My Biennale Favorites

No Biennale is complete without one scandal at least, usually either national, political or sexual. One candidate was brought to my attention by a cluster of women standing quayside between the Arsenale and the Giardini, who were handing out leaflets which read: Jacques Charlier 100 Sexes D’Artistes. Censored.

Jacques Charlier, the artist, was alongside on a boat. His project had been accepted by the Ministry of Culture and Broadcasting of the French-speaking Community of Belgium, but chucked by the Venetians. He had planned to exhibit 100 “portraits” of artists, made by re-imagining their sexual organs.

Charlier said the Venetians had been nervous of affronting the artists. I looked over the images. The Jeff Koons was a pink balloon phallus, the Damien Hirst was salami-sliced and in a vitrine. The images were cute rather than radical and I couldn’t imagine any artist being bothered for one nanosecond. But such scandals of course usually benefit the outraged artist rather than the deeply offended community.

The political furores included a riot scene by workmen outside the Dogana—some were offended that Berlusconi had been invited to the pre-opening. Indeed Jean-Jacques Lebel, the French artist, and a leader in 1968, told me that he had torn up his invitation—but generally I found that neither politics nor the recession were much mentioned, either at the Biennale or the innumerable collateral events. After all, the Biennale is not a commercial show. But many faces—dealers and collectors—who had been present at other biennales were unseen, at least by me, although the indefatigable Florida collectors, Don and Mera Rubell, seemed to be everywhere at once.

Other forces in the new art world were highly visible though. They included the UAE and Dubai and exhibits included a model of the “Cultural Village” at Dubai and for such projects as the Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Tadao Ando museums intended for Abu Dhabi.

The Russians were also very much there. The on and off Moscow Biennial is on again and I went to a morale booster in the Marco Polo Room of the Daniele Hotel, which was addressed by, among others, Daria “Dasha” Zhukova, who was responsible for turning the Melnikoff Garage, so-named since it saw service in the Soviet era as a bus depot, into a superlative art space, still called the Garage.

How was it going, I asked afterward, given an economic collapse as savage in Russia as anywhere?

“It’s very popular. It’s broken all attendance records,” Zhukova said and rattled off some figures for a month.

“Thirty thousand. For Moscow that’s a lot. It’s very popular with young people.”

Does she collect?

“Yes.”

Will you tell me what?

“No.”

But spoken with an engaging smile.