Case Study:
The Venice Biennale & The Interconnected Artworld Network: 2005, 2007
Sources:
History of the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale Official website
Nationalism, global economics, and the art world
- In an era of international markets, global flows of information and capital, professional networks and careers that cross national boundaries, multiple artist identities among national and ethnic affiliations, and a general movement away from identity politics in art and culture, how can major international art exhibitions at this level of power and influence continue to be organized by "national" exhibitions?
- The legacy of the founding the Venice Biennale and competetion and rivalries among nations after the organization of political and institutional relations by European and American nationalism (the UN model).
Funding and artist selection process for the US:
- Note the strange temporary alliance of government agancy (State Department), major, well-funded non-profit museum institution (The Solomon Guggenheim Foundation and the Guggenheim Museum), and private and corporate funding sources from the US.
Museum and gallery network: artists, dealers, curators
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STATES PAVILION, 51st VENICE BIENNALE, 2005 Artist: Ed Ruscha |
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UNITED STATES PAVILION 51st VENICE BIENNALE |
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Ruscha’s Project Ed Ruscha’s painting, almost from the outset, was tied very closely to the look and feel of a journalistic recording of found facades and signage. “I take things as I find them,” Ruscha has often remarked. “A lot of these things come from the noise of everyday life.” Ruscha’s selection as representative of the United States for the 51st Venice Biennale is both long overdue and welcome; he has been at the cutting edge of American art for at least forty years. On the occasion of this Biennale, he has taken the United States Pavilion “as he found it,” creating an entirely new cycle of paintings, based on an earlier series of dark urban landscapes, and installing it with the Jeffersonian symmetry of the pavilion’s architecture in mind. As in the past, Ruscha’s paintings are photographic in feel, depict an urban landscape at once familiar and remote, and manage to make mundane structures somehow monumental. But the landscape depicted here is no longer limited to Los Angeles, and the familiarity of the imagery is put to the service of something more complicated and unsettling. The new cycle of paintings, and the Venice installation, make progress, or the course of progress, their subject. Ruscha’s longstanding desire to hammer down or capture whatever is out there in a documentary manner is here subject to something more imaginary. Without forfeiting his deadpan reserve, Ruscha has opened up images we think we understand to speculation and to doubt. Catalogue A fully illustrated catalogue, with forewords by Joan Didion and Frances Stark and an essay by Commissioner Linda Norden and Consulting Curator Donna De Salvo, has been published on the occasion of the exhibition at the 51st Venice Biennale. |
Project Administration Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Sponsors United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs The Broad Art Foundation Lehman Brothers The Ford Foundation Hugo Boss Supporters John and Frances Bowes Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy Glenn Fuhrman Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr. Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis The Leonard & Evelyn Lauder Foundation Aimee and Robert Lehrman Margaret and Daniel Loeb Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Foundation Stavros Merjos and Honor Fraser John and Amy Phelan Rosina Lee Yue and Bert A. Lies, Jr., M.D. In-kind support Gruppo Bodino SpA, Torino; Larry Gagosian Contact: Blue Medium, Inc. Telephone: 1 212-675-1800 Fax: 1 212-675-1855 E-mail: info@bluemedium.com |
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Further information, 2005 Biennale: |
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The 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007
"Venice, November 22nd, 2007, Biennale Art: 52nd International Art Exhibition:
319,332 visitors at the 52nd International Art Exhibition: best result in the past twenty-five years. The 52nd International Art Exhibition, first and last stop of the Grand Tour 2007, closed yesterday, November 21st, with an outstanding result in terms of visitors: 319,332 people attended this year’s exhibition in 165 days. This has been the most attended Biennale of the past twenty-five years and one of the most visited in the whole history of the exhibition."
Think with the senses – Feel with the mind. Art in the Present Tense, curated by Robert Storr, has been organised with the support of Antonveneta ABN AMRO, illycaffè, ACI – Automobil Club d’Italia, Fantoni, Casamania, Matteograssi, Bisazza, Decima Italia, ETC, Flex, and Link Italy. (more)
Biennale website
Artists list (official site) | Artist's List and Info
Director, 2007: Robert Storr
118 Nations and participants
Video of US Pavilion Exhibition
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STATES PAVILION, 52st VENICE BIENNALE, 2007 Artist: Felix Gonzalez-Torres |
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The US Pavilion Venice Biennale, 2007 |
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Felix Gonzalez-Torres, |
The US Pavilion Sponsorship Information, 2007 Organization and Sponsorship |
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Official US Announcements Department of State (Federal Advisory Committee on International Exhibitions (FACIE), the Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA)) |
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Search YouTube for all Venice Biennale videos
Reviews/Comments
Jerry Saltz, On Curating the Biennale and "Bienniel Culture" (Artnet)
International Herald Tribune coverage
Martin Irvine, 2005-2008