The Venice Biennale

[art reviews]

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[art reviews]

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[CAP]

Interestingly – well to me at least - over on the Das Kunst Mag site, the band of merry Germans reviewing The Venice Bi are giving The Golden Lion, or whatever the main prize is, to Nelson’s installation. It’s that, or to Roman Abramovich’s massive, black ‘yacht’ Luna, dominating the docks. The German pavilion’s given over to some guy who died of cancer, from what I can remember, kind of gruelling memorial service in faux church interior with lots of screens and pictures. You can tell they’re struggling with it as well. Although I like the way the Germania sign over the entrance has been over-written as Ego-mania.

They really slammed the French pavilion – Boltanski's slick and high-tech slobbering on about babies and old people – and the Swiss pavilion – Tom Hirschhorn doing his usual cardboard/gaffer tape/fuzzy colour photocopies of atrocity victims and such. I confess I have a soft spot for Hirschie – but die Germans are having none of it. They also big out on Karla Black’s pastel clouds – insisting the Scots get their own pavilion and win outright. Strangely, they skip the American pavilion, with Allora and Cadzilla’s installation of a brand new, inverted military tank, its caterpillar track used as a runner’s treadmill. It’s probably meant to be light-hearted but I don’t think you can invoke the US military without introducing manifest evil, frankly. They think they can flip it and pile on some little spectacle in self-indulgence and futility, but it all rests on a VERY uneasy platform, a pliant client, leasing and greasing, flexible muscle brought to nationalist ends. I’m not surprised some French journalist took one of the participating athletes to task (the runners are courtesy of the US track and field team, I think – they run in red, white and blue vests) asking him if he realized the implications of his performance? The runner was basically nonplussed and rambled on about his fitness. New Yorker Magazine critic Jerry Saltz took the Frenchman to task for being offensive. But the French guy had a point and the runner’s evasion absolutely answered it. The piece is all about denial, trying to run away from some clumsy commitments, looking good for a while, but getting nowhere.