Venice has so many fine attractions: canals and gondolas, its great historic preservation,
the foods, the walking, it's got it all.
One of the world's top visitor destinations, there's something extra special going on every
other year in Venice and that is a huge art exhibit.
If you have the time, you would really enjoy a visit as were going to show you now.
We are taking you up on a special look into 3 different years of the Venice Biennale Art
exhibit.
It's the biggest art show in the world – it happens every other year and in this program
we’re going to show you highlights from 2005, 2009 and 2011.
We'll take you through the main garden area, the Giardini, into the various national pavilions.
There are 65 different pavilions as part of the Biennale, generally as many as 500 artists
represented.
The first part of the show will be on the main campus of it, the garden area, and here
we're combining two different years, 2009 and 2011.
We are being quite selective here showing you the very best of what the Biennale has
to offer.
And then when we get to the Arsenale part of the exhibit, that's out at the old historic
Venetian boat harbor, we will be showing you the exhibits from 2005.
It's an amazing display.
We have two other movies that we've created about the Biennale.
One is from the year 2013, the other is further back, the year 2003, and these movies are
on our YouTube channel so have a look for more Biennale fun.
The Netherlands in 2009 featured “Disorient”, a video by Fiona Tan showing an Asian curiosity
shop contrasted with the reality of sweatshop labor.
At the next Biennale in 2011 the Netherlands had a different kind of approach, this time
it was more of a three-dimensional semi-pseudo architectural installation.
The American Pavilion in 2009 was designed by Bruce Nauman and it won the Golden Lion
for Best National Participation.
It features works that Nauman created over the past 40 years and was organized by the
Philadelphia Museum of Art.
At the next Biennale in 2011 the United States featured an upside down tank with an Olympic
runner jogging on top.
You are welcome to take away some kind of an antiwar message from this one.
The Olympic themes continued inside the pavilion with gymnasts performing some acrobatics on
an airline seat, keeping the floor-dwelling audience amused and entertained.
Some of these athletes were Olympic medal winners in gymnastics.
The French Pavilion in 2009 is this immersive experience that seems to put your right in
prison, walking past the stainless steel cages.
It's an installation by Claude Lévêque, who is a major artist on the French scene,
and he likes to shake up your emotions and provoke you visually.
This one is entitled Le Grand Soir, the Grand Evening, which has references back to the
French Revolution.
In 2011 France was represented by Christian Boltanski with the work he called “Chance”.
It looks like a gigantic newspaper printing press but these are actually digitized photographs
of Polish newborns and deceased elderly people that somehow match his theme of life is about
chance and hazard.
He says "we are just the result of chance, there is nothing mystical about our existence."
France hosted yet another giant walk-through installation at the next Biennale in 2013,
an assemblage of stools by the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei.
This is a sneak preview for you – we have extensive coverage in our separate movie on
the 2013 Biennale.
Canada was represented in 2009 by Mark Lewis in conjunction with the national film Board
of Canada.
He produced this video showing contrasting emotions from romance and friendship to a
fight.
The nearby Russian pavilion was constructed in 1914 and was recently renovated.
Theme for the Russian exhibit in 2009 was Victory Over the Future, an installation featuring
7 different artists.
After viewing this colorful, stuffed fabric tower, you walk into another gallery with
these hanging silver balls – it almost looks like Christmas tree ornaments, and the're
hung in such a way that you're invited, encouraged to walk around underneath them and around
them and view them from all angles.
In 2011 the Russian project was titled empty zones and was put together by the Collective
Actions Art Group.
Looks like a nice swimming pool out front until you get closer and see what looks like
a dead body floating in the pool in front of the Nordic exposition in 2009.
On the inside some Scandinavian design.
Theme of the Denmark exhibition in 2011 was “Speech Matters.”
Denmark has always had a great reputation for freedom of speech and expression and strong
civil liberties in a time when censorship is increasingly on the rise.
The 19 artists here were from China, Iran, Palestine, Greece, the US and elsewhere, and
pushed the limits of freedom and expression in their works.
