The Biennale has opened several weeks earlier than usual this year, and the inauguration was Saturday, April 20. What remained usual, however, was the mass of international art(s) journalists and assorted contributors that swarmed the streets of Castello for the three preceding days.
I usually enjoy seeing the exotic plumage of these migrating creatures, not to mention their extraordinary behavior, but this year netted little. A good friend told me he saw a person in the street wearing a toilet on his head and I’m really sorry I missed that. Lino’s father-in-law was a plumbing contractor and was occasionally seen around town carrying a toilet on his shoulder — clearly he didn’t realize the artistic potential in his humdrum little existence and its porcelain trappings. I suspect that supporting four children during a world war might have limited his frivolous side, if he had one.
But such a jape would only have appeared frivolous back then, when life was real and life was earnest. Whoever porta’d that potty the other day was doing it seriously. To what end, I can’t say, but everything at the Biennale is done with a degree of seriousness denser than black granite. Along with the art we get diatribes and philippics and harangues, and also sermons and lectures and platitudes. Lots of words that labor to obscure rather than illuminate. Speaking of art — I mean, words — I’m remembering this self-portrait by Salvator Rosa (1645):
Back to the bony statue on the boat. It has been moored alongside the fruit and vegetable boat at the bottom of via Garibaldi. It will be there till the Biennale closes in November.
But if you desire meaning, maybe the following will help:
The exhibition reflects the dissociation and exploitation of a colonial political system that has attempted to unravel the fraught complexities of contemporary Puerto Rican identities. The estrangement that is inherent to the colonial status is an extended act of violence resulting in a psychic malaise because of what Anibal Quijano has so aptly described and defined as “the coloniality of power”.
At the heart of the exhibition stands Celso González’ monumental Yola Sculpture, “San Juan Bautista,” a powerful symbol of Puerto Rico’s enduring spirit. This site-specific installation challenges the constraints of its political status, whil honoring the Island’s rich maritime heritage.
There have been boats at the Biennale before now. The water is evidently an element that helps some projects seem more interesting. Or important.
Vik Muniz’s floating installation Lampedusa was launched during the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. The article in published in the Haifa Museum of Art publication stated that “the 14-meter-long (45 feet) paper boat was coated with a giant reproduction of the Italian newspaper that reported the tragedy. The gargantuan paper boat drifted along the Canal Grande, Venice’s main transportation route, docking near luxury yachts. As art critic Jonathan Jones wrote in The Guardian, “This art project has been overtaken by real-life horror. Perhaps, in theory, it seemed reasonable to make a vaguely thought-provoking, ‘playful’ piece about migration. But now the scale of our cruelty, the true consequences of all the rhetoric that dehumanises migrants, have become so lethally clear. Surely, art on such a theme should be less equivocal, more angry.”
Well said, Mr. Jones. But this is the Biennale, where scruples find little nourishment.
I’m going to go back to floating St. John. Despite not being any closer to resolving urgent questions of urban injustice or the coloniality of power, I’m starting to feel that we understand each other.
This sylvan glade was created by Napoleon when he went through Venice like the Destroying Angel, razing and demolishing scores of churches, convents, scuole and other buildings that were inconsiderately sited where he wanted something else to be, or that happened to contain things he wanted such as gold, jewels and works of art.
Nowadays the Giardini Pubblici (Public Gardens) are best-known for accommodating the original pavilions of the art extravaganza known as the Biennale. Also, being a garden, the area is full of trees and flowers and shrubs, plus an attractive little playground. It even offers a useful amount of space to handle thousands of runners at the finish line of the Venice Marathon.
However, this 13-acre piece of Venice is more than a shrine for art lovers or a bosky dell for the relief of exhausted tourists. It is a garden of remembrance(s) of people and/or events of which hardly anybody remembers anything. That’s a wild guess on my part, based on the general nonchalance with which people wander through. Look at the bronze bust of Giorgio Emo Capodilista; it has “And now the weather report from Oblivion” written all over it. Not to mention Carlo de Ghega, another extremely worthy Venetian whose crumbling memorial plaque is only about 45 seconds away.
