Venice's Giardini Della Biennale and the Geopolitics of Architecture

FOLKLORIC MODERNISM: VENICE’S GIARDINI DELLA BIENNALE AND THE GEOPOLITICS OF ARCHITECTURE Joel Robinson This paper considers the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale, the largest and longest running exposition of contemporary art. It begins with an investigation of the post-fascist landscape of Venice’s Giardini della Biennale, whose built environment continued to evolve in the decades after 1945 with the construction of several new pavilions. With a view to exploring the architectural infrastructure of an event that has always billed itself as ‘international’, the paper asks how the mapping of national pavilions in this context might have changed to reflect the supposedly post-colonial and democratic aspirations of the West after the Second World War. Homing in on the nations that gained representation here in the 1950s and 60s, it looks at three of the more interesting architectural additions to the gardens: the pavilions for Israel, Canada and Brazil. These raise questions about how national pavilions are mobilised ideologically, and form/provide the basis for a broader exploration of the geopolitical superstructure of the Biennale as an institution. Keywords: pavilion, Venice Biennale, modernism, nationalism, geopolitics, postcolonialist. Joel Robinson, The Open University Joel Robinson is a Research Affiliate in the Department of Art History at the Open University and an Associate Lecturer for the Open University in the East of England. His main interests are modern and contemporary art, architecture and landscape studies. He is the author of Life in Ruins: Architectural Culture and the Question of Death in the Twentieth Century (2007), which stemmed from his doctoral work in art history at the University of Essex, and he is co-editor of a new anthology in art history titled Art and Visual Culture: A Reader (2012). Additionally, he is a freelance critic for various magazines of contemporary art, and Contributing Editor in London for Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. Folkloric modernism: Venice’s Giardini della Biennale and the geopolitics of architecture (Joel Robinson, The Open University) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2013w04jr To view the images used in this article in a larger and more detailed format, follow this link: http://openartsjournal.org/issue-2/issue-2-galleries/article-3 OPEN ARTS JOURNAL, ISSUE 2, WINTER 2013–2014 ISSN 2050-3679 www.openartsjournal.org 2 FOLKLORIC MODERNISM: here in the 1950s and 60s, it looks at three of the more interesting architectural additions to the gardens: the VENICE’S GIARDINI pavilions for Israel, Canada and Brazil. These raise questions DELLA BIENNALE AND about how national pavilions are mobilised ideologically, and form/provide the basis for a broader exploration of the THE GEOPOLITICS OF geopolitical superstructure of the Biennale as an institution. ARCHITECTURE The Giardini della Biennale are among the more Joel Robinson remarkable architectural spaces in Venice, not least because they make up the greenest area of the city. Abstract These gardens have served as the main grounds of This paper considers the national pavilions of the Venice the Venice Biennale since 1895, though the shape of Biennale, the largest and longest running exposition of this architectural landscape has continued to change contemporary art. It begins with an investigation of the post- from one era to the next. As the world’s oldest and fascist landscape of Venice’s Giardini della Biennale, whose largest international art exposition, the Venice Biennale built environment continued to evolve in the decades after long predates the present-day proliferation of such 1945 with the construction of several new pavilions. With a biennial and triennial ‘mega-events’ (Roche, 2003), and view to exploring the architectural infrastructure of an event differs from those newer ventures in that it utilises that has always billed itself as ‘international’, the paper asks freestanding buildings to separate exhibitions according how the mapping of national pavilions in this context might to the nationality of participating artists. While have changed to reflect the supposedly post-colonial and several histories of the Biennale have been written, democratic aspirations of the West after the Second World almost nothing meaningful has been said about the War. Homing in on the nations that gained representation architectural infrastructure of this institution, or indeed Figure 3.1: Main avenue of the Giardini, looking northeast, and showing the Spanish pavilion in the foreground, the Belgian and Dutch pavilions behind the trees, and the Central Pavilion (the main exposition venue) at the far right. Photograph: Joel Robinson. OPEN ARTS JOURNAL, ISSUE 2, WINTER 2013–2014 ISSN 2050-3679 www.openartsjournal.org 3 Figure 3.2: Viale Trento, or the secondary avenue of the Giardini, looking southeast, and showing (from right to left) the Swiss, Venezuelan and Russian pavilions. Photograph: Joel Robinson. about the ideological foundations