Venetian Biennale
Bice
Curiger, "Patronnese" of Biennale Art 2011
BIENNALE
ART
2
0 1 1
"ILLUMI
- NATIONS"
(Illuminations)
Jacopo
Robusti, called Tintoretto, "the animals’ creation", Venice, Gallery
of the Academy, momentarily exhibited at the Biennale- Art 2011-07-12 Above the
title: Loris Gréaud, the work leaning against a wharf of the Arsenal,
"The
Geppetto Pavilion"
Today the 45th
International Art Exposition, the Venetian Biennale, (which will remain open
until November 27th 2011), has opened its doors to the public. People have been
talking about it for months, especially since they have discovered that the
curator, this year, would be a
woman, in charge of the exhibition’s setting-out, and all those powers linked
to the creation and management of the most important artistic event of the
world, which imposes and allows some choices that will have great cultural and
economical repercussions. A curator, the lady who has this year signed the
Biennale Art in Venice, with many credentials: an out-and-out all-able in the field
of vanguards, a breeding ground of important frequentations and ideas, an art
historian and critic, Bice Curiger, aged 63, Swiss and native of Zurich (above
in the picture).
The poublic of previews, opne to critics and journalists, looks at the big canvass
by Tintoretto “The Last Supper”, coming from Saint Giorgio Maggiore Basilica,
almost 6 meters long
She has been put in
charge of an hard task, and considered the first approaches with critics and
journalists during the first days of opening, it looks like she has done a good
job. She had to assemble those artists from every Country who traditionally
partecipate to the event, in
addition to many new artists, while Vittorio Sgarbi has taken care of the Italia
Pavilion.
We think that both
the results must be appreciated, besides the numerous polemics, especially regarding
the choices made for the italian section.
Illumi-Nations
(Illuminations) is the title that Bice Curiger has wanted to assign to this
year’s kermesse, constituted by new art proposals of 83 artists coming from all
over the world, with a number of Countries which is way higher than the years
before.
The Illuminations
have been a real “brainwave”, like the curator herself says, because this term
is full of different and “illuminating” allusions, as soon as you compare it
with the artistic proposals and with the different “philosophies” that they
bring. They concern all the aspects linked to the use of light in art,
especially in a context like the Venetian one, which deeply feeds on light,
with its reflections of lagoon water, in its variables of shade and half-light,
as its history keeps reminding. It’s nota n accident that the Swiss curator has
wanted to draw her inspiration from Tintoretto, one of the most well-known
artist of the 16th Century, to the extent that she has put at the entrance of
the exhibitions three of its canvasses, between the most famous and beautiful
ones.
Jacopo
Robusti, called Tintoretto, “Body snatching of San Marco”,151 x 258 cm, Venice,
Accademia Gallery. Tintoretto has painted many canvasses with this same
subject, and one of them, maybe the most published, is in Brera picture gallery
in Milan.
The other three
canvasses by Tintoretto in Biennala are “The Last Supper”, coming from Saint Giorgio
Maggiore Basilica, and other two works kept in the Accademia Galleries, the “Body
snatching of San Marco”, and the “Animals Creation”, lent to Biennale.
“These paintings
by Tintoretto, one of the most experimental artists of the italian art, are particularly
fascinating for their ecstatic
light, almost feverish”- has declared Curiger- “and for their reckless approach
to the composition that reverses the classic order of Renaissance. These works
will play a fundamental role in the exhibition, establishing an artistic,
historical and emotional relation with the local context”. A challenge to
welcome?
Why these three
great canvasses by Tintoretto?, they have asked her: “Because peopole who come
to the Biennale, usually, want to see only the Biennale: a contemporary art
bubble in the city. I wanted to remind that, outside of it, there is Venice”.
