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As the vaporetti shuffle visitors to and from the islands that comprise la Venezia, you realize that even Italians are tourists here. Nestled in the Northeast the Veneto, the last of the great global city-states, is a culture unto itself and as the first incubator of multiculturalism, it preserves the profound impact it had upon the West. So it is fitting that the Biennale brings together worldwide culture to its soupy canals and maze-like streets once again. |
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“With both an art fair and a film festival, Venice creates a sensory overload—it’s own cultural legacy is sufficient to overwhelm.”
Courtesy of the Venice Beinnale
Venice Biennale: Art In The Time Of Doubt
Tony Zaza
As the vaporetti shuffle visitors to and from the islands that comprise la Venezia, you realize that even Italians are tourists here. Nestled in the Northeast the Veneto, the last of the great global city-states, is a culture unto itself and as the first incubator of multiculturalism, it preserves the profound impact it had upon the West. So it is fitting that the Biennale brings together worldwide culture to its soupy canals and maze-like streets once again.
With both an art fair and a film festival, Venice creates a sensory overload—it’s own cultural legacy is sufficient to overwhelm. Fortified with a Bellini, one can begin to navigate the three main categories: the ILLUMInazioni, the individual artists, the national pavilions.
This is the 54th Biennale stretching through 116 years. It’s impossible centrism is environmental art oh so meekly competing with the embedded visual treasures of the city. Modernist contrivance and self-indulgence vaporizes when confronted with the stunning magnificence of the Venetian artistic legacy. In the Giardino and Arsenale the battle rages between video art, conceptual sculpture and ingenious constructions only to be intellectually smothered by the architecture in which it is enveloped.
Crass devotion to tightly dehumanized expressions of technique persuade the viewer to reward effort while an old Tintoretto simply mesmerizes the senses.
