This morning the water in Venice was agitated. Maybe it is foretelling a storm out in the Adriatic Sea that will soon be upon us; maybe something more sinister (or maybe I’ve been reading too much Dante). I woke up early, not quite early enough for the sunrise but early enough to see the sun low in the sky and hardly anybody out and about. The sun sparkled across the canals casting a magic spell on early morning Venice. (I know my parents are wondering what “early” means in this context so I will tell you specifically that I was up and about by 7:30). There were several fishermen out sitting on the sidewalk who stared at my strangely as I meandered by but when the dog-walkers started emerging at 8, I took cover in the hotel and had some breakfast. By 9:30 a good portion of our group was walking up the stairs to the Venetian Galleria dell’Academia which houses brilliant paintings by Bellini, Titian and many other great Italian painters. It also has a sizeable amount from Flemish painters. There are many academic distinctions between Italian and Flemish artists but I noticed how obviously Northern-European every person in the Flemish paintings appeared to be. I hadn’t realized how shocking a blonde person might be to Italians in the 1300s.
I followed up this museum visit with an once-in-a-lifetime exhibition visit on the other side of the island. It was called La Beinnale Arte 2011: ILLUMInations. This exhibition was spread out over two venues: the Giardini and the Arsenale. We only had two or so hours free before we had to head back to catch the bus so I decided to spend more time looking around the Giardini. Here, participating countries were each given an area for their own mini-museum which they could build and decorate however they chose. The United States had built a classical museum-style building with Corinthian columns but right outside the building was a tank turned upside-down. On top of one of the tracks (the wheel-thingys that go on a tank) was engineered a treadmill. A woman from the USA track team was running on it so that the tracks moved and screeched awfully. She ran for about 20 minutes, then left. Modern art! One of my favorites was a poem written in pencil on the white wall of Denmark’s museum. It read:
This is a work about freedom
freedom of speech
but how can speech be free when it is everywhere
in chains
when freedom is unfree
and in whose name
costing what
and where
where who what
who what
when how
free, at last
a practice
how to practice
freedom
this is a work about unlearning a named freedom
freedom today is not
yet
free enough
to be na assigned a name
freedom does not yet
undeserving
this is a work about privilege & responsibility
this is a work about around a question
can one be free, speak, become free/ in one's (own) name
&
what to say
of silence
-Johannes Af Tavsheden
It was at this point in my blogging that my computer decided to implode so I will describe the rest of the exhibits without photos, though I’m sure if you’re curious, you can Google image search these. The Czech Republic had an interesting assortment of ordinary household furniture that was taken apart and put back together with rough bronze figures incorporated into the structure. It was beautiful and quite haunting. France commented on the population boom with intense scaffolding and a simulation of a (very loud) news press which seemed to be printing off pictures of newborns. In the room to the left, a screen counted up (we witnessed it around 198,440) and in the room to the right, a screen counted down. I liked this one a lot, especially with my opinions on the frightening population growth in our world today. Next to Germany, which in Italian is “Germania” and they had graffitied over the “ger” so that the country label read “Ego Mania.” We entered a building that seemed to be set up like a church if one turned it into a haunted house. Above the altar was a movie screen which showed a black and white film with a voice over. The man seemed to be telling his story about overcoming an addiction. Next to this thoroughly creepy exhibit was Korea, my favorite. Here there were three sets of army fatigues hung up above their army boots. These fatigues were meant to be camouflage in a field of very bright, vibrant flowers. There were life-size photos of military in these fatigues with the flower background and you could only recognize that the military were there because of their machine guns. What a message! Great Britain was a bit of a maze, an antique haunted house with old and abandoned sewing machines, looms, dark rooms, photographs hanging everywhere all underneath a solid layer of dust and cobwebs. Venezuela certainly made a statement with large cartooned famous figures as if they with bodies that were either naked or bodies of children. These faces included Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, Guy Fawkes, a storm trooper, Hitler, Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen of Hearts, Einstein and the Statue of Liberty. Switzerland was wild and huge and certainly not neutral! There were lawn chairs with old cell phones taped all over them, store mannequins with the faces and insides cut out and replaced with crystals, webs of Q-tips, a taxidermied hawk, lots of magazines, broken TVs, lots of tin foil and on top of all of these were a constant stream of photographs. These were all graphic images of death and violence around the world. Belgium displayed an interesting technique of running a video and painting moments on the screen. If you didn’t know what they had been doing, it looked like a four-year-old had been finger painting on glass, but when you understood that there had been moving pictures beneath the canvas you could begin to make out a story line. A very cool technique!
At that point, it was time to head back through the tourists to our boat which took us to our bus and then home to Florence again. A long trip to the most beautiful place I have ever been. Venice is truly a location in which to spend time with loved-ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment