These three days were
taken up with art, more art, and even more art.
Highlights were the Rauschenberg
exhibition on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore which contrasted and compared his
silkscreen works to that of Andy Warhol, the Galleria Giorgio Franchetti which
had a wonderful exhibition of tapestries and carpets from the Zaleski
collection, plus some wonderful renaissance art, all set in a wonderful piazza
with tiles floors and mosaic walls, and the exhibition of paintings by Phillip
Gunston at the Galleria Accademia. So much to take in, so very hard not to be
spoilt as you walk by just another renaissance masterpiece!
In addition, in the
realm of artistic bling, we spent some time checking out Damien Hirst’s massive
over the top exhibition of hundreds of coral encrusted and ‘restored’ Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable.
Despite the technical brilliance of the work in creating classical statues and artefacts,
and in many cases encrusting them in colorful faux coral, my reaction was
rather negative, feeling that it was a cynical excercise in viewer manipulation.
In fact, it self-references this cynicism by the addition of two or three coral
encrusted statues of Disney cartoon characters Goofy and Micky Mouse, and ‘the
collector’, a representation of Hirst himself. The New York Times review of the
Biennale by Holland Cotter (link
here), which I came across only after I had seen the Hirst exhibition
expressed similar views; I quote:
I’m instinctively sympathetic
to career-salvaging efforts on an artist’s part, which this work is rumored to
be. And experience has taught me that damning criticism can be as useful,
promotion-wise, as praise. So I don’t have much to say about “Treasures of the
Wreck” except that it’s there; that some people care; and that it’s irrelevant
to anything I know about that matters.
We managed to eat
lightly, and also spend some time exploring the back streets of Guidecca, which
includes two prisons, a swathe of public housing, a walled garden with a back
gate with the name ‘Garden of Eden’, and a couple of luxury hotels located in
former industrial factories. A later google search revealed that the ‘Garden of
Eden’ was in fact the former summer retreat of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s
father.
All in all, a very
pleasant end to our stay in Venice.
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