Exhibitions
45th Venice Biennale (Venice, till 10 October)
Whiff of the nursery
Giles Auty
or those to whom the expression `organised by Italians' may convey a condi- tion similar to unrelieved chaos, further comment on the press arrangements made for the 45th Venice Biennale will be super- fluous. The strain of lengthy indoor queue- ing on successive days in temperatures in the 90s is hardly fun for the fit let alone the frail or aged. In my own case, I had cause to be thankful I had just spent a week at a health farm which left me in a state relaxed enough to cope even with Italian forward planning. Better still, my stay at Champ- neys was given as a very generous prize in an inaugural tennis tournament for jour- nalists. As friends remarked sagely, 'What must the other players have been like?'
But even organisational hiccups — not a single catalogue was ready on the first press day — and art of almost unrelieved silliness cannot dim the delights of Venice in early June. Art of a certain kind has reached a point now where artists are indulged in the manner of spoilt and wilful children. Yet, like children everywhere, the latest crop of hopefuls is not at its most appealing when commenting on the affairs of the adult world. Many of those taking part in the Aperto, the showing for artists of supposed promise who are under 40, have clearly left their nurseries prematurely. Some of the works on show in the Corde- ria, Venice's old ropeworks, would be tol- erable as sixth-form projects were it not for the staggering expense involved often in making and transporting them.
With admirable logic, the present Venice Biennale is the first for three years. The reason for this anomaly is that the occa- sion's centenary falls the next time it will be held in 1995; if wars had not caused the event to be cancelled, clearly the next Bien- nale would be the 50th rather than the 46th. The Biennale is a jolly affair, attend- ed by artists, historians, critics, dealers, administrators and collectors from all over the world. Yet just how removed from nor' mality the whole thing has become was brought home to me in observing an Italian naval officer taking in some of the exhibits at the Aperto: the good man was clearly so taken aback by an image Of congress between a dog and woman that he all but tripped over the sword he was wearing. Sex and sacrilege are two of the main themes
adopted • this time by the nursery set, although 'emergency' is the one officially advertised. Just how emergency is illustrat- ed by a long dissertation on self-abuse by one Sean Landers, or by a vast roomful of blown-up photographs of male and female pudenda, or by a sculpture of a male figure practising auto-fellatio eludes me. Perhaps this is more a case for Conan Doyle?
This year 31 nations showed their select- ed artists in 29 permanent pavilions. Unsurprisingly, the former Yugoslavia was no longer participating as a single nation. However, at least two other pavilions dis- played themes apparently featuring nation- al disintegration and dissent through symbolism on a massive scale. Unified Ger- many (Hans Haake) and disunified USSR (Ilja Kabakov) showed that installations can be intelligent, apt and telling in spite of ample evidence elsewhere to the contrary.
For Germany, a vast photograph of Hitler visiting the 1934 Biennale fronted a room filled with cracked paving stones. These gave off awful echoes when trodden upon. The pavilion of the former USSR meanwhile was surrounded by a loosely erected, wooden stockade. Inside all was darkness and chaos but, at the back of the pavilion, a small, stylised building gave forth recordings of martial music and ghostly political exhortations. Is the mes- sage that certain peoples need authoritari- an government to keep the fabric of state together? Since the Biennale is a nest of liberal sentiments, I cannot imagine any such thought-provoking meanings were intended.
For Britain, Richard Hamilton trotted out his familiar lightweight images which are loaded generally with heavy-handed sYmbolism: about Northern Ireland, the National Health Service, the Gulf war and other right-on and undemanding targets. Hamilton is a putative father of Pop, admirer of Duchamp and would-be didact. For me, the last role is by some way the Most irritating; sadly for Hamilton, tech- nology even of the most expensive kind cannot turn its user into an artist. There was a strong element of the poseur in Duchamp but at least his imagination was Poetic rather than grindingly prosaic.
Meanwhile the living French have exchanged a penchant for the little black dress for one for little black skulls, repeat- ed over and over identically thousands of times on the ceramic tiles which line their entire pavilion. A German and an Ameri- can went by, discussing these in English. Most important point, zis is not a normal Skull, note ze three dents. . . . ' Decoding the arcane is the principal occupation now of avant-gardist groupies. Today almost anything can 'mean' almost anything; the artists themselves would be the last to ,know. Why do the Swiss show 120 small 'andscape paintiings of identical size and uniform lack of distinction featuring roads and railways? 'Most important point, zis is not a normal road.. .. Outside the Japanese pavilion, the first ill-behaved Japanese child I have met threw gravel at me, unrebuked by its moth- er. Inside, rowing boats fashioned from sausage-shaped segments of soft fabrics recall sea anemones from beneath rather than above the waves. A large room paint- ed yellow with black spots similarly assails the eye, if no other sense, and contains a mirrored cabinet with a peephole revealing lines of yellow and black gourds stretching away to infinity. We are in an ultimate nursery of sensation, funded no doubt by the very adult nature of Japanese big busi- ness. At the Aperto, meanwhile, one Kohdai Nakahara presents 'A module for floating to be used in pair with my wife or future child'. The probable cost of this vast, engineered extravagance probably exceeds that of a small industrial plant.
As with much Surrealism, the precise make-up of these symbolic constructions seems arbitrary, a criticism which applies even to the venerable exhibitor represent- ing the USA, Louise Bourgeois. At 70-odd, her symbolic, organic forms still exude a strong whiff of the nursery, not to say a retreat to the womb. At the Aperto, Britain's Damien Hirst of shark-in-a-tank
fame shows not a cloven hoof but a cloven cow and calf in separate tanks, giving us the full inside, intestinal story for the first time. In my presence he was summoned to meet an admirer 'anxious to meet a genius'. I fear the Venice Biennale is not the right place now to meet genius but only to dance on the grave of art. Where is satisfying art to be found other than in the city's church- es and historical collections?
The surprising answer is at the Museo Correr, where a large, brilliantly selected show celebrates the achievement in paint of the late Francis Bacon. Paint on canvas is a grown-up medium which thus makes it unsuitable for today's child-artists. It also lends itself to obvious hierarchies which distinguish between those who can and cannot use it effectively and expressively. Bacon is an effective and moving artist, producer at times of an outlandish beauty and an imaginative manipulator of colour and form. His paintings expose the souls or auras of his sitters, as though layers of skin and psychic defence have been removed. But I find the existentialist angst too unremitting to be credible; his paintings are finally personal theatre rather than any metaphor for life.
Angel's Heap' and 'I feel like when . . . by Jenny Watson, at the Australian pavilion
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