So I’ve decided — SEEING THAT THERE ARE NO HELPFUL EXPLANATORY SIGNS ANYWHERE, THE KIND THAT MANY TOWNS WHOSE CITIZENS AND OFFICIALS FEEL SOME CIVIC PRIDE OFTEN PLACE NEAR WORTHY LANDMARKS — to remedy this oversight. I’m limiting myself to the Gardens at the moment, because I intuit that trying to address the skillions of other personages “remembered” around Venice would be a life’s work. Not a reason not to do it, just a reason to evaluate it carefully.
But the Gardens are calling. May I present Riccardo Selvatico, our first example of departed glory:
Selvatico was born in Venice in 1849 and died in 1901. Trained as a lawyer, he was mayor of Venice from 1890-95. He was also a poet and writer of comedies (I guess politics could help you with that) written in the Venetian dialect. When he wasn’t scribbling he did a number of important things. For one, he established a fund to finance the construction of healthier housing, replacing swathes of dwellings which were worthy of New York’s Lower East Side or Rio’s favelas; he would have lived through several cholera epidemics, so he didn’t need anybody to explain the problems of slums.
And if that doesn’t seem especially herm-worthy, he was also the person who came up with the idea, approved by a city-council vote in 1894, of holding an international art exposition in Venice every two years. In other words, he invented the Biennale, which now runs for at least six months, and sometimes seven, every year. It brings glory to the participants and boatloads of money to the city — I have no way of knowing which aspect inspired him more. Maybe it was a draw. The opposition party, naturally, stigmatized it as yet another example of his administration’s tendency to waste money on projects of barely discernible utility, in order to favor its friends and clients.
So he wrote a little poem called “Metempsicosi” in which he imagines that if it were true that we can be reincarnated as some animal, he’d like to come back as a pigeon in the Piazza San Marco, watch the people, fly around, and poop on the hats of a couple of individuals he isn’t going to name.
His five years as mayor were busy, of course, partly due to an ongoing battle between his highly eclectic and non-religious government and the opposition party marshaled by Giuseppe Sarto, then patriarch of Venice but later Pope Pius X. In 1895 Sarto’s faction won the election and Selvatico was back on the street. Separation of church and state was not an important principle at the time.
Selvatico clearly accomplished more than your usual assortment of Bepis and Tonis (“Bepi”and “Toni” are the immemorial nicknames of the quintessential pair of Venetian friends, up to and including today). I’m glad his efforts were appreciated, though the encomiums came after his death, as usual.
I Recini da Festa (“The best earrings”) is a comedy in two acts set in Venice, first performed in Venice to great success at the Teatro Goldoni on April 4, 1876 (14 years before he became mayor, so people knew what they were getting into, so to speak, when they elected him). One critic calls this comedy as “light and intricate as a piece of Burano lace,” still a stellar example of the best of the theatre in Venetian dialect of the time. Then as now, everybody spoke Venetian, so it wasn’t necessarily seen as a quaint way of talking, or even typical of a particular social class.
A poverty-stricken young married couple — also, she’s pregnant — is living with her parents because the husband has been rejected by his rich father who was opposed to the wedding. This opposition is based on an old quarrel between the two fathers-in-law dating from their youth, about which the newlyweds know nothing. Her father can’t support them all, so his wife breaks the piggybank in which the money for the crib was being kept.
But the baby MUST have a crib so that the father can at least put up a good appearance, therefore the daughter (soon to be mother) decides to pawn her best earrings. The person who resolves all the twists is the big-hearted and astute midwife, who’s ready to make any sacrifice to settle the matter. In the end the two old enemies make peace, and the rich father himself gives the earrings back to his daughter-in-law. Happy ending for everybody!
One critic calls this little confection “fresh, simple, full of domestic intimacy, which even today one hears willingly.”
Perhaps even better-known (among Venetians) is his poem “Brindisi” (toast), written in honor of the Regata Storica of 1893, and read by Selvatico at the then-traditional dinner given for all the racers the Thursday evening before the big event on Sunday.
That year the festivities were grand — nine new gondolinos had been constructed, and six bissone were bedecked at a cost of 3000 lire ($15,678 adjusted value). The rockstar pair of rowers, the Zanellato brothers, weren’t competing, and that left three crews which were virtually equal. Emotions were high even before the wine began to flow.
