Agenda Venezia

The art scene

Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection
5 february to 21 may 2006

The head of Alberto Sordi coming out of a sculpture by Alberto Viani; Alberto Giacometti looking with desire at a buxom model, in front of his bony sculptures; the service policeman bowing in front of Rauschenberg, congratulating him for the Golden Lion of 1964: there are many funny and tasty images exposed at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in the exhibition “Venice 1948-1986: the art scene”. 150 pictures, almost all in black and white, selected by Luca Massimo Barbero on a basis of 12.000 plates. They formed the archive of the agency Cameraphoto, which has been bought, for consultation and study, by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio in Modena. The exhibition follows a chronological order, beginning from 1948, the year in which the Biennale of Visual Arts restarted, after a long interruption due to war. And there is a really touching picture, the one in which Romolo Bazzoni, secretary, Rodolfo Pallucchini, director, and Giovanni Ponti, president of the Biennale, welcome the arrival of the first plane bringing the works of art. Those until 1954 are years of big turmoil, and of great protagonists: Picasso with his magnetic look, Arturo Martini, a gorgeous Palma Bucarelli. There are pictures showing the exhibition halls (the personal of Morandi and the one of De Pisis), but also testimonies of the preparation works. And then there is the public, that particularly in the first years is the lively public of the neighborhood of Castello, like the woman with an apron looking puzzled the huge, soft toothpaste by Claes Oldenburg (Pop Art, 1964); or like the child caught in the hall of Emilio Vedova (1960) together with a priest dressed in a cassock. This last picture is almost a provocation, exceeded only by the image of the cardinal in the Sovietic pavilion (year 1960) leaving behind the statue of a peasant man and woman with hammer and sickle, in perfect realist style.

During the Sixties the Biennale is a stylish event: magazines send their models to pose, with an half amused and half serious air, in front of the works of art. Also the clothing changes: from the elegant and luxurious clothes, often enriched with stately brim hats, it switches to minimal clothes, tight and with short skirts (an anticipation of Mary Quant’s miniskirt) of a Paola Pitagora, Renato Mambor’s sweetheart (1966). We are approaching 1968 and the protest is exploding: at the Giardini the oeuvres are covered or turned against the wall; on the bridges, where the police is lurking; in the calli and in San Marco square, where there is a crowd of young people. The Seventies are the years of happenings (Lee Byars with his black top hat and the golden stick, 1975), and of arte povera (the paws of Luciano Fabro, 1972). Of the same year are the disabled persons (Gino De Dominicis) and the liberation of thousands of butterflies in San Marco square. In the mid-sixties environmental themes prevail: the horses of Kounellis and the totems of Beuys (1976); the flock of sheep at the Israeli pavilion and the bull’s leap (1978). They are also the years in which the different fields get mixed and Julian Beck with his “Living Teather” puts on stage between the calli his “Six public acts”. In the Eighties the relationship between art and nature is replaced by that between art and science, with the director Maurizio Calvesi. Then, with the beginning of the electronic age, everything changes in the way of depicting the art scene, the takes multiply, the transmission of images gets faster and the function of an agency, even if it is as good as Cameraphoto, runs out. The catalogue of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena, edited by Skira, is really well-made, complete of 900 images, a real visual history of the Biennale.

Lidia Panzeri (translation of Olga Amagliani)