of the landscape What makes these pavilions exceptional is not just in which this most prestigious and well-attended that they were built over one-hundred-odd years in exposition of contemporary art is situated.1 This – of all places – Venice. (In the modern era, this was infrastructure consists of thirty-odd national pavilions, surely one of the least welcoming cities for any kind which were built (and often rebuilt or refaced) in a of building that smacked of foreignness or newness.) staggered fashion over the course of the twentieth They are more permanent than the quickly erected, century. Each of these is owned and administered ephemeral structures that formed their counterparts by a nation, and both the architecture and the art- at the universal expositions and world’s fairs. Unlike work exhibited therein are inevitably bound up with a those national pavilions, which nonetheless served projection of national identity. as a model for what one finds at Venice, the Biennale 1 As the study of biennial culture or ‘biennialogy’ expands, pavilions have for the most part remained; they are Venice’s Giardini and its pavilions are becoming a topic of fixtures there, which define a particular sense of place, interest. In the little amount of time since this paper was not unlike temples or follies in landscaped gardens. To presented at the Open University’s 2012 Association of be sure, a few of the pavilions have been restored or Art Historians conference, more attention has already reconstructed from scratch, whether out of pragmatic been paid to them. In 2013, for instance, Diener & Diener necessity or due to a change in the way a nation Architects organised an exhibition called Common Pavilions, which showed photographs of the pavilions taken by sees itself. After all, ‘national identity is always under Gabriele Basilico; each picture was accompanied by a construction,’ as architectural historian Raymond Quek personal reflection on the pavilion by an architect or other (Quek, 2012, p.209) reminds us; and just like at the commentator chosen for the task. This has generated further world’s fairs, the form of these ambassadorial edifices interest, and led in turn to the publication of an exhibition (each adorned with its flag) needs to match up with the and catalogue of photography, Pavilions and Gardens of the most current image of the nation. Venice Biennale: Photographs by Gabriele Basilico, curated by Adele Re Rebaudengo (2013). OPEN ARTS JOURNAL, ISSUE 2, WINTER 2013–2014 ISSN 2050-3679 www.openartsjournal.org 4 The key difference between world’s fair pavilions and those at Venice’s international exhibition of art, then, is that the latter have largely persisted – and have persisted in such a way that they might be said to tell the story of this place. Yet, because these structures have a longer history, as part of a landscape that has witnessed so much change and additional building over the decades, they are a lot more difficult to discuss than buildings that have been constructed for a specific event, in a specific year. Studying the pavilions of a particular world’s fair, for instance, offers a more controlled object of inquiry. That might explain, at least partially, why the world’s fairs and their pavilions have generally received so much more critical attention (Greenhalgh, 1990; Rydell, 1993; Tenorio-Trillo, 1996; Figure 3.3: View looking south toward the British pavilion Schrenk, 1999; Mattie, 2000; Morton, 2000; Storm, 2010; converted from an older 1897 tea pavilion in 1909 by Edwin Alfred Rickards, and decorated with the banners Geppert, 2010). Nevertheless, it is the very fact that the of the installation English Magic (2013) by Jeremy Deller. Biennale pavilions are implicated in a complex narrative Photograph: Joel Robinson. that has now been unfolding for over a century, which makes them so intriguing, and worth a closer look. The Biennale pavilions are worth investigating for the national image that they project, but also for what they contribute to the concrete fabrication of a supposedly ‘international’ space for art. Not to be fooled by the rhetoric of international cooperation and peace that was so much a part of the world’s fairs, though, one should approach this architectural landscape critically, with a view to digging a little deeper than the stated aims and intentions of the Biennale organisers.2 Worth considering here is the extent to which its network of national pavilions might reveal, in the sphere of culture, what the geographer Jane Margaret Jacobs in her ground-breaking book The Edge of Empire Figure 3.4: View looking east toward the French pavilion (1996), calls ‘the embedded unevenness of power, designed by Faust Finzi in 1912. Photograph: Joel Robinson. which is the legacy of imperialism’ (p.157). Critics are no doubt aware of how the Biennale ‘is marked in its very architectural structure by the inequalities of the colonialist world order’ (Madra, 2006, p.526); but precisely how this geopolitical unevenness is manifest in the Giardini is what needs to be explained.

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