Perspective: Venice Biennale is a vast, unwieldy, exhilarating spectacle, PhilipKennicott writes
The Central Pavilion of Venice Biennale already gathers a crowd before the official opening of the biennial event, the premiere gathering of the international art world.
I tried to get a sense of the structure of this vast, unwieldy, exhilarating spectacle. At the center of the phenomenon, says Biennale President Paolo Baratta, is the International Art Exhibition, a free-ranging survey overseen by a single curator charged with saying something substantial about the state of the art every two years. This year’s curator is Ralph Rugoff, an American who is the director of the Hayward Gallery in London.
Rugoff has called his big show “May You Live in Interesting Times,” a reference to a supposed ancient Chinese curse, but also a dog whistle to people who are feeling apocalyptic about the state of the world — environmentally, politically and spiritually. He has divided his massive installation into two “propositions,” one laid out in a long brick building in the Arsenale and the other in the Central Pavilion. The same artists have contributed works to both buildings.
I’ve decided to give his language the benefit of the doubt for the next three days. And if one suspends skepticism about the intellectual architecture supporting it, his exhibition is strangely fun, polished, anodyne and engaging. The two-part structure is a smart way of giving some artists a mulligan.
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