Traversing the Slopes of the Florence Biennale
Edward Rubin
The Florence Biennale is a large sprawling, ramshackle affair, in which any artist who can afford the hefty entrance fee is given some 15 feet of exhibition space at the medieval Fortezza da Basso–the city’s premier venue–to display their work. Founded in 1997 by Piero and Pasquale Celona, and shepherded for the past four editions by the American John Spike, a Renaissance scholar, the Florence Biennale is the largest artist supported exhibition in the world.
While strolling through miles of art is the main event for paying visitors, meeting the exhibiting artists from all over the world, especially for those artists from countries that have no art market to speak of, is the absolute highlight of the Biennale. Starting off as comrades in arms, everyone–the artists, the Biennale’s staff, its director and the jurors–end up becoming one great big crazy quilt family. Nowhere was this more evident than at the Gala closing dinner where everybody dressed to the nines, some with heavy heart and tears in their eyes, assembled to say their good-byes.
Playing second fiddle to the art on display were the art stars flown in to receive a lifetime achievement award, give a lecture, mingle with the exhibiting artists, and in some cases, exhibit their own work. This year, one of the fathers of Op Art, Richard Anuszkiewicz, a young and kindly 75, touchingly retraced his life and work through two films and a lecture. His paintings, still vibrant after four decades, graced the entrance to the exhibition hall.
The top draw was Christo and Jeanne-Claude of wrapped Reichstag and Central Park Gates fame. The audience, clearly intrigued by the pair, asked question after question after question. With much talk about how they alone are "freeing the slaves"–they take no money from any government agency or individual, make no money from their ventures and offer everything free to the public–art historian and juror Barbara Rose rose to the occasion by asking Jeanne-Claude: "Then why is it that you insist on having the final say on everything that is written about you before it finds its way into print? Isn’t that fascism?" Stepping in for an obviously flummoxed wife, Christo tried to wiggle out of that situation, giving several lame examples of how the press got the facts wrong.
When stars weren’t occupying the limelight, the "workers" took over. Professor R. B. Bhaskaran, the Chairman of India’s National Academy of Art, and a fine artist himself–he had three lovely paintings on display–gave an eye-opening lecture on the birth of modern and contemporary art in India. Who knew that it was the English who set up the first art school in India. Equally compelling was Rosa Tejada’s lecture on the history of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of Latin American Art. Delivering the lecture in Spanish, Miss Tejada, an educator at the museum, covered her topic from every conceivable angle.
The talk of the Biennale was Phoenix artist Henry Leo Schoebel’s lecture "Nothing is Something: The Paradoxical Truth About Art That Appears Devoid of Content or Meaning." Using brilliantly selected slides, Schoebel examined works of art that to some might seem incomprehensible. With much humor, many ideas, and an intelligence that triggered deep thought, he successfully argued that what might appear as "nothing" is in truth "something," if not "everything."
The quality of the art ranged from rank amateur to the highly polished professional, with the majority, always sincere to a fault, falling somewhere in the middle. One would think that the jurors would have no trouble separating the pearls from the dung. But this was not the case. According to juror David Rubin, Curator of Visual Arts at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, there was much backstage haggling, some heated arguments and many tradeoffs. More often than not the jurors selected winners whose style of work was instantly recognizable as "Certified Biennale Material." Sadly, many talented artists, mainly those who did not fall into what passes as cutting-edge–meaning that no trendy New York or London gallery would be caught dead representing them–were completely bypassed.
Among those works passed over although deserving special attention is Paul Flynn’s (Ireland) Beckett Waiting, a stunning triptych of Samuel Beckett, in young, middle and old age, gazing out above our heads. Painted in grays and black in minimalist style, the only color on the canvas, remaining consistent through all ages, is the writer’s blue eyes. Equally eye-catching, with his use of dramatically bold colors mixed with delicate detail in a very modern old-master style, was Sean Farrell’s (USA) exquisitely painted flower and fruit arrangements.
Other works that commanded attention were João Figueiredo’s (Portugal) finely jeweled Renaissance portraits, Louise Barteau-Chodoff’s (USA) Bubblewrap sculpture, Jon Selby Winslow’s (USA), funky Florida landscape paintings, Caroline Kampfraath’s (Holland) Dead Dogs Envelope, Jackie Sleper’s (Holland) porcelain sculptures of dogs and monkeys and Hildegard Unterweger’s (Austria) NO Entry – our Time – bomb. The latter, an installation of a very young suicide bomber wired to explode, did garner one of the 13 fifth prizes that were awarded in the mixed media and installation category.
The most deceptively simple work, if not most innovative–it won first prize for Mixed Media and Installation–was Daniela de Maddalena’s It’s Christmas Time. Here we get what appears to be an innocuous Christmas display of nine Santas on aluminum pedestals all wired to dance and sing when people approach. Innocent enough, until you suddenly realize that three of the Santas are wearing black hoods and carrying machine guns. This resonant work takes no prisoners.
The most playful sculpture, placed outdoors at the entrance to the Fortezza where it soon became every visitor’s favorite photo-op stop, was Catalina, New York artist Carole Feuerman’s supra-realistic sculpture of a woman swimmer coming out of the water. Feuerman, whose modus operandi was to appear front and center at every event and in every photo, was the Bridget Bardot of the Biennale. At the Gala dinner, shoehorned into a tight, low cut, rhinestone encrusted gown that rendered her nearly-naked, the eye popping Feuerman, was last seen sitting at the VIP table charming the pants off the Celona Brothers.
Hands down, the most beautiful and soul-lifting work of art was New York artist Karin Giusti’s intricately crafted installation Safety Net, exhibited off-site. Composed of hundreds of delicate handmade paper and wire skeletons woven into a doily shaped pattern and suspended from the ceiling at the entrance of the St. James American Church, the work, when lit from above, projected an astonishingly beautiful lace pattern onto the floor. Removing the image of the skeleton from its modern associations with violence and atrocity to a place of consummate beauty, Giusti reminds us that we are all attached at the hip and it is within the realm of possibilities–a choice clearly in our hands–to transform tragedy into aesthetics. In no small way this is exactly what the Florence Biennale is all about. For their work, the city of Florence awarded Carole Feuerman and Karin Giusti, their highest honor, the Premio Citta di Firenze.
