1997 Ad

Art in America, Sept, 1997 by Marcia E. Vetrocq

I opened myself up to Art as if it were enormous galaxy, something that could not be grasped all at once but through which one could travel, with all its novas and supernovas, its large and small dimensions, all of them charged with a luminosity that could metaphorically bring each star to the cognitive, visual, linguistic and formal illumination typical of the work of art. Once I had assumed this planetary overview, which includes every sphere of language and material, of place and situation, I found myself in the position of a space traveler, off on an adventure between worlds known and unknown.

Captain's Log

On the one hand, you could say that Germano Celant had less than six months to put together the 47th edition of the Venice Biennale. Budget wrangling, debates about administrative restructuring, and the option of postponing the show to 1998 in order to be poised for a millennarian blockbuster all played a role in delaying the official appointment of the visual arts curator until January 1997. On the other hand, you could say that Celant has had 30 years to prepare for the job. Since his first efforts in the 1960s to place the artists of Arte Povera before a worldwide audience up to his 1988 appointment as curator of contemporary art at the Guggenheim Museum in New York he has become one of only a tiny number of Italian curators who enjoy international standing. Along the way, he has evoked from being the spokesman for an upstart movement that challenged the prevailing taste to being an influential architect of, and caterer to, that taste.

The two preceding Biennales should have offered cautionary lessons to the new appointee. The presiding curator in 1993 was Achille Bonito Oliva, Celant's rival in Italian art circles for some 25 years. Bonito Oliva's Biennale [see A.i.A., Sept. '93] took off in the spirit of inclusiveness and careened out of control. Affiliated shows spread like kudzu throughout Venice. The Aperto section, a showcase for younger talent, ballooned to over 100 participants in what became an anarchic carnival of curiously cheerful anguish -- postfeminist, postcolonial, posthuman. Bonito Oliva was denied a second term. Not forgotten, but not forgiven either, he garnered five votes to Celant's nine in the selection process which named the current chief. Ensuring that he is nevertheless a Biennale player, Bonito Oliva has curated "Minimalia: Da Giacomo Balla a ...," a survey of Minimalist and Conceptual currents in Italian art which is installed in the Palazzo Querini Dubois. Though not officially coordinated with the main event, it strategically opened during the Biennale preview.

The centenary Biennale of 1995 [see A.i.A., Sept. '95] was headed by Musee Picasso director Jean Clair, the first non-Italian visual arts curator. He axed the raucous Aperto section altogether, and concentrated his energies on a vast yet polemically focused survey of images of the body. Clair's uncompromising and often arrogant articulation of his theme, his seemingly scant regard for abstraction, and his undisguised contempt for Italy's cultural bureaucracy doubtlessly prompted a longing for a Biennale of consensus and good will. In the end, the only point of universal agreement was that Clair, too, would serve just one term.

Succeeding the indulgent impresario and the scandalizing auteur, Celant took command with the aplomb of a technocrat who speaks the language of multinationalism, teamwork, product uniformity, fiscal restraint and downsizing. He appointed an international "commission of experts" to assist with decision-making, as well as a collaborative curatorial team.[1] There are fewer sanctioned satellite exhibitions. Aperto remains dormant. Its space in the Corderie of the Arsenale and its commitment to the young both have been absorbed by Celant's featured exhibition, a tri-generational survey of vanguardism, which has been held to a trim 65 artists. The appointed time span is 1967-97, a fact not altogether clearly communicated by the shows willfully reversed title "Future Present Past," with its faint echo of Vittorio De Sica's anthology film of 1964, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Celant applied his rule of economy to the Italian national section, for which he has selected only three artists, Ettore Spalletti, Enzo Cucchi and Maurizio Cattelan.

Celant enjoined the participating artists to contribute new and, if possible, never before seen work, so that the Biennale would have the effect of a premiere rather than a roundup. This has met with only limited compliance, as has his other request that countries sponsoring pavilions observe a standard format for their publications. Exercising new powers of dissemination as well as organization, this Biennale has introduced an educational service for school groups and a Web site. Celant confidently has predicted that the entire enterprise will finish within its budget of $4.6 million. No less adept at managing time than money, the visual arts curator also weighs in as the author of essays for the catalogues of two affiliated exhibitions on Anselm Kiefer and Dennis Oppenheim, and for a monograph on Juliao Sarmento, the publication of which coincides with the painter's appearance as Portugal's Biennale representative.