Like most poetry, it’s infinitely better spoken than read in silence, and I can only imagine the exultation that greeted the last few verses. I will translate, knowing that things like this come out in translation as if they’d been soaked in bleach. The original is below.
There are some who tremble/Looking around/And seeing that the world/Keeps going along every day
It seems that Venice/Once so beautiful/A little at a time/She too has changed
Mincioni/Let me say it/Venice doesn’t change/No matter how much people shout (terms in italics explained below)
The calle de l’Oca/has gone to hell/But the Grand Canal/For Lord’s sake, who would touch it?
They’ve gone to hell/parties and gambling houses/Dances, country festivals/
The Forze di Ercole/the puppet shows
So fine– but there is always/our Regata/There is always the festa/That nothing can affect (literally “impact”)
Cape, wig/ hat shaped like a raviolo/They’re dead and buried/But there is still the boatman!
And as long as this breed/Of arms and lungs/Of men who are tressi/sbragioni but good
As long as this breed/I repeat, is like this/Venice doesn’t change/Venice is beautiful!
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Mincioni: Refers to the male member; I’ve tried and can’t confidently give an English equivalent in the sense intended here, which summarizes all the great qualities of men’s men, in a good sense, even while using a word which usually implies the opposite.
Forze di Ercole: These “strengths of Hercules” were complicated human pyramids, spectacular exhibitions of endurance and equilibrium put on during festive occasions such as Carnival.
Hat like a raviolo: Tricorn
Tressi: A person who is a “tresso” (here he is using the plural to characterize boatmen in general) is big, strong, burly, muscular. I can imagine this inspiring an enormous burst of laughter, table- and friend-pounding, general uproar. What’s even better is that “tresso” is also the piece of wood which strengthens and unites two things that without it would collapse — for example, the legs of a chair (technically known in English as the “stretcher”). Calling somebody a tresso suddenly seems like a great thing.
Sbragioni: People called “sbragioni” are those who tend to yell when talking, especially with the belief that yelling will make the shouter win the argument. More laughter.
This is only the first personage to be rediscovered in the Garden of the Forgotten Venetians. Next chapter coming soon.
“Brindisi” for the Regata Storica by Riccardo Selvatico 1893
Gh’è certi che trema
Vardandose a torno,
E visto ch’el mondo
Camina ogni zorno,
Ghe par che Venezia
Un dì cussì bela,
Un poco a la volta
Se cambia anca ela.
Mincioni, mincioni,
Lassè che lo diga;
Venezia no cambia
Per quanto che i ziga.
Xe andada in malora
La cale de l’Oca;
Ma el so Canalazzo,
Perdio, chi lo toca?
Xe andai in so malora
Festini e ridoti,
I salti, le sagre,
Le forze, i casoti:
Va ben, ma gh’è sempre
La nostra Regata,
Gh’è sempre la festa
Che gnente ghe impata.
Velada, paruca,
Capelo a rafiol
Xe morti e sepolti;
Ma gh’è el barcariol!
E fin che sta razza
De brazzi e polmoni,
De omeni tressi,
Sbragioni ma boni,
In fin che sta razza,
Ripeto, xe quela,
Venezia no cambia,
Venezia xe bela!
Sometimes people ask me when the “tourist season” or “high season” begins, and I used to be uncertain. Uncertain no more: It’s Easter. Easter is like the starting bell at Churchill Downs — they just start coming. I can’t explain it, but it has never failed; even if Easter were to fall on February 3, November 5, January 22 — that would be the start of tourist season. But that’s not what’s weighing on me.
What’s weighing on me is how so many of our honored guests have come to behave as if they were in their own backyard, or garage, or abandoned lot behind a shuttered White Tower Hamburgers. Extreme bad manners, of which we’ve already had a few starter episodes, get into the newspaper. For example, the drunken Swiss boys cavorting naked in Campo San Giacometto at the Rialto — profoundly repulsive but not DANGEROUS — or the drunken boys (unspecified nationality) who jumped off the Rialto Bridge one night — HUGELY dangerous.
