Page 23 - Studio International - August 1966

Reflections on the Biennale 1

by Alan Bowness

The first Biennale that I saw was in 1954, and I have seen but then Sverdlov was not unlike Trotsky in appearance,
them all since then, usually going on the Press days that as photographs of the time attest. Stylistically the picture
precede the official opening but whenever possible re- represented a shift from the Bastien Lepage-type natura-
turning later in the summer when the crowds have lism very much in evidence ten years ago to something
thinned. Of course there is much to criticize, but the that one associated with the graphic poster-like realism
Biennale remains a marvellous institution that has be- of the 1920's, so perhaps the gap between Eastern and
come indispensable to anyone with a concern for what is Western art is lessening. Visiting the Russian Pavilion at
happening in modern art, and this year's exhibition is no Venice one always hopes to find evidence in support of
exception. It is not that there is a lot of good painting this, and once it does we shall be in for surprises. Abstract
and sculpture in Venice, because there isn't and I art is after all almost a Russian or Russian-inspired
suspect never has been. But bad painting can be inter- invention.
esting too, and it is in its comprehensiveness and lack of One of the consequences of the increasingly sophisti-
selectivity that part of the Biennale's virtue lies. Each of cated international public at Venice—at least on the
the thirty or so participating countries shows precisely Press days—has been the concentration on what is newest
what it likes, and the gulf between the handful of art- and most avant-garde. This is now becoming a serious
producing countries (where something new is happening) problem, for a number of reasons. One is that the two
and the many art-imitating countries (where it isn't) is countries where experiment is today liveliest and most
a large and obvious one. The art-imitators can however fruitful—the United States and Britain—have, propor-
be useful weathervanes, giving some indication of general tionately speaking, two of the smallest national pavilions.
trends, and accepting or rejecting what has gone before. In consequence they can neither show the number of
If you have an almost inexhaustible curiosity about new artists who deserve to be shown, nor can the work of
art, as I have, the quantity of work at Venice becomes those artists selected always be displayed adequately.
perfectly acceptable. Imitators, should they come from a small country, are
Admittedly the Biennale is not what it was—or so it likely to get a showing before originals.
always seems, but in fact I have the impression that the Even so, I felt very strongly at Venice this time that the
general level now remains steady, and I'm not at all sure discussion of serious matters of painting and sculpture
that one could say that the 1966 Biennale is any worse or had almost become an Anglo-American prerogative. This
better than the 1964 or 1962 one. What is certainly true seems certainly true so far as exploration of colour and
is that none of the Biennales of the sixties can compare space are concerned. The best work outside the Anglo-
with those of the decade after the war, when prizes went American orbit (and in this I include the Swede Fahl-
to artists of the calibre of Matisse and Braque. Even in strOm) was either kinetic (e.g. Le Parc, Soto) or colour-
1954 the three big prizes went to Ernst, Arp, and Miro. less (e.g. among the Italians, the white pictures of
But all this represents a backlog of great artists whose Fontana and Castellani, the black and whites of Burri,
work had gone unexhibited during the years of Fascism the monochromes of Bonalumi).
and war, and these post-war Biennales were the excep- Another consequence of the concentration on the new
tion and not the norm. has been the steady lowering of the average age of
Another change that one notices is the lack of surprises. Biennale exhibitors. If nothing is done to counteract this,
I can remember the extraordinary excitement in 1958 Venice will end up by being indistinguishable from the
at the big Spanish Pavilion, filled with abstract paintings Paris Biennale for the under-35s. Budding talents are
and sculptures by such unknown artists as Tapies, quickly exploited and squeezed dry and discarded the
Chillida, Saura, Millares and a dozen others. It was moment their novelty is lost. The years between a young
completely unexpected by everyone that Franco's Spain
should produce such a group, and though the inter-
national vogue for these painters has now faded, some-
thing certainly remains. The whole art world has now
become so internationalized and so self-aware that one
knows everything almost before it happens. Artists in
1966 who might have provided pleasant surprises, like
the Brazilian Camargo, for example, or the Pole Stazew-
ski, have already been seen in London. The only excep-
tions in Venice— the pavilions I visit with most anticipa-
tion— are those of Japan and Soviet Russia. The Japanese
usually turn out to be the most blatant of art-imitators
it was Japanese matter-painting a few years ago, and
now it's Japanese happenings— but one day surely some-
thing creative must occur in Japan. And the same
more obviously the case in Russia. This year's moss
momentous picture was by Brussilovskij Mossin —a grand
Right machine called 1918: Lenin, Zerginskij and Sverdlov in Red
Brussilovskij Mossin's 'grand Square. Its immediate interest lay in the fact that to
machine'-1918: Lenin, several observers and critics one of the figures bore a
Zerginskij and Sverdlov in
Red Square striking resemblance to the hitherto banned Trotsky-