Art + Design at the Venice Biennale: Archives

Venice is more unusual than it is romantic. The buildings here are painted soft colors, sun orange, yellow, salmon and rich cream. The green canals wind everywhere, and the boats line the canal streets and houses like cars. There are no cars here, so all transportation, construction, public buses, mail delivery, etc, is done by boats. One of the first days here a few of us saw a boat carrying a huge steel sculpture, almost five times as tall as the boat is wide!

All the Columbia students have apartments spread all over the city. The one I am staying in is in a region called San Polo. San Polo is mostly residential and much more quiet than the tourist centers of San Marco and the Rialto bridge area. Our apartment is right on the canal, so we have to hang our laundry out to dry (Venice has washing machines, but no dryers) over the water. On the first day I lost a pair of underwear to our neighbor's windowsill below. The next morning, our neighbors had set my underwear right outside our front door. How embarrassing!

My favorite food here is the ice cream. Gelato places are plentiful, set on almost every corner of the city. Try the Tiramisu flavor, its amazing!

Also, one thing I did not expect to see a lot of here was graffiti, and a lot of dogs. Tagging makes up the majority of the street art, but I found a notable street artist who does do beautiful stencils. Two of the stencils are in the pictures below.

As for the dogs, It seems that almost all Venetians own dogs. Dogs are allowed inside stores, on trains, boats, and in cafes here. The translation from English to Italian to ask someone if you can pet there dog is not direct. There is no word for "pet" in Italian, you either need to use the word touch or caress to describe petting. Hopefully, you would want to touch a dog instead of caress it. However, if you say to an Italian, "Posso toccare il suo cane?" (Can I touch your dog?), they would think you would want to poke their dog. So, you need to ask "Posso accarezzo il suo cane?" (Can I caress your dog?).

Our school and studio spaces are inside and old church, check it out in the picture. Many of the students are inside a chapel area, complete with chipping Renaissance paintings and a marble altar. We have a beautiful view of the city from the second floor. As for the Biennale, we haven't received our passes yet but we will be going tomorrow to see the show. So far, Venice is amazing, and I am excited to see the Biennale and make work here!

Over the past few days we visited La Accademia, a museum filled with Venetian Renaissance artwork on the South Bank of Venice, and also got our passes for the Biennale. We all took the Vaporetto, the public water "bus" to both places. It was thrilling to see all the works of art I've only seen in Art History books, and also to experience my first day at The Biennale, one of the largest contemporary art festivals in the world.

It was overwhelming to view the work of my favorite Italian Renaissance painter, Jacobi Robusti (a.k.a. Tintoretto). His piece, “Finding of the body of Saint Mark,” is part of a four painting series he did for the Scuola di S. Marco in the 1600's. It tells the story of how the Venetians stole back the body of Saint Mark from his grave in Alexandria, Egypt. Saint Mark's body is now in the Basilica di San Marco, the most popular tourist spot and church in Venice.

Out of all the Virgin Mary and Child paintings from the Renaissance, "Madonna of Red Cherubs,” 1485, by Giovanni Bellini is my favorite. It is an oil painting on panel and is not very large, 77 x 60 cm. I admire it just beacuse of the red cherubs in the clouds. It is very rare to see a human figure, or rather mythical figure, in monotone during this time period.

The Giardini is a huge garden space in Venice, where the majority of the Biennale pavilions are housed. The Giardini gardens smells of the most wonderful flower scents you can imagine. There are these tiny white flowers everywhere that smell similar to lilacs, but even more sweet.

In the Biennale, each major country has their own pavilion, in which a chosen well-known artist of that country has work on display. We watched an amazing video by Steve McQueen, Britian's representative, and saw a few other pavilions: France, Germany, Canada, Japan, and Korea. Steve McQueen's video, Giardini, named after and filmed within where the Biennalle is located (in Venice's Giardini, a large garden-like plaza), was my absolute favorite. It is a new thing for me to view video as a sculptural work of art, rather than our usual interpretation of film - as a Hollywood narrative.

The German pavilion was a controversial exhibit for the lot of us. Some of us praised Liam Gillicks's piece shown here, and others absolutely despise it. Here in the picture below, a stuffed cat sits on top of a wooden kitchen shelving unit. Kitchen cabinets, counters, and drawers built of pinewood filled the white gallery space. All the drawers could not be opened, and no visitors were allowed to touch the word. The stuffed cat "spoke" a poem, written by Liam Gillick, which echoed almost incomprehensibly throughout the room. The poem told a looping story about how the cat is self-consciouslylosing its "human" qualities as it remains in the kitchen and strays from its interaction with a small boy and girl. The exhibit refers to Liam Gillick's own practice of working in his kitchen, which serves as his studio space, and sharing this space with his son's cat.

Take a look at this image from the French pavilion, represented by artist Claude Leveque, titled "Le Grand Soir". The exhibit was a huge steel cage environment, behind which was nothing but sparkling silver walls and small hallways leading to inaccessible rooms blackness with a black flags billowing within. A loud humming sound, like that a of a steam engine or airplane filled the area and overwhelmed you. Walking through, I felt fright and pleasure at the same time. The walls glittered and the lights were bright, but the obvious notion that a black flag symbolizes anarchy or revolution fought against that aesthetic pleasure.