Owned by French luxury goods billionaire François Pinault, the Palazzo
Grassi, a splendid 18th century palace overlooking the Grand Canal, presents
major exhibitions, many of which are based in whole or in part on his enormous
collection of contemporary art. For overflow, he also has the Punta della Dogana
which at one time was the Venetian customs house. It’s a wonderful triangular building
at the tip of the island of Dorsoduro next to
that magnificent Venetian landmark: il Salute.
The renovation of the Palazzo
Grassi (2005) as well as the restoration of Punta della Dogana (2008-2009) were both done by Japanese architect, Tadao Ando. In
each, Ando adopted a minimalist approach that allows the original architecture
to shine forth while transforming the spaces into appropriate venues to exhibit
contemporary art. In the Palazzo Grassi, Ando used free-standing white partitions set slightly in front
of the original marble walls to adapt the space and suspended a sheet of transparent
fabric underneath the palace’s central atrium’s glass roof to create a modernist look and diffused light effect.
On view when I visited was a selection of videos
from the François Pinault Foundation. “A sensory journey that oscillates, through
the gaze of the artists, between solemnity, angst, humor, and levity,” is how
it’s billed, but for me it was one long slog through. There were a couple of exceptions:
Hassan Kahn’s Jewel, which I had seen last spring at the New York's New Museum still moved
me and Javier Téllez”s Passion of Joan of Arc
with interviews with 12 psychiatric patients was pretty galvanizing.
Over at the Punta della Dogana one encountered
the usual suspects: Koons, Cattalan, Judd, Nauman in a show entitled In Praise
of Doubt. I did like the Judd and Nauman pieces and work by Tatiana Trouvé who I was unfamiliar with. By and large, the show’s all about what little shock and irony value
that can be wrested from objects that clamor for attention either by virtue of
size, material, bad taste or just plain yuckiness, but which strike me as
ineffably hollow.
As a child, I was indeed staggered by Edward Kienholz’s installation at the Whitney that could have been Mrs. Bates waiting for her son or Faulkner’s Emily of the rose sitting in their living rooms. That was in the late 1960s. Now, his work just looks painfully hackneyed. And what do I want with a giant plastic caterpillar, a taxidermied horse coming through the wall, or a glitzy heart and ribbon that looks like it’s part of a department store Valentine’s display. Whatever message these works are trying to convey has long since lost its meaning, let alone punch. But it’s all about names, not art in a place like this and why would I expect anything else from a successful businessman whose specialty is promoting merchandize that relies on its name recognition. So it’s a no-brainer that he’d go for brand over originality.
As a child, I was indeed staggered by Edward Kienholz’s installation at the Whitney that could have been Mrs. Bates waiting for her son or Faulkner’s Emily of the rose sitting in their living rooms. That was in the late 1960s. Now, his work just looks painfully hackneyed. And what do I want with a giant plastic caterpillar, a taxidermied horse coming through the wall, or a glitzy heart and ribbon that looks like it’s part of a department store Valentine’s display. Whatever message these works are trying to convey has long since lost its meaning, let alone punch. But it’s all about names, not art in a place like this and why would I expect anything else from a successful businessman whose specialty is promoting merchandize that relies on its name recognition. So it’s a no-brainer that he’d go for brand over originality.
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