Venice Art Biennale
Visually Stunning
The Venice Art Biennale is the most important contemporary art show in the world. For six months every other year, it takes over the entire city of Venice. But it’s much more than an art show. If you are at all interested in art, architecture or just a lover of Venice, you should consider extending your Venice trip for at least a couple of days in order to truly experience the Biennale. A couple of hours or even a couple of days isn’t nearly enough time to experience all that this festival has to offer, but with careful planning you get a little taste … and maybe encouragement to come back for more.
The Biennale is not a traditional art show. Unlike commercial shows such as Art Basel which takes over Miami Beach every year, there is nothing for sale at the Biennale. It is truly an exhibition, just like the World’s Fair expositions that are still held every other year somewhere in the world. It’s the difference between the Super Bowl and the Olympics. The Biennale is the Olympics of the art world. And that analogy is more apt than it first seems. Art at the Biennale is presented by country, not by individual galleries. More than 89 different countries participated with pavilions throughout the city in 2019.
The Venice Art Biennale has been held every odd-numbered year from May to November since 1895, except for a few breaks mainly due to world wars. It is called the Biennale because it happens every second year. In 1980, a Venice Architecture Biennale was established for even-numbered years; however, the Art Biennale is much bigger in scope and completely different in tone — more
adventurous, more challenging. Someone who has attended both summed it up for me this way: “Architecture focuses on perfection, whereas art tends to focus more on the imperfection in life.”
The Birth of Venues
The majority of the Biennale takes place in two venues — the Giardini and the Arsenale — on the far end of Venice in the Castello neighborhood.
The Giardini is a large park with a Central Pavilion built in 1894 and 29 smaller, permanent national pavilions that were constructed by various countries mostly during the mid20th century. Each country pavilion is owned by the country it represents and the national architecture of the country is an integral part of its design. Walking through the rolling hills of the Giardini is like a walk through a global history of the 20th century.
The Arsenale housed the shipyards and armories of the Italian navy dating back to the
The Biennale is the Olympics of the art world.
1100s. The navy donated the 110-acre site with its complex of low brick buildings to the city of Venice, and the Biennale became the perfect use for these massive open spaces. To understand the enormity of this site, it is almost 15 percent of the land mass of the city of Venice. The rough industrial buildings don’t appear to have changed much since the days the navy owned them, leaving blank spaces for each artist to fill in whatever their imagination (and budget) allows.
If you have limited time, the Giardini will probably give you the greatest exposure to art and you can also experience the fascinating individual country pavilions. But it is beyond those main venues that the Biennale really gets interesting. Download the Venice Biennale app on your phone, put on comfortable walking shoes, and be prepared to get lost. Think of it as a city-wide scavenger hunt, and you’ll have the right idea.
The country pavilions provide an opportunity to explore an otherwise hidden side of Venice, to venture down alleys and be welcomed beyond doorways into private places that would never be seen otherwise.
Countries that don’t have a permanent home in the Giardini exhibit in private buildings throughout the city of Venice — palazzos, private apartments, theaters, churches, and gardens which then open their doors to become the backdrop for that country’s art. And they are all free.
Venice is a historical architectural wonder, a living museum. Yet this is still a city where people live and the most wondrous buildings are private. You can only catch a glimpse of them through open windows late at night as you glide silently along a canal on a gondola or by peeking beyond a garden gate. The country pavilions provide an opportunity to explore an otherwise hidden side of Venice, to venture down alleys and be welcomed beyond doorways into private places that would never be seen otherwise.
Masterpieces and Me
The art at the Biennale can be fun, confusing, even shocking. But spending a few days exploring the different venues is like Disneyland for adult art lovers or for those who just love experiencing cutting-edge, experiential art where you are not just a viewer. You often become the center of the piece, and the art is a totally encompassing sensory experience.
Imagine literally walking on water through a long, rubber tunnel that is submerged in water, feeling the cold water beneath your stocking feet and the otherworldliness of disorientation. What did it mean? I don’t know, but it was fun. Or imagine having a conversation with a plant that responds to your touch or calls at you when you walk away. Or weaving among a hundred speakers hanging from the ceiling in an enormous empty room, each one with a different voice telling story, singing a song which you could hear up close but with the rest of the voices quietly in the background. Or the Alice-in-Wonderland shock of stepping into the modern, boxy Danish pavilion completely filled with a massive pulsating black orb, too big to have gotten in through the door, like a huge black planet had just dropped through the roof.
But my favorite experience was on a cold rainy day in May. I walked alone down a narrow alley, barely wide enough for two people to pass, with no visible signage until I reached the end and saw a small sign for the Iran pavilion next to an old wooden door. Walking through the unlocked door, there was a young woman smiling behind a desk and she silently nodded in the direction of a room behind a gauzy curtain. I stepped through the curtain into a large, dark room, empty except for an enormous L-shaped dining table under a spotlight, which appeared to be waiting for its dinner guests. At least 30 feet long on each side, the table, the chairs, and all the items on the table were symbolic fruits, animals, dishes, all made of grey papier-mâché. Even the tablecloth and the massive chandelier overhead were part of the same grey material,
as if the luxury of this world were all an illusion. It was a hauntingly beautiful piece, and the few people who stepped beyond the curtain while I was there were quiet and reverential. It truly encompassed the best of what the Venice Art Biennale could be: the anticipation of a walk down an unmarked alleyway to experience an artist’s vision brought to life, whose only purpose was to appeal to your sense of wonder and imagination.
Approach with an open mind, a taste for adventure, and a willingness to get lost in a world of ideas and color; be challenged, be confused, and be amazed. The appeal of the Biennale goes well beyond just seeing the art on display. It is really Venice that is the work of art, and we are just lucky enough to be alive to experience it.
It’s said that walking around Venice, you can take a photo every 30 seconds and every photo will be beautiful. I was lucky enough to spend a month in Venice and every day Venice took my breath away.
The rough industrial buildings don’t appear to have changed much since the days the navy owned them, leaving blank spaces for each artist to fill in whatever their imagination (and budget) allows.