THE CREATURE the Real Action Is the Week Before the Opening, Even Before the VIP Preview

Jacopo Robusti detto Tintoretto, Last Supper, 1591-1594, Oil on canvas, 144 x 224 ½ in. (366 × 570 cm), Installation, ILLUMInations, 54. Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Photo by Francesco Galli, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia. ou have to understand what Venice is really about,” said a Roman art publisher who has attended every “Y Biennale since the seventies. “You think that because nothing is for sale there that it is not about money. But in fact, it is all about money. And everything is for sale, just not officially. THE CREATURE The real action is the week before the opening, even before the VIP preview. That’s when the guys and girls with the big yachts from are cutting all the deals with the galleries for the artists showing at the Biennale. They agree on terms, and the money actually THE BLACK LAGUNA changes hands at Art Basel two weeks later. Venice is like a big window display for the actual transactions that happen where NOTES ON THE VENICE BIENNALE all the banks are.” Sometimes these transactions are neither discreet nor about BY DREW HAMMOND to wait for Art Basel. A purchase, probably in the $250,000 range, of a work by the South African artist, Nicholas Hlobo, Central Pavilion, 54. Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Photo by Impundulu Zonke Ziyandilandela (All the Lightning Birds Are After Giorgio Zucchiatti, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia. Me), 2011, was the subject of very public media notice when the chief curator of “Puma Creative, a company which has already demonstrated a firm commitment to advancing the profile Opposite page: Nicholas Hlobo, Iimpundulu Zonke Ziyandilandela, 2011, Rubber, ribbon, mixed media, sound, Dimensions variable, Sound recorded by Ndindodwa, of visual art in Africa,” bought the piece on behalf of Jochen Izulu lindila band, Duration 23 minutes, 25 seconds, Commissioned for 54. Esposizione Zeitz (Chairman and CEO of Puma), from Hlobo’s Cape Town Internazionale d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Installation, Arsenale, Courtesy of Gallery, Stevenson—presumably with the intention of adding it Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town. +27 21 462 1500 to the collection of a future museum in Africa. Why is the rep- resentative of a German “sportlifestyle” multi-national manager buying the work of an African artist, and leaking the purchase to the media on the first day of previews at Venice? The reason 40 THE ART ECONOMIST THE ART ECONOMIST 41 could be to share the pure joy of aesthetic discov- distinction. Although one of the criteria that makes it such a distinc- vilions beginning in 1907. These pavilions are under the control ery, cultural philanthropy, a reflection of the love of tion is that it purports to be above commerce, a further irony of its of curators for each nation represented, but the curator who is the African culture by Herr Zeitz, a Swahili speaker and condition is that participation of an art work in the Biennale is tan- Biennale Director controls the biggest and most central structure honorary warden of the Kenya Wildlife Service. Or tamount to a brand label that almost invariably guarantees market of the Giardini, the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, the center-piece of perhaps it might have something to do with the fact value and practically every currency in the art world that translates the Biennale, the embodiment of its theme, and the home of the that fast growing economies in Africa offer the best into market value de facto: the attention of museum curators, high- eighty-three artists the curator has invited to participate. In addi- chances for double-digit growth in sales for Puma. end galleries, collectors of note, media coverage and often, even tion, the curator serves as a gatekeeper to the admission of proposals And art, readily available to the resourceful buyer, scholarly research. by non-profit organizations to create the Collateral Events, in effect also serves as the exalted and respectful expression Of course, another thing that is supposed to distinguish Venice sideshows that are allowed to use the Biennale logo, and to benefit on the mask of commercial aspiration. is the general quality of the artworks—no matter how controversial from its promotional machine. Although she does not initiate them, This example practically is an international case such estimations invariably become. This is where the curator comes she can choose to accept or reject, and this time the acceptance rate study of how art serves profit in a way that has only in. Officially known as the Director of the Visual Arts Sector—in was approximately 50 percent an incidental relationship to the art market. For fact, the Biennale includes other sectors at other times of the year— For this duty, Bice Curiger, a founder