Hundreds of excited, high-flying international arts players, a strange culture minister and a few CIAO-barking celebrities cram onto a sinking island… what could go wrong?
That film played out last week as the Venice Biennale – now in its 60th year and the world’s longest-running, preeminent contemporary art festival – opened after a Spritz-infused preview week, complete with fantastic art (and the obligatory nonsense).
As a scene, imagine the Carnival of Venice, but the hand-painted masks are facelifts, the fancy dress codes are billionaire pinstripes and on sneakers and festivities are f-off fashion parties that make the Parisian look tame. It all takes place in the shadows of the superyachts that dwarf the Italian Gothic buildings with lemon sorbet on a postcard, and by the fourth night everything turns into an episode of Love Island, as the dealers hook up and anyone else left can muster: ‘Do you?’ know who I am?” fights for a spot on the boat with an afterparty.
Every two years, these Art Olympic countries (85 this year, from Great Britain to North Macedonia) organize mini-exhibitions in separate pavilions, focusing on an overarching Biennale theme (‘Foreigners Everywhere’, for 2024). exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa, director of the São Paulo Museum of Art.
The pavilions are divided into two parts in eastern Venice, the Castello sector – at the Arsenale, in the Renaissance shipyards, set up as white cube-like galleries in rows, and the Giardini, in the Napoleonic-era gardens, all of which be even grander (as a conspicuous exercise of soft power) consisting of architecturally unique, self-contained buildings. A number of others (highlights including the Ethiopian Pavilion, organized by London gallery Saatchi Yates, and the Nigerian Pavilion, curated by London-based Aindrea Emelife) are spread across various vacant townhouses and palazzos in the city, joining side exhibitions (from the impressive Zeng Fanzhi: Near and Far/Now and Then to retrospectives for Willem de Kooning, in the Gallerie dell’Accademia, and Jean Cocteau, in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection).
It all made for an immersive playground as the buzzy openings of each country’s spots rolled out from Tuesday (“go through Saudi Arabia – Luxembourg has prosecco versus Peru”, read Whatsapps) and before you could fill a Hauser & Wirth bag with press reports, people pressed into tweeds had sat for a Chanel dinner in honor of the French. On Wednesday, Salma Hayek trotted out in a cobalt blue sequined ball gown and the city was buzzing with galleristas and critics getting their first glimpse of 2024’s offerings.
“If you want to feel the pulse of the world, come to the Biennale,” an art insider told me. It was no surprise that the political atmosphere was feverish. The war between Israel and Gaza was inescapable and most intense in the Giardini, where the Israeli pavilion is sealed off and kept under the watch of armed guards, some in combat uniforms. A poster in the window read: “the artist and curators of the Israeli pavilion will open the exhibition when an agreement on a ceasefire and the release of hostages is reached.” Whether this was sufficient turned out to be a subject of intense debate. Some joined organized protests; Many made quieter statements by wearing their Keffiyeh scarves.
Given the theme, political statements are also made in many of the pavilions; Poland doubled down on the impact of the Ukrainian war, Brazil declared that “you can’t breathe money” in a last-ditch effort to halt the destruction of the Amazon, while Senegal looked to “the future migration phenomena of climate change.” Egypt was the favourite, with a Thorpe Park-style queue outside, while Australian artist Archie Moore took home the Golden Lion for his moving chalk family tree detailing 65,000 years of his indigenous ancestry.
All of these were eviscerated by art people in sunglasses and lenses to match their Aperols, at “networking events” and at clever parties hosted by a rolodex of top fashion brands rallying to fund their home country’s economy. Exit.
Burberry provided Britain, whose artist John Akomfrah was joined by London’s arts brigade (V&A director Tristram Hunt, TalkArt podcasters Russell Tovey and Robert Diament, and Justine Simons, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries) for Bollinger and artichokes at Harry’s Bar on Thursday evening. Singaporean artist Robert Zhao Renhui, who looked at the country’s reforestation, including transporting collected debris for immersive sculptures, was supported by footwear label Charles & Keith and came complete with a chic VIP lunch; while Tod’s, the official leather goods purveyor of Italy’s 1%, flexed their muscles with a bacchanalian red carpet cocktail by the canal. Actors Adrien Brody and Hayley Atwell were there, along with artisans making classic car shoes from Murano glass.
In a quiet corner, Steven Moore, the Antique Roadshow expert who became an Instagram sensation of 382,000 followers and lived part-time in Venice, mused on the foibles of Venetian high society (“you have to be careful – you can get up quickly and fall faster”) with Atwell, no stranger to the city himself, having filmed parts of Mission Impossible 7 here. “There are two Biennial types: the elegant type and the art type,” Moore said. As for sartorial do’s and don’ts: “I’ve seen five or six women looking really smart in vintage lamé, which I think will become a new evening trend. But there are too many people trying neckerchiefs, that’s already over.”
Avoid those who try to tell you they feel “healed by art”, be patient with endless, impenetrable art texts and run from anyone who exclaims “I can’t wait for the Biennale next year” and the whole affair is an enthusiastic knee-up celebrating diversity and unlocking usually closed doors – all aided, of course, by Venice’s impossible, film-captured levels of fabulousness.
Previewers have now taken water taxis to the airport; the Biennale opened to the public on Saturday and now runs until November 24. Nonnas across the city will breathe a collective sigh of relief. They’re used to tourists, not so much the hundred or so club kids of Rick Owens who packed their vaporettos early Wednesday evening after his rave (for his wife, Michèle Lamy’s 80th birthday no less) at Lido airport.
You’d be damned if the dirty looks of the locals could wipe a smile off someone’s face; all the bright young things, as well as many of the more weathered ones running around, were visibly excited to their very marrow. Venice will do that.