Physical fatigue is always a factor in criticism, but at the Venice Biennale, the world's most prestigious recurring art exhibition, it picks up a few seats on the private jury of taste. The event, showcasing hundreds of artists and patronized by hundreds of thousands of people, spans two main locations: the lush parkland of the Giardini, created by Napoleon, and the cluster of retired shipyards and armories known as the Arsenale. Each day of press previews, my black sneakers gained a layer of whitish dust, as though mummified by travel, and my eyes burned with a thousand sightings of the same pink tote bag on everybody's arm. (By the time I left, it seemed as Venetian as a Bellini.) Gravity tugs harder than usual here. No dosage of caffeine is enough. Successful art works sense their audience's aches and respond with exquisite tact.
The limitations of the human body may well be the Biennale's true subject, but at this installment, the sixtieth since 1895, the explicit theme is otherness. The show's title is "Foreigners Everywhere," which at its least trivial signals an emphasis on the creations of the marginalized. In the eighty-seven national pavilions that make up half of the event, many of the featured artists are Indigenous; at the Central Exhibition, which constitutes the other half, a good chunk hail from the Global South and a majority are deceased, the past being the biggest foreign country of all. You might want to complain about the preponderance of death in a show that is implicitly about the health of contemporary art. But any curatorial choice that gives us fewer immersive rooms and preening enfants terribles doesn't seem so bad to me.
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Denne historien er fra May 13, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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The Dark Time. - On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging.
On the Arctic border of Russia and Norway, an espionage war is emerging. The point of contact between NATO and Russia's nuclear stronghold is the small town of Kirkenes. For years, Russia has treated the area as a laboratory, testing intelligence and influence operations before replicating them across Europe.
MIRROR IMAGES
‘A Different Man” and The Substance.”
THE FOOTBALL BRO
Pat McAfee brings a casual new style to ESPN.
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY
Proximity to wealth proves perilous in Rumaan Alam’ novel Entitlement.”
EYES WIDE SHUT
How Monet shared a private world.
WITH THE MOSTEST
The very rich hours of Pamela Harriman.
HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN
On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.
TRY IT ON
How Law Roach reimagined red-carpet style.
SORRY I'M NOT YOUR CLOWN TODAY
Bowen Yang's trip to Oz, by way of conversion therapy and S..N.L.”
SNIFF TEST
A maverick perfumer tries to make his mark on a storied fashion house.