Exhibitions
49th Venice Biennale (till 4 November)
States of bemusement
Martin Gayford
What is the Venice Biennale?' That is the question I find most frequently asked by people when I tell them what I did the week before last. Well, in one respect, it's a colossal, biennial art-world trade-fair-cum-get-together, not that different — except for the personnel — to similar knees-ups in the worlds of Eng. Lit. or footwear. But it's also an equally gigantic — indeed constantly proliferating — contemporary art exhibition which can be inspected by non-art world members.
For the opening Venice is packed with an astonishingly dense international throng of people who write about the arts. I have noted before that, as contemporary art becomes increasingly popular with the general public, there is a perverse tendency among artists to create works to which only a handful of people can gain egress at any one time, the Louise Bourgeois towers at Tate Modern and the Mariko Mori space-capsule thing in Apocalypse being cases in point.
Consequently, this was the Biennale of the two-hour queue. It took half a day to get into the German and Canadian pavilions, both tipped by messages from an art magazine that popped up on people's mobile phones. Even the perfectly ordinary — in fact rather sparse — installation in the American pavilion by Robert Gober required a 40-minute wait. But such frenzy was doubtless restricted to the press days. For the rest of the summer and autumn it will probably be possible to stroll right in, since the Biennale is frantically thronged in this way only by critics.
Simultaneous with the trend towards the work of art that almost nobody can see is another for the dimensions and atmosphere of contemporary art museums to resemble those of international airports. Consequently, scarcely had Tate Modern opened than it was considering an expansion that would double its size — and this, if built, would barely allow it to keep up with the growth of American museums such as MoMA and the Guggenheim.
In Venice they have a problem, since there are few disused power stations or suitable sites for the construction of a convoluted temple to modernity resembling the one in Bilbao. So the Biennale has instead expanded into the abandoned boathouses and sail-lockers of the Arsenale — 16th-century structures, built by such architects as Antonio da Ponte, designer of the Rialto bridge — and Sanmichele. For some time there has been a display of invited artists in the Corderie, a mighty repository for sails and rigging about a quarter of a mile long. Now another series of huge buildings has been opened up, making up perhaps a mile of art, in one of which there is now an art theatre. This is presenting a musical performance dedicated to the late German avant-gardist Joseph Beuys and involving the celebrated Finnish Howling Men (sadly, I missed that).
It is worth the price of admission simply to admire the enormously atmospheric Arsenale buildings. But it is more doubtful whether they are suitable for the display of contemporary art. Ron Mueck's giant 'Boy' crouching in the Corderie looked, in general estimation, much better than he had in the Dome. On the other hand, I thought Richard Serra's 'Torqued Elipses' — massive, twisted, abstract mazes, some of which, displayed in Bilbao, made one of the most exciting exhibitions of the late 1990s — were upstaged by being presented in surroundings resembling a capriccio by Canaletto.
But, I am asked when I have explained all that, is it a good Biennale? Well, yes it is (granted that, as always, a good 90 per cent is rubbish). Usually the good things are in the Arsenate, but this time they are mainly in the national pavilions in the Giardini. And among them is a beautiful exhibition in the Belgian pavilion by the painter Luc Tuymans, an artist who imitates the smudged, bleached-out and spectral qualities of photography in a way that reminds me a little of late Sickert.
There is more good painting upstairs in the Italian pavilion — another location for invited artists — from the veteran American Cy Twombly. He has produced a series of canvases, based on the Battle of Lepanto, that seem offhand, with paint trickling down and graffiti-like drawing, but become sensually luxuriant and complex on closer acquaintance.
The German pavilion I'm afraid I took on trust — two hours or so is too long to queue for anything — but I'm prepared to believe that Gregor Schneider, the artist in whose installation many visitors got lost at the start of Apocalypse, is an interesting figure. It might be easier however to go to visit him in his house near Monchengladbach, which he has been transforming into a work of art for the last 16 years. The American pavilion, which I did manage to enter, was a disappointment. Robert Gober can create powerfully spooky, gothick installations, but this is underwhelming.
The British pavilion — one notes with patriotic pride — is often among the best presented. This time, our representative is Mark Wallinger, an artist who works in many media. Of the works on show — which include the Christ, `Ecce Homo', which was on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, but looked better there — by far the most successful are two videos. Both reveal his fascination with religion: 'Threshold to the Kingdom' recasts the international arrivals gate of an airport as the pearly gates through which a sequence of passengers pass in various states of bemusement to the sound of spiritual music. It is a surprisingly powerful and moving piece (mystic video art, by the way, is also a bit of a trend — see the Bill Viola exhibition at the Anthony d'Offay Gallery).
Quite what any of this has to do with the official theme of the Biennale — 'Plateau of Humankind' — is hard to say, since as is the way with Siennale themes it defies comprehension in various languages ('Plateau der Menschheit', Platea dell'umanita', etc). But that's part of the charm of international get-togethers.
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