Did you want to remind it through Tintoretto’s light, since the title of “your”
Biennale is “ILLUMInations”? She answers: “Yes, it is true, I chose three canvasses
by Tintoretto where light ha san important role. I’m thinking about the immaterial
angels of “The Last Supper”, pure brushstrokes of light; or the rainstorm of
the “Body snatching of San Marco”. But my decisioni s also a provocation for
all the artists in Biennale, an invitation to a comparison with the past”.
The use of the light
component as a protagonist this year has had Tintoretto as a sponsor,
reconnecting the gloomy, dark and complex, terrible and latent, marshy and not
always limpid contemporary art, which speaks about reality as it was something
hard to decode, to the art of a more shining past. Bice Curiger seems to be
proud and conscious of this, since she has made the corageous and innovative
choice of Tintoretto as a guardian angel to the event, “because he was a
creator of “bolts of thought”, and an inventor of a dazzling “feverish light”.
Light is really important for Bice Curiger, who was born and now lives in
Switzerland; the Italian and Venetian light always fascinates people who come from
the North.
Let’s talk about the
title of the biennale, “ILLUMI – nations”. A word game between light and
nations, those nations that participate, way more numerous than in the past;
more numerous are the artists too, a big part of them is younger that 35 and
there are about 30 women.
“Compassionate
Dream”, Jean Fabre. After the laboratories of the past March, staring from June
1st 2011, in conjunction with the Biennale, the Flemish artist presents this
year five new sculptures of big dimensions in the New Big School of Saint Mary of
Mercy. It is, for the artist, a performative work, which represents the
sensations of a mother who wants to replace her dead son.
Between the
works, one of the most popular is a new reading of Pity by
Michelangelo, entitled by Fabre Compassionate Dream (Pity V). Christ
is portraied with the artist’s face, and Mary with the one of a skull.
The fruition of
the sculptures will take place through a particular ritual. The spectators will
be asked to take off their shoes, and once equipped with slippers provided by the
artist, they will be allowed to go up to the platform-stage and immerse
themselves into the sight.
Coming back to the
ladies between the artists, the curator has written a book about Georgia
O'Keeffe and Méret Oppenheim...« The one about Oppenheim was a biography. Says
Bice: “She asked me to do that: an honour, because at that time I was 30, and
she was already aged and one of the protagonists of surrealism. Getting to know
her and working with her was really exciting: intelligent, ironic, still so
open to the world. And she gave me a beautiful gift, when the book was
published: a collage that Max Ernst, her big love, had created for her,
dedicated to her. Giving it to me was an act of trust, a donation of something
intimate and precious, that she really treasured». The interviewer then asks
her: “ If you could bring home something of the Biennale, your Biennale, what
would you choose?” “Maybe Loris Gréaud’s whale?” (she laughs: it’s an
installation at the Arsenal, picture above the title). “Just kidding, it
wouldn’t certainly fit in my apartment. But I have many works made by the
artists I have known, whose exhibitions I have cured: I have always bought
something, afterwards, maybe something small. They’re like pages of a diary for
me, concentric circe of a biography. I’m not a collector: I would never sell
anything”. Question: “Do you own something by Méret Oppenheim?” Answer: “Yes,
some drawings.In her testament she wrote that I could choose what I liked. A
touching act.” Question: “Do you wish that a person come sto the Biennale and
feels…happy”. Answer: “Happiness? In the contemporary art you never talk about
happiness, is it a provocation? (she smiles) “ And yet art can do it: it
illuminates us, sometimes even with joy”.
This episode
reminded by her can explain us her big passion, since she was young, for art,
and everything of art and from art that can cause an emotion…a way traced long
since, which has brought her to direct the Biennale, this year, with a sureness
of touch, without any hesitation; she will be really appreciated for the acumen
in the choice of the works, in the ability to continously correlate an artist
with another, an idea and another in the complex articulation of their
meanings, inside contemporary art.