and editor of the re- whatever reasons earnest or cynical, curators bring the curator is the official face of the Biennale, the operational chief spected art journal, Parkett, was an uncontroversial choice whose the work of a talented artist from the supposed au- executive and its post as an Adjunct thenticity of a region utterly distant from any major aesthetic strate- Curator at the international art city, and confer upon the artist the gist. Choices by the Kunsthaus Zürich, legitimacy of Western awards and institutions—in curator can have an geographically Top: this case, the Tate Modern, the Institute of Contem- enduring effect on at least, seemed Artist Song Dong at the porary Art, Boston, and the Venice Biennale. Once the market, on the to hark back to Arsenale with his "Para- the artist attains the cultural imprimatur of the nature of artistic the glory days of Pavilion" installation The Intelligence of the Poor, West, with its accompanying rise in market value, practice and gallery Harald Szeemann: 2011, Courtesy Han Jia. a corporate titan or his assign, purchases the work exhibition choices in a quote from so that it can be reinserted into the culture whence it worldwide, and on Paolo Baratta, the Left: Franz West at came in order to enhance the PR profile of the firm’s the development of President of the ILLUMInations, 54. operations abroad. contemporary ar- Biennale, and its Esposizione Internazionale Now Herr Zeitz, a management prodigy of heroic tistic culture and its titular adminis- d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Photo by Francesco stature, perhaps conceived the operation in a more international status trative head, “the Galli, Courtesy La Biennale altruistic frame of mind—he might not even have for an entire conti- happy journey di Venezia. the time to give it much thought at all—but he is far nent—arguably, we from Harald’s beard Bottom: too sophisticated not to appreciate the irony of the are still feeling the to the cherry red Jennifer Allora and situation. In either case, someone in his organiza- effects of the late of Bice’s lipstick.” Guillermo Calzadilla, Gloria, 2011, Installation, tion is paying attention to this, or there would not Harald Szeemann’s Apparently, this Pavilion of the United be such an emphasis on art in the company’s presen- inclusion of many journey was made States of America, 54th tation strategy for Africa. Prominent on the African Asian artists in the Bice Curiger, Director, 54. Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, even happier by International Art Exhibition, Photo by Francesco Galli, Courtesy La Biennale di Venezia. La Biennale di Venezia, Puma site is a button for Kehinde Wiley, “one of the back-to-back edi- Maja Hoffmann, Photo by IRondinella, world’s most sought-after artists,” who has been tions of the Biennale he curated in 1999 and 2001, including the an heiress to the Hoffmann-Laroche pharmaceutical fortune whose Courtesy La Biennale di “commissioned by Puma to create four original participation of the great Chinese curator, Hou Hanru, as one of the LUMA foundation receives special thanks from Baratta for contrib- Venezia. portraits, featuring three of Africa’s most decorated curators of the Biennale’s 50th edition two years later. uting an undisclosed sum to fund Curiger’s “Para-Pavilions”(see football players.” Mr. Wiley should be relieved to In order to understand limitations on the curator’s influence it below), and presumably other Biennale expenses as well. Besides see that Puma’s writers took care to associate decora- is useful to recall, to the exasperation of Biennale veterans, that the her adjunct position with the Kunsthaus, where she is a hometown tion with the footballers and not with his work, no Biennale is a sprawling, ever-expanding affair that occupies most colleague of Maja Hoffmann, who is President of the Zürich Kun- matter how the company attempts to use it to deco- prominently two major theaters of operations in the city together sthalle, Curiger also is editorial director of Tate etc., the magazine rate its operations in the former colonial domains with an outpost on the Isola di San Servolo (the latter only visited of the Tate, where Hoffmann also is a trustee, and Curiger also is with an “Africa-inspired product range.” by the more obsessive scouts, being remote and sparsely serviced on the Board of the Palais de Tokyo museum in Paris, which also No matter how we might marvel at “the rise of by the vaporetti, the Venetian maritime equivalent of a bus). One is receives support from Hoffmann’s LUMA Foundation. So, the two the rest,” the glories of BRIC, and how countries the Arsenale, a vast sheltered antique ship building complex in the ladies would not be at a loss for conversation topics at tea time. without primary technological proprietorship could northeastern zone of the city’s eastern sector of Castello.

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