We’re back!

After the Covid break (yes, we’re aware that at the time of writing it’s not over and we’re taking precautions), we took our first major trip to see the Venice Art Biennale. It was a two-part trip.

First, we had five days in Cascais, near Lisbon.

That was followed by four weeks in Venice. Our goal? Immerse ourselves in contemporary art at the 59^th Venice Art Biennale, absorb traditional old masters in Venice’s churches and galleries, and walk our feet off in this magical city. Oh, and there would be eating and drinking too.

Why the Portugal/Italy connection? Portugal’s airline, TAP, offers flights with Portugal stopovers at no extra cost. So, we flew Toronto to Lisbon and then Lisbon to Venice for the same price as Toronto to Venice. A good deal!

We’d been to Cascais a few years ago and liked it, so we took this opportunity to revisit.

But this post is about art in Venice.

We’ve been to other art shows, but none of this scale.

From mid-September to mid-October, we spent nearly a month in Venice. Every day we were in galleries or churches or both.

We had loose plans to take day trips to Padua or Verona. We didn’t do any of that. We never left Venice for the whole month.

Art Biennale is an art festival that has taken place in Venice every other year since 1895, alternating with the Architecture Biennale. It’s only been interrupted by the two world wars and now postponed a year due to the pandemic.

The theme of the show was Milk of Dreams, after a book by the surrealist painter and writer Leonora Carrington.

What does Milk of Dreams mean? Carrington described it as a magical world where life is constantly re-envisioned through the prism of the imagination. It is a world where everyone can change, be transformed, and become something or someone else.

Seemed like a perfect theme for the show.

The curator, Cecilia Alemani, decided to focus on women, trans, non-binary artists (80% of all artists?), and artists from under-represented regions and countries. This caused controversy in some circles. Not for us.

There was just so much to see, so it seemed irrelevant whether a piece of art was created by a woman or man, trans or not. If you didn’t like what was in front of you, move on. Interview with curator Alemani here.

There are two main Biennale venues in the Castello area of Venice: the Arsenale, the old Venetian shipyards that have existed since the 12^th century (building started in 1104), and the Giardini (gardens), a park just east of the Arsenale.

While the Arsenale features rooms of galleries in the factory buildings, the Giardini consists of 29 permanent country pavilions of various sizes.

These days, the word “art” covers an immense range of expressions.

That includes things you can hang on a wall, set on the ground, fill up a room, from every material imaginable, film, sound, found pieces, elaborately manufactured, laugh-out-loud funny, nightmare-inducing, morbid, sunshine happy… it was all at Biennale.

When you buy a ticket, you get admission to both venues. You can visit the venues on different days at any time.

Here’s the first tip: only attempt to do one venue per day. Even at that, you probably won’t be able to do the venue justice. See the second venue on another day.

Second tip: see everything twice. That’s what we did. A week after seeing everything the first time, we bought another set of tickets. We were surprised at what we missed the first time and what we wanted to spend more time with on the second go around. So, that was four days in total. Well worth it.

Third tip: wear comfortable shoes and use the restaurants and cafeterias to rest your feet and eyes. You need to stop and refuel. Also, the main cafeteria is a work of art in itself.

As if the Arsenale and Giardini weren’t enough, there was much more to see.

Throughout the city, there were many related shows. Most of them were free for everyone. Some were country pavilions for countries that didn’t have a permanent spot in the Giardini, while others were dedicated to a particular artist.

So, we could have filled our days with contemporary art without buying tickets. With a free map, we could visit the shows in the various palazzos and exhibition halls throughout Venice.

But there’s more. There were also shows related to the Biennale where we did have to pay a separate fee. These were for some of the rock stars of the art world.

For example, we saw the overwhelming Anselm Kiefer installation at the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace). Tickets were 25 Euros, 15 Euros for seniors. The ticket also gave us admission to a full tour of the Doge’s Palace and the nearby Correr Museum. Again, we visited the Correr on a separate day.

Similarly, tickets for the monumental Anish Kapoor show, spread over the Gallerie dell’Accademia and Palazzo Manfrin, included admission to the Accademia collection of Venetian renaissance masterpieces.

