THE Venice Biennale is an institution which many artists, critics and dealers distrust or even hate, but this massive event still holds its own and the ideal of virtually every ambitious young artist is to be seen there and to be included in one of its weighty, wordy catalogues. It dwarfs the prestige once held by the Salon des Beaux Arts or the Royal Academy, since it typifies the internationalism of the Jet Age and global culture. Its politics, its power battles and its personalities are discussed as eagerly as its awards, and often as savagely criticised.
Meanwhile, it sprawls and sprawls, and since national prestige demands that more and more countries have to be represented, the Biennale tends almost unavoidably towards elephantiasis. There is a type of artlover, or cultural tourist, who is prepared to make the journey to Venice (no hardship, anyway) and spend several days making the rounds of the various pavilions and associated exhibitions, some of them several miles apart; but many viewers must simply find it too big to take in as a whole. So, rather than exhaust themselves by trying to see everything, they pick and choose - which is something the critics can hardly do.
As most people probably know by now, Golden Lions went to Marina Abramovic of the former Yugoslavia, Agnes Martin of the US, Gerhardt Richter of Germany and Emilio Vedova of Italy. Abramovic (known and respected in Ireland) once again was the centre of controversy when Serbian and Montenegran officials vetoed her performance in the Yugoslav pavilion and she had to be accommodated in the basement of the much larger Italian one. This performance involved the artist sitting wailing among rancid cow bones, holding and scrubbing them - obviously an allegory of war and strife, though with an interjection of Baroque or black humour.
Abramovic is a unique personality, an "inspirational" figure apart from her great personal beauty, who puts across her material, with the power of a great tragic actress. Having endured a good deal of performance art over the years, I tend to avoid it as being, on average, scarcely above the level of fringe theatre at its most pretentious or trivial; however, undoubtedly she is sui generis. In comparison, Richter seems a safe, rather uninteresting choice, a capable and versatile technician whose painting always looks to me curiously lacking in inner life.
As for Vedova, he has been around long enough to serve in the role of Italy's Grand Old Man, which is reinforced by the fact that he was born in Venice (in 1219). It must, have been a nostalgic event for him, since he was one of the eight Italians who exhibited at the 1952 Biennale when postwar abstract painting was just breaking through internationally. Vedova was to be seen personally in the area of the Italian pavilion given over to his work, a little stooped, yet still towering by a head over most of the admirers grouped around him, white bearded and patriarchal. His Golden Lion was probably the most popular choice of the event, at least locally.
The most deserved, however, is probably Agnes Martin, whose handful of Minimalist style canvases were for me the high point of this Biennale. True to type, they were in simple horizontal stripes, though this time without the faint pencil lines she has often used in the past - a banal description for paintings so contemplative and haunting. The colours are muted, and they seem to have drifted onto the canvas rather than been painted, yet this outward fragility carries considerable power.
The choice of Germano Celant as curator and virtual master of ceremonies was less, sure. He has been around a long time and made his reputation originally by becoming the guru of Arte Poveia, a movement which has not worn well, though Celant has gone on and on to be a power in the international art world. Some people have complained that he belongs not only to yesterday, but to the day before yesterday, which may explain a certain geriatric element among the welter of Post Modernist trends. Mario Merz and Enzo Cucchi, for instance, already seem dated figures, and the best of the Italians - Vedova apart - is probably Ettore Spalletti, whose work is cool, elegantly formal and tending towards Minimalism.
CERTAIN Americans, too, emerged from fogs of the not too recent past, notably Jim Dine who made his name back in the days of Pop Art. Ed Ruscha is unusual in that he is a West Coast rather than a New York artist; however, he too has been around for a long time, and nobody I know has ever classed him as a major figure. The actual American pavilion, however, features the large, lurid ever paintings of a relatively unfamiliar artist, Robert Colescott - torrid, crowded works which resemble, cartoon art crossed with Expressionism. Few people appear to have liked them very much, or could explain their presence satisfactorily, yet the pavilion was thronged.