Or the perhaps not even drunken young men who still were jumping off the bridge by the Danieli hotel in full daylight, blithely unconcerned about barges and taxis and gondolas below. The jumpers could easily be injured when hitting the water or, more precisely, hitting something that’s on the water (recall the drunken New Zealander a few hot summer night years ago who jumped off the Rialto and landed on a passing taxi; after six months of agony, he finally died). Anyone in a boat passing under a bridge has to start thinking they’re in some shooting gallery where, instead of bullets, there are bodies coming for them. The prospect of six months of inescapable and increasingly repellent tomfoolery makes me feel tired and dejected.
We know about these shenanigans because people make videos on their phones and post them on social media. That’s the bass line in this chaotic cantata — showing the imbecility by doing something equally imbecilic. Everyone who reads these reports wonders why people are making videos instead of calling the Carabinieri. If you know the answer to this, please step up to accept your award. Right after you call the Carabinieri. But witnesses to the Danieli escapade say that the police were indeed called, and the police indeed did not appear. So there’s that.
In any case, one doesn’t need dramatic episodes to feel repulsed by tourists, and the daily deterioration doesn’t merit much of a story in the paper. Any neighborhood is bound to offer all sorts of examples of boorish behavior. Among various options, my current obsession is the evidently irresistible urge so many people have to just sit anywhere, plop down on the pavement or bridge, when the mood strikes. I realize this is not unique to Venice, because I’ve seen young people sitting on the floor in the airport, as if there were no seats anywhere. I’m not saying we should bring back the corset and the high starched collar, but the other extreme is worse. Why? For one thing, because they’re in the way and public space is already measured in microns. Second, because it makes otherwise normal people, who almost certainly have had some upbringing, appear to want to revert to life as Homo habilis once they get to Venice.
So much for the subject of quality (lack of). In my next post, some observations on quantity (surplus of). There will be interesting statistics.
One feels the imminence of the opening of the annual contemporary art exhibition in the way one feels the approach of a heavily-laden barge on a body of still water. (Hint: A barely perceptible surge of energy which produces only the faintest wave, but you know it’s caused by something very big.)
For the past 10-14 days the impact zone delimited by via Garibaldi/Giardini/Arsenale has experienced similar increasing energy manifested by more people outside drinking at bars, more people dragging suitcases to hotels and apartments, MANY more people clogging the supermarket aisles, almost all of whom don’t look much like the locals. They are more uptown, more trendy (hair, clothes, makeup, accessories — the full catastrophe, as Zorba said about something else). They walk around looking at each other and at themselves — I don’t know, I can just tell that they’re looking at themselves. The Venetians seem to be invisible to them as they occupy a stage on which the curtain is about to rise. It’s an interesting sensation to be in the same place as someone else and yet not be in the same place at all.
None of these musings is intended to be pejorative. I’m just attempting to convey the altered atmosphere, the shifting of the rpm’s in the old zeitgeist. And why would there not be such alterations? The Biennale (founded in 1895) now runs for seven months of the year, and is worth 30 million euros. The article I read cited that number but didn’t clarify how it breaks down, but as I look around, I’m guessing that at least 28 million euros are spent on vaporetto tickets and taxis. And drinks and ice cream cones. The joint is definitely jumping.
120 artists from 51 countries are featured, including plucky little Kiribati, out in the Pacific Ocean, where each new day officially begins. There are 85 “national participations,” according to the press release, strewn about the city from the national pavilions at the Giardini to 260 other spaces wherever they might be claimed, from non-practicing churches to literal holes in the wall. There are 23 “collateral events,” 5,000 journalists, and a healthy number of luxury yachts ranging from big to astonishingly ginormous. So far, so normal.
What follows are some glimpses from the past few days, bits that show what the arrival of the Biennale looks like. This is not an encyclopedia because life is short and my interest in the subject likewise. I was impelled to put this together merely to give a resident’s-eye view of the proceedings. There will certainly be more jinks of various heights in the next few days (Opening Day is officially Saturday, May 13), but I won’t be trying to keep up with them. I’m covering this entirely by whim. It’s my new operating system.