ask, you’ve just embarrassed yourself.They are bits of paper folded in a fiendishly clever, origami-like way. I can tell you nothing more.I can explain this: It’s a young person (man?) dressed entirely in black holding a red balloon in the shape of a heart. That’s my explanation.A cactus with two ovoids on each side. Witty and irreverent and so much fun. You know who appreciates this piece of art the most? The barge driver who got paid to carry it around.A girl is strapped into an old electric chair; of course the headpiece needs to be adjusted by a helpful collaborator perhaps from the hair and makeup department. The hair must be perfect. If you want to know what this is about, you’ll have to subject yourself to the explanation at www.samarcandaproject.org. Hint: It’s ponderously loaded with the most intricate art-babble I’ve heard in a while. Bottom line: It’s a protest. Art as social megaphone. But blah-blah-blah doesn’t sound any better either loud or soft.I’ve slighted the glamorous people in this piece, but I couldn’t resist this woman. As far as I’m concerned, walking in those shoes qualifies as performance art. The unusual color combination plays an important part in the entire presentation.I was startled — as was everyone else in the neighborhood — to come across this extraordinary quintet on our very own little bridge. You think this is about naked and semi-naked people posing in public? Peasant! It’s a Protest, of course!I had to look it up, but this concoction of leaves and skin has a name, and is is intended to draw angry attention to the uprooting of the olive trees in the region of Puglia.The artist got everybody’s attention — anybody with a camera was snapping madly away — but I wasn’t aware of any explanation of the deeper significance of the endeavor. Do white-painted naked girls wearing a rabbit mask naturally symbolize the destruction of olive trees?Apparently yes, they do.The bunny-faced girl took a break later, freeing herself of her frondy friends but still accepting huge numbers of eager snapshots. She just walked along the street like this: white, nude, and rabbit-headed. It all totally makes me think of olive trees in Puglia. As photographer Ansel Adams once remarked, “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”Or we dispense altogether with the concept and just stick with the sharp image. These are nightmare pictures, which have left frivolous little Dada behind and plunged into the abysses of Surrealism. Luis Bunuel would have been proud. This is on a hideous hoarding on the nearby fondamenta with a number of appalling partners.Like this, for example. It will probably be there till the end of November, or till next year’s annual bi-annual event.You can send me ten reams of single-spaced explanations, but you will never convince me that this has any meaning whatsoever. And the girl’s right foot is freaking eerie. But I do admire the folds of her skirt. I wonder what they mean?
A view of the island of San Michele, with the sculpture placed just right. Going my way? (photo: georgy-frangulyan.ru)
One day in 2007 a bronze sculpture suddenly appeared in the water between the Fondamente Nove and the island of San Michele.
It represents two men standing in a boat, one of them pointing somewhere important.
If there had been an announcement about this innovation, I missed it, because I was compelled to try to figure out what it was all by myself.
I failed; in fact, I didn’t even come close. My main theory was that it was Saint Francis with one of his disciples. Logic! Because it is said — or even known — that in 1220 the “Poverello,” returning from the Fifth Crusade, stopped in the Lagoon and founded a hermitage on the little island now known as San Francesco del Deserto.
I was slightly troubled by the consideration that if the armless man in bronze were St. Francis, why wasn’t his companion pointing to the island he adopted — or toward Venice, at least? The statue is pointing more toward Murano, but that makes no sense, even if it is something from the Biennale, whose components are not supposed to make sense.
Then I thought it might be some representation of Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”: “Courage!” he said, and pointed toward the land, / “This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.” / In the afternoon they came unto a land / In which it seemed always afternoon.” Mounting wave: check. Plenty of those. It’s a start.
But now I know the truth, and it’s more troubling than ignorance. Perhaps you’ve noticed that truth can be that way.
This pair of metallic men floating in what appears to be a pistachio shell is a creation of a Russian artist, Georgy Frangulyan, and it is known as “Dante’s Barque.”
Excuse me?
