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'A Different Mood:' Concern about the global economic meltdown is reflected in the theme 'Making Worlds' at Venice's 53rd Biennale art exhibition
AP Photo
A visitor looks at Anatoly Shuravlev's Black Holes at the Russian Pavilion.
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Published: June 7, 2009
VENICE, Italy
Quieter parties. Harsher art.
That's one view from the 53rd Venice Biennale, the oldest and one of the most influential contemporary-art fairs, seen this year through the lens of the world economic meltdown.
No comment was more cutting than the joint exhibit of the Nordic and Danish pavilions called "The Collectors," in which curators Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset created a mock-up of adjacent homes of wealthy art collectors, now up for sale.
The crash of the high-flying art market has taken its toll: A body floats face down in a pool outside as real estate agents (docents) lead potential buyers (art aficionados) on a tour of the two properties, the creation of 24 international artists.
Still, there was debate about the extent to which the world financial crisis has or has not permeated this edition of the Venice Biennale, which opens to the public today and will close Nov. 22. Many had the impression that there were fewer critics and fewer dealers coming to scope out new talent.
"There seems to be less of the irrationally exuberant parties that there were year ago. And the art seems to be more earnest and harsh," said David Resnicow, an art consultant in New York. "I think it is a different mood."
But no artist backed out because of money, said Daniel Birnbaum, the rotating director of this year's Biennale under the theme "Making Worlds," an invitation to artists to represent a vision of the world and not to see art as a commodity.
The Biennale itself is operating with $1.41 million less than the 2007 edition, said the Biennale's president, Paolo Baratta, who raised the entrance price from $21.25 to $25.51 and asked Birnbaum to economize by having some artists find financing for the transport and insurance on their work.
The budget of the contemporary-art section of the Biennale is somewhere around $12.7 million, including not only the transport but the permanent Biennale staff and infrastructure, which also support the Biennale activities from dance to film to architecture.
The 77 nations with their own pavilions in the central Giardini venue and throughout the city pay for their own exhibitions with a mix of private and public financing reflecting their national proclivities and arts politics. Of the $992,127.80 it cost to assemble the Russian Pavilion, Moscow contributed just 10 percent, said Olga Sviblova, the director of Moscow's Multimedia Art Museum and curator of the Russian Pavilion. The rest came from private donors.
Because the Biennale cycle begins more than a year before the show opens, Sviblova was deep into the planning when the worst of the crisis hit last fall.
"Everyone lost money. But this didn't change the support," she said.
The Russian Pavilion featured seven artists exploring the utopian concept of victory -- six newcomers alongside Andre Moldkin, whose installation featured two small figures of the Winged Victory, one that fills with oil, the other with blood donated by a Russian soldier in Chechnya in a statement on the ambiguity of victory.
"They are all young and as artists they are free -- free from ideology pressing on them," Sviblova said.
"Today we need energy, because the crisis is depressing for everyone. We're afraid of the future."
The U.S. Pavilion featured works by Bruce Nauman, whose media span sculpture, neon, performance, video and photography. Several times he has been invited to represent the United States at Venice, but until now had declined.
Many of Nauman's works are pieces created over his 40-year-long career, some adapted for the Venice space, including his famous outdoor neon sign titled Vices and Virtues, which is installed around the colonial facade of the U.S. Pavilion. Overlapping pairs of neon words flash alternately: justice/avarice; hope/envy; faith/lust; faith/charity.
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