Page 25 - Studio International - August 1966

Reflections on the Biennale 2

by David Thompson
If it somehow seemed a quieter-toned, less strident Bien- tinuity in space figure which was the centrepiece of the
nale than most I remember, this may partly be a matter Futurist exhibition in 1960 appears again now in a
of the zeitgeist, partly due to a lack of manifestly major Boccioni retrospective. It is a conscientious representa-
figures, and partly due to Morandi. The Biennale can tion of by far the most gifted of the Futurist artists, but a
seldom have had a central retrospective (Morandi died totally lifeless and prosaic hanging dampens the effect
just two years ago, at 74) which so pervasively spread by giving over the first and largest room to the earliest
its own quiet authority around it. The pictures were so and least interesting work. Throughout the Italian
small, the rooms they were in so high and narrow, that Pavilion this apparent lack of any knowledge of how to
people at first almost overlooked them in the general display works of art to the best advantage contributes to
panic of finding their way through the seventy-eight a generally gimcrack and ad hoc atmosphere unworthy
rooms of the Palazzo Centrale at all. Then word got of the occasion. Only two individual displays in the whole
around, and the Biennale had acquired its still centre. labyrinth of gracelessly partitioned boxes use the space
Nothing could be less auspicious in description than alloted to them imaginatively. One is the sculptor
Morandi's Oeuvre, with its mild, beige colour, its discreetly Viani's, whose smooth torso-shapes of marble and bronze
sensuous facture, its horizon limited by the far edge of a look blandly impressive in what another, but more
table-top. But something of the atmosphere of pittura eminent, sculptor once called the 'sucked sweet' tradition.
metafisica always survived in Morandi's still-lifes, haunt- The other is Fontana's, who makes the most dogmatically
ing the close-grouped bottles with human presence in stylish gesture of the whole Biennale by setting in a
spite of the total absence of the human image, and blindingly white, egg-shaped interior five identical white
charging the repetition of a certain jug's silhouette with canvases with a single black slit down the middle. The
far more than formal significance. Roberto Longhi's rest of the Italian section, including Burri, Gentilini and
selection for this memorably concentrated show scored Dorazio, ranges strenuously from the vacuous to the
heavily with the inclusion of several of the seldom- provincial, with some amelioration in the rugged black
exhibited landscapes. iron shapes of Ghermandi, the locked stone masses of
It has been in some ways a year for Reappearances. Pietro Cascella, and Ceroli's single exhibit, a huge
(Italian artists regularly use the Biennale to supplement packing-case into which you peer to find it lined with
their relative paucity of commercial galleries, and hinged planks silhouetted as faces and figures.
Venezuela has sensibly brought Soto forward a second It is always difficult to compare objectively the effects,
time this year). It is not the first time Morandi himself in such an exhibition as this, of work you already know
has dominated the Italian Pavilion (he was in the 'Sur- well and admire, and work which is relatively unfamiliar.
realist' Biennale of 1954), and Boccioni's striding Con- It is only fair to record, therefore, that (among a wide
consensus of opinion during the week of the vernissage
that the most balanced and serious concentration of work
was to be found in the American and British Pavilions)
there was some grumbling that the British one looked
too crowded, and that the individual artists therefore
made rather less than their merited impression. The im-
pression was, nevertheless, considerable, and in that
testing but beautiful Venetian light all four painters,
and Denny and Smith in particular, were revealed for
the colourists they are as never before. The paintings
seemed to acquire a new bloom and depth which were
hardly to be matched anywhere else in the Biennale, as
well as a commensurate sense of scale. Apart from its
front room, however, the British Pavilion is an ungrateful
place to exhibit in, and inhibits scale. Caro's Early one
morning seems double the size it does at the Tate, and in
spite of the tactful skill of the hanging, most of the
paintings over-fill the rooms.
The Americans to that extent gain by the lower and
roomier proportions of their building, and they have
emphasized the effect by bold but very spare hanging.
For sheer professional presentation their contribution
looks superb, particularly in a room where the intensity
of light engendered round Ellsworth Kelly's saturated
fields of pure colour almost hurts the eye. Olitski's tall
panels of what seems like watered silk add up to a regal
interior decoration but never quite manage as paintings
to make a positive virtue of having no form. The essential
arbitrariness of Lichtenstein's subject-matter — as distinct
Still Life, 1960, shown in the from the straitjacket of his style—splits his exhibition
Giorgio Morandi retrospective
in the Italian Pavilion straight down the middle, between the assumed neo-