In the early 1300’s, a Florentine pharmacist and poet named Dante Alighieri took a trip to Hell — not the Piazza San Marco at noon on a summer Sunday, but the other Hell — in the company of the ghost of Virgil, the famous Roman poet, who acted as guide and fixer. They also went to Purgatory and Paradise, and he wrote the trip up in “The Divine Comedy.”
I knew all that a long time ago, but I never imagined that the creation installed in the Venetian lagoon depicted an interlude in the allegorical travels of the Supreme Poet and the author of the Aeneid — specifically, their preparation to be rowed across the Acheron, a boiling river of damned souls. Many congratulations to all.
Now that I think of it, they could also just be two tourists crossing the Grand Canal on the gondola traghetto. That’s pretty much a boiling river by now. (Flickr)
There’s just one thing. Who came up with the idea that it would be cool to position a big statue showing two men heading for Hell pointing at the cemetery?
It was bad enough when the city’s funeral launches, which carry the coffins to the graveyard, had a big sticker on the stern bearing the name of the city’s garbage collection service. Thank God they finally stopped that.
But this isn’t much better. It isn’t any better. I realize we live in an era which has been deformed by irony and mockery, but that’s no excuse.
If I had to accompany my mother’s body to the cemetery, I would never want to know that those two characters are Dante and Virgil. You could tell me they’re George and Gracie; you could tell me they’re Crick and Watson; you could tell me they’re two of the Flying Karamazov Brothers.
But I’d appreciate your just leaving Dante out of it.
Despite the fact that he represents a doge (notice the ducal “corno”), this lion looks surprisingly like lots of Venetians when told they’re going to have to change something. Baffled. Apprehensive. Disbelieving. If it’s change, make somebody else do it!
My recent silence would typically have been due to the winding down of the summer, the winding down of me, an annual process which usually is distinguished by….nothing. Sloth, heat, tedium, what the doctors might call general malaise. (The tedium, unhappily, is also caused by the endless, predictable procession of homicides, femicides, drownings, drug overdoses, fatal mountain accidents, political did-so-did-not, and miles of traffic backups on the major days of departing and returning from vacation.) It’s practically a tradition.
There are usually some slight variations. Today we read “After he slit his friend’s throat, he went out to drink a beer.” That’s a little different. Or the young man who was accosted by a prostitute on the street in a town out on the mainland who got fined 450 euros for the verbal exchange even though he turned her down. The law says clients are criminals too, and it appears that even telling her no counts as much as hiring her for the weekend. But on the whole, a typical 30 summer days, not so unlike what people experience in many other parts of the world.
By now, though, we all know that August, which is supposed to be the Nothing Month, was very much a Something Month, for the gondoliers, ACTV, and city as a whole. Which also explains my recent silence because (A) I was trying to keep up with the constantly evolving situation and (B) doing so made my brain seize up, therefore (C) we went to the mountains for a few days where my brain wasn’t needed for anything but maintaining basic life functions.
Returning to Venice, we immediately fell into the groove, right where we had left it. There is a traditional sequence of events in this sliver of time, which involves lots of people moving ceaselessly around the city, especially in our neighborhood, not to mention the Lido.
Plenty of visitors are still going to see exhibitions of the Biennale; every evening, when the doors close at 6:00, we sit at our favorite cafe and watch the migration moving sluggishly from the distant Arsenal outposts toward and along via Garibaldi, in search of food, drink, and a place to sit. I’ve seen a lot of really nice dresses this year, if anybody wants to know.
The Venice Film Festival opened three days ago, so although actors and fans aren’t to be seen in our little cranny of the city, there are plenty of badge-and-totebag-and-camera-bearing journalists around (a reported 3,000 have come to cover the festival. How could there be that many outlets in the world that want hourly bulletins about movies and their makers?).
Here’s a Film Festival tradition I really like: the megayachts. They’re not for going anywhere, they’re merely for parties. But if you’re looking for a film contract, these boats will take you somewhere, if you’re lucky.
In fact, a number of traditions here are pleasant, even reassuring. I enjoy the eternal cycle of seasonal food; right now the grapes and the warty, gnarly pumpkins (suca baruca, “the veal of Chioggia”) are appearing in the market. And I feel the onset of the Regata Storica, to be fought out tomorrow, and there are the signs in the shop windows selling new backpacks and school supplies. That’s the happy side of tradition.