Jacopo
Robusti, called Tintoretto, “The Last Supper”, Saint Giorgio Maggiore Basilicas
The three works by
Tintoretto that have fascinated Bice Curiger have reference to some
contemporary works in so far as the events’ representation is overlapped by
paradoxical phenomena, which describe fleeting fragments of reality in which
factors abnormal, unreal and full of suspence arise. The action of the
protagonist figures emerges in theatrical circumstances, some supernatural events
overlap them, and are presented in scandalous, inconceivable, absurd terms, and
exposed to the public’s judgment.
That’s the way the
sublime, gigantic classic canvasses become a viaticum for an attempt to
penetrate contemporary art, made out of objectifications in which paradox and
irony are always latent; but also artifice and metaphor, whose light emanates a
san adventure of critical and desecrating spirit of the artist, while
Cattelan’s birds flutter and defecate everywhere in an Hitchcock way.
In the world of art
Bice Curiger is especially known for the creation of a sophisticated trade
magazine like “Parkett”, created together with another lady,
Jacqueline
Burkhardt, in 1984. Curiger has always dealt with women who were artists,
starting from the first book about Georgia O’ Keeffe, or the biography about Méret
Oppenheim. What about women at the Biennale of this year? Who will be there
this year? Curiger answers: “Cindy Sherman will be there (american photographer
and artist, known for her conceptual “self-portraits”), with an original “wallpaper”.
Do you know what I find extraordinary about Sherman? That she has been able to
reinvent herself. At the and of the 80’s they said” she has already done everything…
whereas …”. The Biennale this year has been strict: no details and no pictures
before the paint.” Question: “ Give us another anticipation, another woman that
we will meet…”; “Piplotti Risi”. Piplotti risi, videoartist, Swiss: she has
been recently called by the archistar Jean Nouvel for the new hotel Sofitel in
Vienna. And its decorated and ipercoloured ceiling, in the restaurant at the
highest floor, has become a new “Landmark” of the city, visible also from far
away”. Question: “Did you like it?” : “I like Piplotti Risi’s work, and I have
been following her for a while. For the Biennale she has had three works of
Canaletto’s school copied, in China, and she has “worked” on them with images
and videos. It’s what you can see right now in the exhibition”. Copying a
master of the past and reinterpreti t: a provocation?
"This
is not a game", work by Lorenzo Quinn, exhibited in the Biennale
Lorenzo Quinn
says: “While observing my son who was playing on the terrace with some toy
soldiers and a plastic tank, I realized that children try to emulate what they
see in everyday life and that, unfortunately, images of tanks and soldiers
dominate the media, they are a really common presence.”
“War has
fearfully become familiar and whoever is not involved and can watch it from the
comfort of its living room, remains indifferent.
I see the world
leaders using their armies as they were toys that you can maneuver and destroy
with the same carelessness of a boy. But this is not a game, there are real
people and real weapons, and the results isanything but a game.”
Figure o fan
artist that in the past twenty years has showed his works al lover the world
and is present in many private collections, Lorenzo Quinn couldn’t avoid to “nail
down” the town of artistic interest par excellence, making it feel confused and
“embarassed” about the arrival of his “not game of war” that, kept suspended
with lightness on the sea by a hand, asks us not to forget the past pain so as to avoid it in the future.
Of real
dimensions and colours, the site specific that Quinn will show at the next
Biennale is almost “unsympathetic” when it forces us to think, and causes a
lump in the throat of anybody accepts to stop and look or feel… I have done it
and felt it, and now I’m here so as to introduce a person who has been
able,through art, to stop my race against time for a moment: Lorenzo and his
symbolic realism.
The artists that
have been more appreciated by the curator are those ones who break into paradox
in an immediate and overwhelming way, with more elegance and clearness than in
the past, so as to renew the pleasure, sometimes lost, of spending some time with them, as you walk between the
pavilions: Cindy Sherman, Franz West, Sigmar Polke, Fernando
Pratz, are the most visible ones, since the curator has much talked about them
during her interviews. But also Yto Barrada, coming from Morocco, the chinese
artist Son Dong, Christian Marclay, Urs Fischer, Monica Bonvicini.
