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Artscope Magazine | January/February 2021

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Venice

COMMENTARY: WARNINGS, TRUTH AND ART, VENICE BIENNALE 2019

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

Art Matters. Artists matter. The world has become art’s domain. Culture unites us as art informs us of threats to our environment, governmental institutions and existence. Nearly all of the exhibits at the Venice Biennale 2019: “May You Live in Interesting Times” showed nations joining to save our earth, respecting nature, amending damaging practices and coming together to save those of lesser means or threatened lives. Even more than Venice Biennale 2017’s curator Christine Macel’s removal of border markings at entrances to rooms, curator Ralph Rugoff boldly showed work by the same artist at both the Arsenale and Giardini, providing different neighbors, siting exhibitions depending on the fitness of the particular space for the exhibit. This Biennale declared the world an interdependent space. Addressing political lies, coverups of current and long-hidden governmental documents and … [Read more...] about COMMENTARY: WARNINGS, TRUTH AND ART, VENICE BIENNALE 2019

TOWARD AWARENESS AND SOLUTIONS: CONSIDERING CLIMATE CHANGE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE — DAY THREE

// Artscope Online, Current Exhibits, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

It is fitting that on my last day at the Venice Biennale, as on my first, it is raining buckets, only underscoring what I perceived as the themes of the biennale: false facts and the implications of global warming on climate change. Regarding false facts, the Indigenous Peoples exhibit, “Volume 0,” establishing its place as an original document, was held at the Zuecca Project Space outside the Giardini grounds. Sponsored by the Venezia Fondamenta Sant’Anna, organized by Dr. Max Carocci, the “Indigenous Peoples” pavilion showed a video on four medicine-ball size spheres, sequentially narrating the story of Venice’s impact on 16th century North American settlements. It said that trade and the necessity of acquiring gold and gems for trade provided the impetus for invading other lands, and Venice was a crossroads of trade. The video’s narration began, “We think of these explorers, taught … [Read more...] about TOWARD AWARENESS AND SOLUTIONS: CONSIDERING CLIMATE CHANGE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE — DAY THREE

Alexander Sokurov, 2017, giclee (photograph by Nancy Nesvet).

FALSE FACTS ON DISPLAY BY ARTISTS: DAY TWO AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

// Artscope Online, Current Exhibits, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

VENICE, ITALY, MAY 9, 2019 — I spent my second day at the Venice Biennale touring the national pavilions at the Giardini site and in other areas in Venice. The most beautiful exhibit I saw was on the second floor of the Russia pavilion, where the director of the 2004 film, Russian Ark and the 2011 winner of the Golden Lion at Venice, “Faust,” directed an exhibit that featured a life-size giclée of a Rembrandt painting, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on permanent display at the Hermitage, here along with the biblical verse, The Parable of the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke, and Chapter 15 of the Gospel of Luke, that speaks of property deeded to a son by a father, squandered by the son, further illustrated with statues of biblical figures. On two video screens were a vision of fires burning down buildings in present and biblical times, with Jesus sitting on a rock watching the … [Read more...] about FALSE FACTS ON DISPLAY BY ARTISTS: DAY TWO AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

EVEN BETTER THAN 2017: VENICE BIENNALE 2019

// Artscope Online, Exhibits, Featured, Visual Arts

by Nancy Nesvet

VENICE, ITALY, MAY 8, 2019 -- Venice has bested its last biennale. This morning, at the press opening, Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery in London since 2006, spoke along with Paolo Baratta, president of the Biennale de Venezia and the director of Swatch, about the biennale. Even more than the theme of the 2017 biennale, which announced “Arte Viva” and made sure there were no barriers to crossing borders, Rugoff’s message was right on, and important. Responding to politics around the world, he said, “In art, there is no simple truth — there is a complexity of voices — a double format and a plurality of voices.” But then, he went on even further, saying that, “each artist’s voice must also be a plurality.” This plurality was demonstrated in Rugoff’s decision to locate some artists’ work in both venues of the Biennale: the Arsenale and the Giardini. I asked him what dictated … [Read more...] about EVEN BETTER THAN 2017: VENICE BIENNALE 2019

ALLURE OF VENICE: LANSIL AT WHISTLER

// Issue Articles, May/June 2018

by Flavia Cigliano

REVIEW THE ALLURE OF VENICE WHISTLER HOUSE MUSEUM OF ART 243 WORTHEN STREET LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS THROUGH JUNE 23 Whistler House Museum of Art, in partnership with Fry Fine Art, is presenting a special exhibit of paintings by underappreciated late 19th century New England artist Walter Franklin Lansil. “Allure of Venice” presents 70 paintings depicting the lagoon, canals and architecture of Venice, one of the world’s great cultural sites. Venice’s fabled appeal to artists and writers begins with the city’s unique history. For centuries, the Republic of Venice, ruled by an extremely wealthy and powerful merchant class, was an economic powerhouse, serving as an essential link in the trade routes between Europe and Asia. During the 15th and 16th centuries, patronage of the arts became an active competition among the rich, with individuals, families and the Republic’s … [Read more...] about ALLURE OF VENICE: LANSIL AT WHISTLER

Art Makes the World Go Around: First Day at the Venice Biennale

// Artscope Online, Audio/Visual, Current Exhibits, Exhibit Openings, Exhibits, Featured, Visual Arts

By Nancy Nesvet Surrounded by water, filled with foreigners speaking different languages, in a city where getting lost in ancient alleyways is a regular occurrence, Venice provides the perfect venue for the most famous of the World’s Biennales. Almost every exhibit at the Venice Biennale deals with risks to our changing world, whether they be political or environmental. Located at ground zero, with the risk of inundation by water if global warming continues to produce floods and facing refugees arriving in Italy every day, Venice is the perfect place for government-sponsored art projects seen by an international public. On my first day at the Biennale, coming by vaporetto boat down the grand canal, I entered the former Arsenale grounds, where an arsenal of weapons was once housed. Walking further, I surveyed what Paolo Buratta notes in the “Introduction to Biennale Arte 2017 Short … [Read more...] about Art Makes the World Go Around: First Day at the Venice Biennale