The world’s oldest and most lionised contemporary art show, the Venice Biennale, has delivered a 51st installment of precedent-setting proportions.
Alternately revered and reviled by the art world, the five-month-long cultural extravaganza opened its pavilion doors on June 12 to reveal creative contributions from 70 countries – the highest number logged its 110 year history. A record contingent of first-time participants includes Afghanistan, Albania, Morocco, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and the People’s Republic of China. And female artists, historically underrepresented at the Biennale, are in the spotlight like never before, making up a decisive 38 percent of the curated field, and enjoying a vigorous showing in pavilions from individual nations.
International critics, press and commentators have observed that the event has never been more representative of the global visual arts arena, crediting the successful panorama in part to a structural overhaul, and, not least, to Biennale 2005’s equally precedent setting debut directors – María del Corral and Rosa Martinez, art historians, critics and accomplished curators from Spain.
The first women to helm the renowned contemporary art exhibition, De Corral and Martínez have actively sought to reinvigorate the event, bringing a fresh perspective and a judicious eye to their roles.
Where the Biennale’s 2003 outing, directed by Francesco Bonami, invited the participation of several hundred artists in a labyrinth of display ‘islands’, this years event is slimmed down to a core 90, on show in two major exhibition projects in the Italian and Arsenale di Venezia Pavilions.
‘The Experience of Art’ and ‘Always a Little Further’, conceived and programmed by De Corral and Martínez respectively, have consciously strayed from excess, pop and pizzazz, instead focusing on pedigree, impact and creative dialogue that can engage expert and spectator alike.
De Corral’s ‘Experience’, presents 34 rooms containing 42 international artists and four major themes: nostalgia for a lost past; corporeality; the confrontation between art and reality; and the “ready made”.
The exhibition was conceived by De Corral, advises official Biennale press, to be “more similar to a centre for experimentation than a stack of certainties”. Speaking to the BBC, the curator further explained her process by saying she selected artists and their work with her ‘mind, heart and stomach’.
Those choices included a noteworthy one – several galleries of paintings, including works from masters no longer living. The creations of Francis Bacon (1909-62), Philip Guston (1913-1980) and Agnes Martin (1912-2004) were hailed by some as savvy historical benchmarking of a form whose presence in the Biennale is steadily diminishing. For others, it was a contentious side-step.
‘If you’re including dead artists,’ complained Italian critic and commentator Vittorio Sgarbi, to Artnet ‘why not exhibit works by Raphael and Michelangelo!’
But De Corral has allocated space to a healthy staple of current artists in her retrospectively skewed exhibit, mixing venerable with virgin to ameliorate the ‘experience’ of the project, indeed Biennale as a whole.
Among the contemporaries included in the Italian Pavilion are: Dan Graham, Jenny Holzer, Bruce Nauman, Rachel Whiteread, William Kentridge and Thomas Ruff, as well as many prominent Spanish players, such as Jose Damasceno, Joan Hernandez Pijuan and Juan Usle.
And here’s where the female artists first grab your attention. Of the 42 artists in the Italian Pavillion, 11 are women – hailing from the UK, Finland, the USA, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and beyond, their bodies of work command attention amidst outstanding peers.
Over in Martínez’ ‘Always a Little Further’ exhibit (christened after her favourite Corto Maltese comic strip, in which the hero is constantly pushing the envelope), 21 of 55 invited artists are female, representing an array of countries that includes Pakistan, Turkey, Palestine, South Korea, Brazil and Bangladesh. The work adds a freshly feminine touch to the Biennale bastion, notably embodied in French-born artist Joana Vasconcelosa’s chandelier made entirely of tampons and a prominent display from the anonymous New York-based Guerrilla Girls art collective, who have made a head-turning career of exhibits that address the role of women in the art world. Their Biennale contribution, pop-art posters with factoids such as “Less than 3 per cent of artists in the modern art sections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum are women, but 83 per cent of the nudes are female”, epitomises the Biennale’s considered counterbalance this year – neoteric, but salient throughout.
Speaking to the press, Martínez said she thinks the Biennale exhibition should hold the present to account, revisit the past, and of course, test the waters of the future. The wider the spectrum, the more galvanized the outcome.
‘It provides a temporary global agora, a place for encounters between people…a chance to create new kinds of neighbourhoods between artists and audiences,’ she told The Economist.
By engaging increased diversity at the same time as tipping its hat to ageless masters (Samuel Beckett and Louise Bourgeois in the Arsenale, Bacon and South Africa’s William Kentridge in the Italian Pavilion), the 2005 curated program affirms the central role of the Biennale in the international cultural and artistic debate (another key goal of its Directorial duo) and aspires to a level of international representation rarely seen in its recent predecessors.
In the national pavilions, where countries showcase an artist or artists of their choice, usually supported by formal subsidy, it is a similar story. First time participants, greater numbers of minorities, indigenous artists and women, alongside national treasures and stalwarts of the form. It’s the national component of the Biennale that has seen it dubbed the ‘Olympics of Art’, but, in keeping with their overarching philosophies, this year’s organisers have prioritised spirit over sport.
Amongst the highlights: a strong Latin American voice; a record number of Korean artists (15, including many newcomers); and a landmark pavilion from the People’s Republic of China, featuring officially sponsored artists for the first time. Chinese participants received a red-carpet welcome from Italian Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani, and showed off works that included a makeshift UFO designed to soar above Biennale crowds.
Artists inside each national pavilion touch on an anticipated myriad of themes, but a definite through line is identity (individual, cultural and socio-political), finding its way to the surface through artists like Lida Abdul.
The result of De Corral and Martinez’ curatorial philosophy was carried through to the Biennale’s prizes, the Golden Lions, awarded at a ceremony two days before the show opened to the public. Four of the five Golden Lions went to female artists: U.S. artist Barbara Kruger singled out for lifetime achievement; Guatemalan artist Regina Jose Galindo winning for Best Artist under 35 for her video art (which including close-up footage of a gynecological operation); Lara Favaretto won the award for Young Italian Art for more work in video; and France took home the Best National Pavilion award with a three-part Pinocchio-inspired sculpture and textile installation from artist Annette Messager. Rounding out the honours were German artist Thomas Schütte, who won the Golden Lion for sculptures and paper works included in ‘The Experience of Art’, and a special nod for late Swiss curator Harald Szeemann, who directed the visual arts section of the Biennale from 1998 to 2001.
Finally, the Biennale experience is being coloured by a further trend to celebrity clique. Famous names from film, fashion and music wallpapered the early days of the art fair, attaching themselves to noteworthies, lobbying for attention and wheeling for potentially lucrative partnerships. Prada hosted a promotion party for Japanese artist Mariko Mori (Japan); the Guggenheim threw a dinner party for their Chinese artists; actress Cate Blanchett cut the proverbial ribbon on the pavilion from her native Australia; and an abundance of all-night raves boasted performance from Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker, Kraftwerk and Björk, among others.
A cluttering influx of celebrity and excess has been a complaint about the Venice Biennale across numerous incarnations. But – with new blood at this year’s helm, more on the way (New Yorker Robert Storr will serve as Director in 2007), enhanced scrutiny of process, and ever-wider gates of entry – the inevitability of famous faces may be the only Biennale element audiences searching for the less staid can truly expect.
More than 300,000 people are expected at the Venice Biennale before it concludes on November 6.