Above and below: Fernando
Pratz, Chilean pavilion. The structure of the artisti s constituted by three
works: an intervention on the impact of the volcanic eruption in Chaiten
(2008); many parts have reference to the earthquake that struck the south
centre area of Chile (2010); and an installation with neon letters that
reproduces the announcement that the irish explorer Ernest Shackleton had
published, arpund 1911, so as to recruit men for his expedition in Antarctica.
Prats produces images starting from smoke, through which he can accumulate
natural phenomena like the water expelled by a geyser or the surface of an
immense glacier. His technique has been notice by figures like the French
theorist Paul Ardenne, who has included Fernando Prats’ work in the current exhibition in the Space
Luis Vuitton of Paris, praising him because he has given start to an “uncommon
form of painting”.
Cindy
Sherman: "Untitled 2010" (Picture Andrea
Pattaro/Vision)
Untitled (2010)
from Sherman’s latest work. After completing a series, Sherman says she often
feels she never wants to take another photo. "I’m just like, forget it, I
don’t want to put on any more make-up again, I’m so sick of those
wigs, so sick of it all."
(Photograph:
Courtesy Sprüth Magers Berlin London and Metro Pictures).
Sei opere di
recente produzione di Allora e Galzadilla con il supporto del Museo
d’Indianapolis, hanno trasformato il padiglione Americano in uno spazio
dinamico e interattivo, assegnando un titolo eloquente “GLORIA”. Nome femminile
italiano e spagnolo, armonioso, con evidenti riferimenti religiosi, economici,
culturali, sportivi, di grandezza e forte identità nazionale.
Sarà sicuramente Track
and Field a rubare la scena, a rendere ancora più visibile
questa invasione culturale pacifica e creativa. Un carro armato capovolto di
sessanta tonnellate sormontato da un tapis roulan, dove l’atleta corre ad
intervalli regolari durante l’esposizione. Sarà una metafora di pace od una
mera allusione alle possibili olimpiadi di Roma del 2020?
"Signora
serenissima", "I’m a Lady", un’opera di Mary Sibande, esposta
nel Padiglione del Sudafrica alla Biennale di Venezia.
Totalmente diversa
l'impostazione che Vittorio Sgarbi ha dato al Padiglione Italiano, del quale è
stato curatore. Titolo polemico della mostra: "L'arte non è cosa nostra".
Di opere in mostra ce ne sono 260, che è un numero impressionante. Esse sono
state scelte con cura, ma la loro distribuzione nello spazio, come fossero
affastellate una sull'altra, messe in ogni dove, sopra e sotto, ai mujri o
appoggiate al pavimento, in mezzo alle sale una contra l'altra, vedendone anche
il retro, appese ai sofitti, le fa sembrare lì per caso. La scelta di Sgarbi è
stata quella di rappresentare uno spazio residuale, quasi si trattasse di un
magazzino con oggetti alla rinfusa, una sorta di mercato spontaneo, una fiera.
Non vi sono solo tele, ma anche sculture e fotografie, ove capita di
imbattersi, quasi fossimo in un circo, con artisti al posto degli
animali, perfino in un cagnolino, dipinto con scarpette rosa, portato dall'attrice
Adriana Asti.
"Kopflosi"
(senza testa), l'opera di Ivan Landschnaider, giovane artista altoatesino che
ha scelto temi relativi alla massificazione, da presentare e per presentarsi
all’interno del padiglione della Repubblica araba siriana, sull’isola di San
Servolo, alla 54esima Biennale internazionale d’arte di Venezia. Come lui
spiega la massificazione è "spersonalizzazione spirituale e morale
dell’individuo come diretta conseguenza della civiltà dei consumi"
Vi si trovano
ritratti anche di Sgarbi, e poi di Berlusconi, vi si trova di tutto, un po' di
sesso anche qua e là che non guasta mai, installazioni, scarabocchi, paesaggi,
opere dal gusto naif. Gli artisti, molti mai sentiti, alcuni già noti coi quali
Sgarbi lavora da tempo, quali Stefano Di Stasio, Lino Frongia, ("il più
grande pittore antico vivente"), Aurelio Bulzatti, Rolando Gandolfi
Gandolfi e il fotografo Antonio Biasiucci.