Then there is the also-traditional way in which events have been unfurling since the death in the Grand Canal. Everything that has happened since two weeks ago today has been as predictable as dusty bookshelves, but they are not positive developments. In fact, they’re not really developments at all.
In the days following the accident, there was a mighty outcry from all sides demanding change. That was predictable.
What is also predictable is that change is now being resisted with every weapon that comes to hand. Life here obeys Newton’s Third Law, the one about equal-and-opposite-reactions. Newton’s Laws are among the few edicts nobody objects to, mainly because Newton isn’t around to argue with.
When I say “laws,” I am referring specifically to the recent regulations that have been proposed to establish order on the traffic in the Grand Canal. Because even if you say you need them and want them, when you get them, you have to fight back.
The mayor and assorted sub-mayors and people who wear uniforms worked mightily and also rapidly to devise a new way of organizing the assorted boatly categories. In record time, a 26-point plan was presented, and published in the Gazzettino.
This plan contained a number of dramatic innovations, such as collecting garbage at night, and requiring the barges to have finished their chores by 10:00 AM.
But this is the point at which the true, fundamental, guiding-more-surely-than-a-compass tradition took over.
The tradition is: I’m not changing anything. Somebody else can change if they’re that dumb, but not me.
I knew the minute I read it that night work wasn’t going to fly. If people hate working by day, which it seems many do, they would hate even more doing it by night. Then the barge drivers said that working those hours would make everything more expensive. And so on.
So the very people who clamored for change in the heat of the moment have shown that they don’t want it. They want somebody else to want it. This is tradition!
People hardly had time to finish reading the list of 26 proposed changes to the traffic on the Grand Canal before the protests began. The Nuova Venezia says: “Limits in the Grand Canal, it’s a revolt,” and the Gazzettino says: “Revolution in the Grand Canal: Immediately there’s a storm about stopping the #2 line and garbage collection at night.” I could have read these with my eyes shut.
I can tell you how things are going to go in the next few months, or perhaps merely weeks: Some tiny tweaks will be made, and everything will return to the way it was. The #2 vaporetto is scheduled to go out of service on November 3, because it’s a high-season traffic-overflow adjunct. The proposal to cut it earlier makes moderate sense, but it’s really window-dressing, because then there would have to be more #1 vaporettos to handle the traffic.
The “Vaporetto dell’Arte,” an enormous, lumbering, amazingly underused and overpriced vehicle, will also stop on November 3. They could stop it now and nobody would notice, but it must be somebody’s pet project because it keeps on going. Empty and big and expensive and pointless. (The “pointless” part is a special ACTV sub-tradition.)
As for what everybody else thinks about revising the way things are done, Grug from “The Croods” put it best: “Change is always bad.” As his son replied: “I get it, Dad! I will never do anything new or different!” Just a cartoon? Maybe not.
By the staircase in the Palazzo Grassi, the original owner, Angelo Grassi, had the following phrase incised in 1749: CONCORDIA RES PARVAE CRESCUNT, DISCORDIA ETIAM MAXIMAE DILABUNTUR.” With harmony the small things grow, but with discord even the greatest things are brought to ruin.
Here’s a tradition that never fails: the invention of new rules (otherwise known as “change”) on the vaporettos. The ACTV must have a team of people dedicated only to devising new and preposterous regulations which are almost impossible to enforce. But they take them so seriously! Here’s the latest, in the so-called effort to eliminate freeloaders who don’t pay for their ticket. This says “People found without a validated ticket on the floating pontoons will receive a fine.” How will these deadbeats be found? By whom? The ACTV doesn’t have enough ticket-checkers on the boats themselves — they can spare them to roam around the city looking for unticketed people just standing on the dock? Most of the world is satisfied to have people buy a ticket to take the bus. Here, they have to buy a ticket just to wait for it. You’re stuck in the rain waiting for your friend? You have to buy a ticket. You want to help your grandmother get her shopping trolley onto the boat? You have to buy a ticket. Hard as I try to grasp this concept, it just slips away.
