Biennale Babylon - Venice Biennale 2001

Art in America, Sept, 2001 by Marcia E. Vetrocq

This year's Venice Biennale includes more participating artists and national pavilions than ever. Affiliated shows stretch from Udine in the north to Sicily in the south. Attendance at the June preview broke all records. It could be too much of a good thing.

There was every reason to be optimistic about the 2001 Venice Biennale. The previous edition had seen the debut of a revamped administration that promised to streamline funding and planning for an event that had seemed straight-jacketed by bureaucracy in the past. Dramatic new exhibition areas had opened in the Arsenale, the former shipbuilding facility that houses, with the Italian pavilion in the Giardini, or municipal gardens, the Biennale's international group show.

Even more heartening, Harald Szeemann would continue as the visual arts director after having curated a high-energy exhibition in 1999 that was distinguished by memorable installations, bold videos and a contingent of promising new Chinese talents [see A.i.A., Sept. '99]. Not since Giovanni Carandente (1988 and '90) had the incumbent received a second nod. Unlike his immediate predecessors Achille Bonito Oliva, Jean Clair and Germano Celant, who each presided over one Biennale, Szeemann would have the benefit of experience and the gift of time--time in which to articulate a coherent theme that would gird the group exhibition and perhaps counterbalance the individual and often self-congratulatory presentations in the national pavilions.

Then, in a statement issued last March, Szeemann declared that his show would have no theme, just a title, "Platea dell'umanita," whose first official translation was the regrettable "Plateau of Mankind." The only marginally improved "Plateau of Humanity" followed. The title was meant to suggest a platform or stage for viewing the panorama of human experiences and behaviors. Szeemann cited "The Family of Man," the Museum of Modern Art's legendary 1955 exhibition, as a conceptual precedent, acknowledging that we could no longer sustain its simple optimism but asserting, nevertheless, that ours is a post-identity moment in which it is appropriate to consider the "eternal within humankind." There may have been a swift intake of breath among those for whom "The Family of Man" epitomizes Cold War-era Western paternalism. But surely Szeemann had something more nuanced in mind?

As the prospect of a critical theme dissolved, it appeared that other anticipated advantages of advance planning were likewise illusory. Interviewed for the summer edition of the Dutch magazine Metropolis M, Szeemann complained about budget decreases and the prolonged uncertainty over how much space would be available for his exhibition. The government contribution is about $3.25 million, down from $4.8 million in 1999. This year's newly accessible sections of the Arsenale include the 16th-century Tese delle Vergini and an adjacent garden, but a theater now occupies the four conjoined sections of the Tese that held art works in '99.

Indecision over whether or not the Italian artists chosen by Szeemann would be shown as a group in the Venice pavilion (which served as an onsite press office in recent years) led to an eleventh-hour administrative announcement that the space would be used for a tribute to Alighiero Boetti. It was a solution Szeemann did not endorse. In the end, he asserted, there was no more time than before to organize the show. Asked by the interviewer to clarify a statement about "intensity" being his only curatorial criterion, Szeemann responded, "I can allow myself to put it so simplistically because everyone knows how complex my way of thinking is." Ah.

Having chosen to ride on his considerable and well-earned reputation, Szeemann has assembled a show that feels alternately meandering and hasty. There is some fine work in "Plateau"--it's hard to come up empty-handed with more than 120 individuals and collaborations, about 20 percent more than in 1999. But the selection as a whole seems to reflect an assortment of unrelated interests and intentions, as if numerous niche exhibitions had been cobbled together and their association rationalized after the fact. Ticking off various subgroups of artists and their shared concerns, Szeemann disingenuously claims in his catalogue essay that he, too, is "curious to see how all of these diverse elements will unite."

Platitudes of Humanity

Age--or, more precisely, "agelessness"--and the recognition of progressive work across generations is one element on the mind of the 68-year-old Szeemann. With three installations in the Arsenale, Joseph Beuys is honored as a sort of patron saint, while Chen Zhen, who died at 45 about a year after his triumph in the last Biennale, is fondly remembered with written tributes and videos. As in '99, the exhibition catalogue is ordered by the artists' dates of birth. About one-quarter of the roster was born before 1950, including the recipients of the Golden Lion awards for lifetime achievement, Richard Serra and Cy Twombly.