Note: Kapoor’s foundation bought the Palazzo Manfrin and will renovate it into a permanent art exhibition space. Interesting to see artists buying their own prominent exhibition spaces.

Bruce Nauman’s show at the Punta della Dogana included free entrance to the Marlene Dumas retrospective at the Palazzo Grassi (both owned by French billionaire and art collector François Pinault).

An added benefit of seeing shows in the palazzos: you experience the palazzos. You’ll walk through the vast rooms with terrazzo floors. Take time to enjoy the wonderful views of the Grand Canal. You’ll gain admission to gardens hidden behind brick walls.

There were still more shows which weren’t formally related to the Biennale but were timed to coincide with the half million art lovers visiting the city.

Two of our favorites were the street and fashion photography work of Sabine Weiss at the Tre Oci gallery and the surrealism exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Gallery.

Note on Sabine Weiss: A contemporary of Doisneau, Brassaï, and Cartier-Bresson, Weiss showed a stunning collection of mostly black and white street and fashion photography shot over many years. Ms. Weiss helped organize this show but unfortunately passed away in Paris just before it opened. She was 97 and still involved with her work.

One of the magical aspects of Venice is that the churches and scuole are full of art.

Scuole (plural of scuolo) were brotherhood organizations (like modern-day unions) that provided assistance against poverty for individuals and families in need. They each had their own buildings, with walls and ceilings covered in art.

The last time we were in Venice, we visited a few churches and scuole. This time, we went to many of them. The difference? Between visits, I’ve been trying to learn more about Venetian Renaissance artists such as Titian, Tintoretto, Bellini, Carpaccio, and Veronese.

These artists worked in the 1400s and 1500s, often competing with each other. All of their paintings illustrate religious stories. The challenge for me? I wasn’t raised in a religious household and therefore didn’t know most of the stories except the obvious ones, such as the crucifixion.

Many of these masterpieces still hang in the churches and scuole they were initially commissioned for.

There are fewer scuole than there were before. When Napoleon briefly ruled Venice in the early 1800s, he shut down many of them. But the remaining ones are spectacular.

More on this in a future post.

No, in fact, we could have stayed longer. There were pavilions and churches on our list that we didn’t see.

What else did we do in Venice? Toured St. Mark’s Basilica, ate at a few excellent restaurants, went on an expensive gondola ride for the first time, and went swimming on a deserted beach on the Lido on a glorious, warm, sunny October day.  (Our Venetian friends, “Who does that? It’s too cold!”) It was cool but fine.

And we walked a lot. Took the vaporetto boats on the Grand Canal. Enjoyed the views.

Was it worth it? Oh yes. Already planning to go two years from now.

Note: Links go to their sites or sites of interest, not necessarily what was at the Biennale.

Simone Leigh (New Yorker article)

Anselm Kiefer (Wikipedia page)

Anish Kapoor

Marlene Dumas

Ai Weiwei (Wikipedia page)

Georg Baselitz (Wikipedia page)

Stanley Whitney (Buffalo AKG Art Museum)

Paula Rego (Wikipedia page) We also saw the wonderful Paula Rego museum in Cascais. Worth the trip if you’re in Lisbon.

Gabriel Chaile (DesignBoom)

Delcy Morelos (Biennale site)

Emma Talbot

Füsan Onur

Santiago Borja (Wikipedia)

Kazakhstan Pavilion (the “new genius” ORTA Collective artists)

Tetsumi Kudo (Wikipedia)

Precious Okoyomon (NY Times article)

Francesca Leone

Chun Kwang Young

There are many sites dedicated to Venetian art. Here are a few that I think you’ll find helpful.

Venice Biennale site

Venetian scuole and the art inside of them

Doge’s Palace official site

Correr Museum official site

Gallerie dell’Accademia

Peggy Guggenheim Gallery

Tre Oci Gallery

St. Mark’s Basilica

In the winter of 2019, I spent 11 days just photographing Venice.

Thoughts before taking this 11-day photo trip to Venice. Would it be worth it? Would I enjoy it? Yes and yes…

Read about the exceptional week we spent in Venice in September 2018 – including opera at La Fenice.

Join us in learning about Mariano Fortuny, a true renaissance man of Venice, and make sure you visit his palazzo.