Upon entering the Swiss pavilion in 2011 we had a chance to speak with the Guardian at
the door and get some opinions.
"The meaning is very difficult because it's complex.
The artist thinks about love, philosophy, aesthetics and politics – a new concept
of art".
The artist, Thomas Hirschhorn, raised the same question: "can my work create a new term
of art?" he said in describing this installation.
He said, "I believe that art is universal, autonomous.
I believe that art can provoke a dialogue, or a confrontation, and I believe that art
can include every human being.
With this crystal of resistance I want to produce a work that is irresistible."
Featured artist at the Korean Pavilion 2011 was Lee Yong-baek who has been working in
a variety of media including video, painting and sculpture.
His video installation mimicked a broken mirror, but is it real, or an illusion, or is it about
self reflection?
The Germany Pavilion in 2011 won the Golden Lion prize for the top international contribution.
It was designed by the late Christophe Schlingensief, who passed away a year before it opened.
He created a church-like space in which he examined the existential circle of life, suffering
and his own death, featuring many movies created during his long career.
Great Britain in 2011 was represented by Mike Nelson who converted the interior of the pavilion
into a series of rooms, kind of junky places that you walk through, very disorienting.
He likes to play tricks.
Japan's 2011 exhibit is called Telco Soup and features thousands of scanned images projected
onto curved mirrors.
The Hungary pavilion was one of the earliest, constructed way back in 1909, featuring traditional
mosaics and eclectic rounded contours.
Upon entering the main room you see a huge video wall, presented in 2009.
This was designed by Péter Forgács, who did the editing and arranging of some old
film footage from Nazi Germany in which the Nazis were comparing the differences between
Jewish prisoners and other non-Jewish Germans – part of their evil search to look for
differences between people.
The artist's intent was to focus more on individual people's identities.
When it's time for a little break to absorb all of these images you're bombarded with,
sit down in the garden café and have a breather.
And then it is time to plunge into the biggest building at the Giardini, the Main Pavilion,
which has dozens of different artists.
And as we walk around inside there I'm going to tell you about the history and background
of the Biennale itself.
As Wikipedia describes it, the word Biennale is Italian for biennial, or every other year,
and is used to describe any event that happens every two years.
It's most commonly used within the art world to describe a large-scale, international contemporary
art exhibit which was first used in Venice in 1895 holding the worlds first biennial
art show.
This idea has spread around the world and today it's estimated there are about 200 different
biennial art exhibits happening in many major cities all around the planet.
The phrase Biennale has since been adapted to suit some other locations such as the Berlinale
(that's for the Berlin International Film Festival) and the Viennale (for Vienna's international
film festival).
So "Biennale" has been used as a general term for other kinds of recurring international
events Very often there's a lot of political content
to these exhibits – it's not just simply paintings and statues – but these are works
of art that increasingly speak to our contemporary social and political issues.
A clear example of that is the Architectural Biennale that also happens in Venice every
other year in the even-numbered years, in which there's a great deal of presentation
of urban plans and ideal kinds of architectural forms with a great concern for the human and
natural environment.
Well after you're done walking around in the main pavilion you'll be a little tired and
hungry.
There is a snack bar and some people like it so much they just never want to leave.
Be sure look across the canal on a little bridge that will lead you to the back section
of the Biennale Giardini.
There are many more pavilions over here that are easy to miss if you don't know what you're
looking for.
There is one long building with 5 countries represented and 3 other separate pavilion
so you could easily spend another hour back here if you're interested in what they've
got.
In 2009 Dale Chihuly had a lot of his glass sculptures here in the back area and also
scattered all around Venice.
There are dozens of other artists in countries with exhibits located outside of the Giardini
or the Arsenale.
You hvef to hunt to find them.
The largest collection of exhibits outside this main garden area is at the Arsenale,
just a few blocks away – maybe take the 10 minutes to walk over there, a pleasant
stroll through some local residential neighborhoods.
You'll see some laundry hanging out, maybe.
The brick building housing this exhibit is a very old historic structure dating back
nearly 500 years.
