Blogs and Stories
Art's Biggest Party
Americans stay in the game with numerous artists spread throughout Biennale group exhibitions and several solo shows at major spots. The U.S. Pavilion opts for a 40-year survey of work by the influential Body Art pioneer Bruce Nauman, while whimsical pop art painter John Wesley lands a retrospective, organized by Fondazione Prada, at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, which is also supporting British filmmaker Peter Greenaway’s multimedia performance that brings Paolo Veronese ‘s 16th-century painting The Wedding at Cana to life at the Palladian Refectory. Americans Lucas Samaras and Ivan Navarro occupy the Greek and Chilean Pavilions, respectively, and Cindy Sherman steals some of the Venice limelight with a show of her recent series of photographs of aging ladies-that-lunch, which opens June 6 at Gagosian Gallery in Rome.
View Our Gallery of the National Pavillion
The Brits storm the city with Steve McQueen, who was widely celebrated last year for his award-winning film Hunger, presenting a new film project in the British Pavilion; the Velvet Underground’s John Cale creates an audio-visual installation for Wales in a former brewery on the island of Giudecca; Martin Boyce honors Scotland with a project that references the labyrinthine nature of Venice at the Palazzo Pisani; and Susan MacWilliam investigates the paranormal in art while representing Northern Ireland.
Elsewhere, Shaun Gladwell shows MADDESTMAXIMVS, a suite of five thematically related videos that riffs on the Mad Max movies, in the Australian Pavilion and Japan’s Miwa Yanagi turns her country’s pavilion into a playhouse, covering the exterior with a black tent and presenting a fairytale-like video and black-and-white photographs of a troupe of windswept women on a journey in nothing but a tent—a perfect metaphor for visiting the Venice Biennale in these turbulent times.
Paul Laster is the editor of Artkrush.com, a contributing editor at Flavorpill.com and Art Asia Pacific, and a contributing writer at Time Out New York and Art in America.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Why America Must Learn to Bow
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
Going Rogue: The Index
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
Pretty Babies
Paul Laster is the editor of Artkrush.com, a contributing editor at Flavorpill.com and Art Asia Pacific, and a contributing writer at Time Out New York and Art in America.
Warhol's Final Years
Paul Laster is the editor of Artkrush.com, a contributing editor at Flavorpill.com and Art Asia Pacific, and a contributing writer at Time Out New York and Art in America.
Dennis Hopper's 1960s
Paul Laster is the editor of Artkrush.com, a contributing editor at Flavorpill.com and Art Asia Pacific, and a contributing writer at Time Out New York and Art in America.
The tower is marvelous, the glassware lovely and the cave model incredible. But that painting of the vampires is a joke.
Much of this work is simply not art.
If you have to explain the thing, it isn't art. It might be creative expression, but it isn't art.
Art is a way of communicating something that can be commmunicated in no other way.
And most of this showing is junk.
Thank you.
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