English visitors could afford to stick out their chests, or bosoms, a little this year since three of the British entrants won awards for young artists: Rachel White read (she of Turner Prize celebrity), Douglas Gordon and Sam Taylor Wood. More interesting than any of these is the Belgian Thierry De Cordier, who is obsessed by the theme of the scriptorium and whose work has that indefinable yet inescapable quality, personality.
It should be explained that apart from the national pavilions, there is also a massive group section entitled Future Present Past which is not strictly on the actual Biennale site but is housed - or warehoused - near at hand. It was in this that Marina Abramovic was originally to have been included, and it is here that Richter is hung. This exhibition boasts a lengthy roll call of famous names: Richard Artschwager, Francesco Clemente, Dine, Rebecca Horn, Jeff Koons, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein (very empty nowadays), Robert Longo, Brice Marden, Juan Munoz, Julian Schnabel, Richard Tuttle, etc., etc., ... In short, virtually self contained Academy of PostModernism, whose exhibition spaces stretch halfway to infinity, or at least it feels like that.
Some of these people are now in the trough rather than the crest of their reputations - already of the past (to echo the title) rather than in the future, or even the present. There are, however, interesting and unhackneyed figures among them, such as the Belgian artist Luc Tymans who appears to have a definite following and influence. His painting style is sparse, shadowy and indirect, yet emanates a strange presence in spite of its studied quality of understatement.
This is a review and not a catalogue, so individual mentions must serve rather than lists. Canada is represented by the film maker Rodney Graham, a worthwhile choice. Ivan Kafka, ink the Czech pavilion, is an interesting sculptor and Hungary has some arresting exhibits, as have the "Nordic countries" of Finland, Norway and Sweden which share a pavilion. Juliao Sarmento represents Portugal well, Ondrej Rudavsky is the interesting entrant from Slovakia, and the remarkable Ion Bitzan (who has been seen in Kilkenny) stands out among the Romanians.
The French pavilion won a prize, which puzzles, me since it appeared to have, little to say. There are some vigorous exhibitors from Latin America, particularly Argentina, but certain countries are disappointing, including Austria and Israel. The Irish entry, which I have deliberately left till last, is out on the Giudecca, up a long alleyway, and without the help of Jenny Haughton I might not have found it - though other visitors had no trouble in doing so. The two Irish representatives are Jaki Irvine and Alastair MacLennan, and both are, very broadly speaking, conceptual in style.
JAKI Irvine works with video and a sound track, and although we have had rather a surfeit of both by now, her work is well thought out coherent and technically adept. She does not, as so often happens in this area, sacrifice or lose sight of sheer visual appeal in the pursuit of some half formulated "idea" or play intellectual games. McLennan's elaborate set up is politico socially oriented, a little distracting because of its very elaboration, but making an immediate emotional effect nevertheless. Here, too the soundtrack is integral instead of being merely a distraction.
Of the various exhibitions held in association with the Biennale, the major event is the Anselm Kiefer show in the Correr Museum. It is very typical Kiefer and by now his style, his themes and his (very individual) mentality are familiar territory to, most art lovers. He is heavyweight, apocalyptic and obviously, self proclaimedly Teutonic, with all that implies - Wagnerian, you might, even say, and in fact, Kiefer does intrude occasionally into the world of the Ring and the Nibelungenlied. Kiefer has real power and imaginative sweep, raises big issues, and rises at times to an epic quality - so that you pass over the tonal monotony, the overstatement and, the sometimes turgid rhetoric which are all components of his style. The Correr Museum has mounted this heavyweight exhibition beautifully.
In the Peggy Guggenheim Museum there is an exhibition of one of the great figures of American art between the wars, Stuart Davis who died in 1964. His pioneering abstract paintings are just as good as they look in reproduction; but the earlier, realist pieces are a revelation in their own right.