It was the shipyard for Venice when they were building a naval fleet that conquered the
Mediterranean.
Usually the exhibits in the Arsenale are at least as interesting as those in the main
Giardini exhibits and sometimes they're even a lot more fun.
The Arsenale is a huge building, especially considering it's a medieval brick structure.
In length it's about 500 meters and in total area it's about 25,000 square meters.
Now compare that for example to the new Whitney Museum in New York, which comes in at 5000
square meters.
The Arsenale is five times bigger in area than the new Whitney.
However the major art museums of the world are much bigger than this, for example the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has 190,000 square meters.
It's one of the largest art museums in the world and certainly the largest in America.
The Arsenale is so big, with so many artworks inside, that it could easily take you half
a day or if you're going to watch all of the video presentations inside, it could stretch
to a couple of days.
Because your ticket is good for admission here to the Arsenale, you absolutely must
come over and see this part of the show.
It's really unfortunate that a majority of people are not even aware of the Arsenale.
They see the main exhibit.
They'll spend three hours perhaps at the Giardini, wandering around, enjoying themselves and
getting tired and then they never get over to the Arsenale.
Another advantage of the Arsenale is that it's so much easier to navigate.
You just enter the building and you walk through it.
You can walk all the way through, come out the other end and then walked back along the
garden by the waterway, or better yet backtrack and come through the Arsenale again and see
everything a second time from the other direction.
Although Venice was the world's first Biennale in 1895, there were some precedents beforehand
including the great Crystal Palace in London, which was the huge greenhouse, the glass and
metal structure that was so innovative, considered the first truly modern building.
In 1851 it housed the Great Exhibition.
It was the first attempt to condense the representation of the world in a single exhibition space.
The Crystal Palace was more concerned with technology and inventions and machines rather
than the fine arts in the main motives were the affirmation of British economic dominance
and national leadership.
The Crystal Palace in 1851 was really the first of one of the World's Fairs which began
and continued throughout the 19th century, and ever since there have been large World
Fairs every several years to the great delight of the public.
Another outgrowth of the World's Fairs in the Biennale's has been the development of
contemporary theme parks.
You could even say that Disneyland owes quite a bit to the idea of the Biennale and the
Biennale itself is like a theme park for arts.
The Venice exhibit in 1895 served as the archetype of future Biennale's.
Of course the art here is always on the cutting edge, pushing the limits of decency and craziness
and wild creativity, always looking to create something new and provocative.
While art museums have existed for hundreds of years, there were no museums dedicated
to contemporary art in the early 20th century.
It wasn't until they Biennale came along that there was a new focus on the idea of a special
place to house modern and contemporary art, and since then in the mid-20th century there
has been a proliferation of modern art museums which can trace some of their ancestry back
to the first Venice Biennale.
So far the Arsenale shots were from 2005 but now we're jumping to 2011, to the wonderful
Italy exhibit, perhaps saving the best for last.
You had to walk all the way through the Arsenale to get here, it wasn't easy, it was way out
at the end of the building, and a lot of people might give up or not even realize you leave
the building and then go back into the building to find it, but there it is and it was really
worthwhile.
On this back end of the Arsenale are going to find a delightful garden terrace with the
view looking out on the boat harbor.
It's the same historic harbor that was in operation 500 years ago and they're still
using it today.
You'll see the Coast Guard, they’re some naval ships occasionally.
And it's a great place to sit and relax -- there's a snack bar, a few more sculptures, interesting
installations and kiosks.
It's a very nice way to end your visit.
And then you can leave out the back of the area.
You don't have to re-trace your steps and return to the front door.
You will find yourself in every typical residential neighborhood – not many tourists venture
out here.
We're on the far eastern end of Venice, it's lovely.
And then there are some canals, and late in the afternoon you'll find some beautiful reflections
in the canals.
From here you could walk back to Piazza San Marco or take the vaporetto.
If you’d like to see more of these very entertaining and cutting-edge whimsical artworks,
we have more movies about the Biennale in 2013 and the Biennale in 2003, so look for
them on our YouTube channel