The Venice Biennale, Part I: Close Encounters
by Aemilia Scott

Aemilia Scott has attended the Venice Biennale for numerous years. In this multipart series, she explores the festival's 51st incarnation.

The Venice International Exhibition of Art is a world-famous art orgie that has made waves and made careers every other year for the past 102 years. The exhibition reflects a long and proud tradition of avant garde artmaking, and its list of participants includes the most influential artists of every movement. But while there are stacks of criticism surrounding the "exhibition of art," the "international" part of the title goes undiscussed. Art lovers attend this exhibition for the world-class artwork, and yet the exhibition begins and ends not with what is on the walls, but with the walls themselves.

	Flak Interactive For photographs of this year's Biennale, click here.

Unabashed displays of patriotism and nationalism have fallen out of favor since World War II. Many might take umbrage with that statement, citing examples of America's recent patriotic and nationalistic renaissance since Sept. 11, 2001. It is true that in America patriotism has gained favor since the '90s, but considering the spectrum of the entire twentieth century, "These Colors Don't Run" bumper stickers are just a blip. We didn't replace the statue of Saddam with a larger statue of George Bush. Press photographers don't scour the country looking for examples of impoverished farmers to hail their proud struggle. Countries with attitudes like that seem creepy and antiquated. Fidel Castro is both a threat and a dinosaur.

Today our patriotism, albeit as strong and xenophobic as always, is much subtler and more refined. We now see images of our president looking for kindling in Texas instead of riding on a horse down a very wide street flanked with soldiers. Remember President Bush's one attempt at classic Patriotic Grandstanding? The flight suit did not go over well with Americans. And yet Mussolini and Roosevelt alike had themselves photographed in situations of preposterous militarism, and the public of the late 1930s ate it up.

Even though campaign managers and advisors spend lifetimes trying to conceal such pretense nowadays, one can't help but feel a little nostalgic at the thought of that kind of spectacle. Why must all modern patriotic display seem so damn real? Why not parade Tommy Franks in a howitzer down Pennsylvania Avenue? Why not take photos of Condoleeza Rice from below as she looks up into the sun, with her glistening brown skin heralding a new day of African pride?

Because it's scary, that's why. It's that kind of patriotism-plus-nationalism, the kind where people start using words like volksgeist, that gets countries into world wars. And yet — and yet, there is something amazing about this sort of art. The art of the world's fair, the art of unironic national pride. It will never be recreated as it was, but there is a way to see a living postcard from that time of confrontational patriotism. If any country would maintain the aesthetic tradition of the world's fair, Italy would.

	For a map of the Biennial, click here.

And it is from this perspective that one can begin to the Venice Biennale. There are many international art exhibitions, but there are few as famous as "La Biennale," and there are no others that take place in pavilions, each built by the participating country, that remain as architectural landmarks throughout the year. Over the last six years a second, more traditionally curated show has been added to the Biennale, but the true gem of the show are the "Giardini" — the gardens in Venice, built by Napoleon, which now house the pavilions of participating countries.

Napoleon would be proud. Each pavilion is a monument to the grandest and proudest national identity that a nation could construct. And as is the way with national monuments, both the building and the identity are equally well constructed. Italy's pavilion evokes the Pantheon, Germany's looks like the intersection of the Pantheon and a Gothic cathedral. And of course, America's is a miniature Jeffersonian building that is a dead-wringer for the Capitol. Italy's pavilion was made in the late 19th Century, but most pavilions on the main ground were either made or remade in the mid to late 1930s — the glorious, shining, horseback-riding apex of patriotic architecture.

Some of the pavilions made later include Brazil — a monument to post-War modernist design, much like a little Brasilia — Japan — also highly modern, but a synthesis of elevated stilt housing and high-rise apartment living — and Norway — a mid-century modernist poem written in concrete. Each country's pavilion reads like an autobiography, capturing both the identity of the country and the era of its completion.