A pensarci bene però,
quella di Sgarbi potrebbe essere solo un’operazione commemorativa, anche perché
il celebre critico/storico ha dichiarato di voler celebrare i 150 anni
dell’unità d’Italia con le sue scelte diffuse. Così il 2009 è stato l’anno di
commemorazione del futurismo è quest’anno quello dell’unità d’Italia, tra due
anni si potrebbe parlare di un bell’omaggio a Giuseppe Garibaldi e
perché no anche uno a Guglielmo Marconi.
"You too can be
in the Biennale, anche tu poi essere in Biennale". Con questo (non
volutamente) ironico titolo "The Art Newspaper" fotografa in pieno lo
spirito di questa Biennale di Venezia 2011 quando vi si parla di Vittorio
Sgarbi. Lo stimato magazine d’arte parla di 1.200
artisti in totale di cui oltre 200 saranno presenti all’interno del Padiglione
Italia. Sempre secondo The Art Newspaper, il Vittorio Sgarbi ha mirato ad
inserire all’interno della manifestazione "tutti gli artisti attivi
nell’ultima decade", con un particolare accento su coloro i quali sono
stati dimenticati o comunque poco conosciuti.
Venezia
Arte, si apre la Biennale con i 200 piccioni tassidermizzati di Maurizio
Cattelan, sparsi un po' ovunque in mezzo alle opere degli altri artisti, sul
frontone esterno d'ingresso, sulle travi e sui cornicioni interni
Dieci sculture di
Vanessa Beecroft realizzate negli Studi Nicoli hanno uno spazio particolare
alla Biennale di Venezia. Le ha scelte Vittorio Sgarbi, curatore del
"Padiglione Italia" 2011.
Dieci sculture
plasmate in rarissimi marmi colorati e bianchi, frutto di calchi alle giovani
modelle nude, che nel settembre 2010 dettero vita ai "tableaux
vivants" all'interno degli ottocenteschi laboratori Nicoli. È la prima
volta che Vanessa Beecroft nel corso della sua vita artistica si dedica alla
scultura, tralasciando le sue famose e costosissime "performance"
fotografiche. Sgarbi è rimasto affascinato dalla catasta femminile di marmi
speciali, perfettamente rifiniti dalle maestranze dei Nicoli. "La
performance della Beecroft si pietrifica - ha scritto in un testo critico
Francesca Nicoli - verso un antico e moderno concetto di scultura classica.
Sono più di 30 anni che l'opera in marmo non compariva in Biennale - ha detto
ancora la manager -, solo Vittorio Sgarbi poteva dare loro la giusta dignità,
mettendole sotto la didascalia che è anche il titolo della sua Biennale:
"L'arte non è cosa nostra"».
Andare in Biennale
d'Arte, crediamo sia sempre un tuffo utile nel senso del gioco, ovvero nella
stessa linfa della vita, perchè assumiamo da ciò che di più matto fanno altre
persone, mentre agiscono senza limiti, un'idea di libertà, ma soprattutto di
questa l'estremo e variopinto assieme delle sue possibili varianti, espresse
con il solo limite di proporre senza imporre. E' magico, e corroborante. Un
piacere da non togliersi, sapendo che in questo spazio tutto è lecito, tranne
che l'eterno: "Ma che cazzo vuole dire?"
Venezia, 4 giugno
2011
Enrico Mercatali
per TACCUINI
INTERNAZIONALI
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