Critics Weigh In on the Biennale; Schneider's Controversial Cube

CRITICS WEIGH IN ON THE BIENNALE

"More legible but less audacious." That's the opinion of Libération's Hervé Gauville and Elisabeth Lebovici, who note that the 51st Venice Biennale has turned southwards under the direction of co-curators Maria de Corral and Rosa Martinez. "The Italians, like the French, complain about the small number of their compatriots chosen for the Biennale," Gauville and Lebovici write. "The North American are not complaining, but they have almost disappeared, to the profit of South Americans. As at the Cannes Film Festival, Latin America has triumphed." Gauville and Lebovici cite Golden Lion winner Regina José Galindo, a Guatemalan artist living in the Dominican Republic, whose scandalous performances include having her hymen replaced. The French also triumphed, with Annette Messager taking away the Golden Lion for best national pavilion. Reviewing Messager's installation, Lebovici writes, "It's not really a pavilion but a cave. . . . It's not an exhibition but a play that creates a slow movement towards the interior and then a brutal and burlesque ejection towards the exit at the rear of the building. . . . Messager put everything into the French pavilion—which she has debaptized and renamed ‘CASINO’—and won."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Thomas Wagner begins his own consideration of the 51st Biennale by noting what isn’t there: "The surprising and the oppressing, the cheerful and the liberating, the dominance of the national pavilions, the chaotic overflow of many of the previous Biennales, the fear that contemporary art will be lost amidst the spectacle, and the illusion that commitment and good will are enough in art." Wagner appreciates the presentational style, which others have found too dry. "This Biennale corrects the mistake of believing that such a large event cannot have precise exhibitions as in a museum," writes Wagner. "While the art disappeared in a curatorial thicket in the last edition, this Biennale provides a sense of clarity. The works—whether painting, sculpture, installation, photography, video or performance—are presented in ways that are appropriate to them. This Biennale lets the art breathe and breathes art—and one cannot say that it doesn't feel good."

SCHNEIDER'S CONTROVERSIAL CUBE

The Tageszeitung's Ingeborg de Vries delves into the story behind Gregor Schneider's proposed project for the Venice Biennale, which was nixed by city officials. As de Vries reports, Schneider hoped to install a fifty-foot-tall cube, whose proportions echoed Mecca’s sacred Ka’ba, in Venice’s Saint Mark's Square—a project that has instead been documented in a video installation in the Arsenale. The cube, which was to be covered with black cloth stretched over scaffolding, was rejected for aesthetic and security reasons. Apart from blocking the view across the historic square, the connotations of Schneider's cube were considered potentially inflammatory. As a press person for the Biennale explained, city officials felt that the installation might offend the Muslim community. De Vries interprets the ban as a response to fear of terrorist attacks rather than a desire to respect religious beliefs. "Behind the attitude that religious persons should not be offended—before anyone even says that they have been offended—there is the dark implication that religion should never be criticized." For his part, Schneider considers the failed project not as a provocation but as a way to demonstrate "a deep connection” between Islam and the West.

— Jennifer Allen