It's a fascinating thing to behold, such an intense display of permanent nationalism in such a small area. Walking around the center of the Giardini does evoke the proud nationalism of a worlds' fair while still maintaining a certain amount of class — after all, we're talking about contemporary art here, not the toaster of the future. The main, tree-lined road leads past Spain, Belgium and The Netherlands straight to Italia, the grandest and largest of all the pavilions. Across the clearing from Belgium is the USA, flanked by Israel and Norway.

What the maps don't show is that the Biennale organizers placed a nice little cafe for you, weary art viewer, right outside of America — a great use of all that space in front of the pavilion. East of the entrance is the grand walk past Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Japan which leads you to a clearing enclosed by Germany, Canada and Great Britain. You walk up a hill to Australia, which has used its architectural genius to make the most of the hilly space, and then you come upon the Latrinestan pavilion... or wait, maybe those are just banks of Porta-Potties. As you approach the river, you begin to notice the pavilions are increasingly unkempt, increasingly surrounded by stinky outdoor toilets, and increasingly close to trash barges. Uruguay's air conditioning is out, Hungary's proud facade looks decayed on closer inspection. You have now reached the river.

Its name is not published on any Biennale maps, but for the sake of argument let us call it the River Styx. Across the river is the other side of coin of nationalism. Proud pavilions and shady streets give way to weeds, crabgrass and unused fountains full of stagnant water. Brazil manages to keep itself above water, so to speak, because it consistently produces fantastic artists that weary art lovers must cross the river to see. But past Brazil lies the strip of buildings housing Serbia, Montenegro, Egypt, "Venice," Poland and Romania — one large, sad, non-descript housing project for poorly-funded countries.

This is the dark side of the Giardini, where the cafes end and the decay begins. Although the organizers of the Biennale would never admit to it, this is the side of the Giardini that asks to be forgotten. Instead of a stately architecture evoking the endurance of this country or that, the buildings on the dark side give the sense of provisional housing, no matter how formidable the art they house. This is the area where nations that missed out on the late 1930s, or didn't exist in the late 1930s, tried desperately to catch up with the feats of their old counterparts. To be sure, Egypt, Poland and Austria had more important concerns during the 1930s than creating a national monumental architecture. But the fact remains that Germany's pavilion is a shady, air-conditioned sanctuary of well-funded art, and Romania could use a good stucco job and a window unit.

And you, savvy art-veiwer, — no matter how liberal you may be, no matter how many Molotov cocktails you threw at the G8 summit in Genoa — will turn into a flag-waving bigot by day's end. After spending the first part of the day in spacious, well-kept pavilions surrounded by restaurants and Illy Espresso stations, in the afternoon the heat and thirst hit you somewhere between Hungary and Romania. If you even go to the other side at all. But if you are determined to have a truly world-art experience, by afternoon you are swatting mosquitoes and cursing the developing world as you walk through overgrown drained lakes and hazardous rocky terrain.

The saddest thing is that though these countries have sorely underfunded art communities and relatively new systems of art education, much of the work produced is excellent and totally raw. This year the artist representing Poland recreated the Stanford Prison Experiment — for real — and filmed a 39-minute documentary about the Polish response to incarceration and power. But few crossed the river, and so few will see it. This inescapable inequity is disturbing to an American raised with notions of hope and potential for all on earth. Maybe it is unfair that every country doesn't get to participate equally in the construction of its own dreams. Maybe it is unfair to put every country in the ring together. But at the 1939 World's Fair in New York, Germany and the USSR were there with Rhodesia and Nicaragua. It's just that only the most exciting and monumental pavilions made it into the history books. In order to be enduringly monumental, an enduring monument must be made.

Then maybe the Giardini of the Venice Biennale, this continually living monument to nations' dreams and disappointments, teaches viewers a lesson simply by confronting them with its disappointments alongside its dreams. It shows that patriotism is a force that exists not within a country, but between countries. It shows that there is a certain violence in patriotism because its power only exists in relation to others nations and their own patriotisms. It shows both sides of the story. Sitting and sipping an espresso, enjoying the huge expanse of land in front of the American Pavilion as you gaze across the river from the shade, it will never be more clear.

E-mail Aemilia Scott at aemilia at gmail dot com.