Our pleasure in arrival in Venice soured by an accommodation of a modesty verging on meanness, a flight of stairs up from the foyer, properly floor one-and-a-half, with low heavily timbered ceiling, as if an overcautious builder had decided to throw several trees at it, just to be sure, the room barely big enough for us and the mosquitoes, the windows hardly large enough to make a hasty exit lest the borer-ridden beams – did I mention that? – above fall down; our joy in the city eclipsed by the mass psyche of mass tourism, here as extreme as anywhere, not the racist displeasure at stupid Americans sharing our airspace, being in earshot, as before, but the tidal – appropriately – pull of tourism towards the destinations, into the churches, the squares, an ooze in which one can’t help but be caught up, sucked in, dragging us one way, until we don’t know whether we are fighting it or going with the flow, and then the other: we left our cell in the city as early as we could, running a bathroom relay against the falling odds of diminishing amounts of hot water coming through, and anyway lacking the perquisites for a healthy matinal regime. No tea. Nothing to munch on but the sheer roughage of dry muesli. So went down to the market.
But while I remember, let me transcribe the notices affixed just inside the front door:
REGULATION OF
THIS IS TO CUSTOMERS THAT APARTMENT IS PART OF A APARTMENT BUILDING AND THAT MUST BE FOLLOWED THE RULES THAT MUST BE RESPECTED BY ALL:DON’T MAKE NOISE EVERYTHING ‘THAT CAN THE TO DISTURB QUIET APARTMENT BUILDING.
ENTRANCE IN ADDITION TO RAISE EXIT CASES ON THE STAIRS FOR DAMAGES TO AVOID STEPS AND ACCOMPANYING THE CLOSING UP THE MAIN ENTRANCE WITHOUT TO BANG
FAILURE IN RESPECT OF RULES AND MEASURES BE TAKEN ANY DAMAGE TO LOCAL AND/OR THE ITEMS TO BE PAID BY THE CUSTOMER.
And:
ATTENTION
IS ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED PUT OUT OF THR DOOR
RUBBISH BAGS OR OTHER ANY THIGH.
RECOMMENDS OF THE ACCOMPANYING MAIN ENTRANCE
WITHOUT IT TO BANG.
And found the market good. Showed barely any thigh.
And a great many bangs to the buck. Chillies in arrangements like bouquets. An embarrassment of riches in the pescheria for people who come from an island. As if we live at home gastronomically deprived. Giant scallops. Clams. Cockles. An eel pointed out to the fishmonger by a lady customer slithering away to freedom, well, trying to find a drain to squeeze through, snaking on the ground, fat as a baby’s wrist. Crabs, both deep and shallow, spiderlike and platelike. Whole salmon. Tuna. Sardines. Marlin. Sole, small ones. Fishy-looking fish of standard and exceptional size. And ugly squishy fish with bits of wood holding their jaws open. Like members of parliament. Then the soft fish who are tentacled. Octopi. Squid associated with their ink more than their flesh. Black and viscous. Other baby squid, miniatures of the giants, with long mitres like trainee bishops. Scampi, clawed and pincered or just tails. Prawns. Shrimp in boxes alive, millions of transparent bodies, with hair-like antennae, crawling legs, steering legs, as if dreaming they are running, all writhing.
Fruit: yes. Veges: fungi, three main varieties, none familiar. Yellow mushrooms, like from the woods; mushrooms with the look of having been dusted with cinnamon; and fungi proper, big meaty things. Melons. Rock melon. The one we bought a gratiti? Sweet, syrupy, as if fermented. Dripping on the stoop where we stopped below the Rialto bridge. And ate our bakery fare too, chocolate almond pastries, pizzetta.
Watching the water-trucks jockey for space laden with whatever the city needs, canal cowboys, shouting over the throb and chug of their engines at each other, throttles on full front, full back; stuff stacked on the level decks rather than stowed in the holds, steered from the back, with giant rudders, and off-loaded on pneumatic-tyred trolleys, deck to deck to shore, if necessary, there being a tacit agreement that if your boat is closer to the quai then I can board it and use it to cross to shore like a pontoon. So we saw a thick-armed captain load his hand-trolley on his neighbour’s deck, while the neighbour and a mate were lugging onboard their boat a sculptural group of pelicans done in bronze, the former having to cross behind, the latter in front, without a word either way.
And the gondolas, one group exceptional for splitting the gentlemen from the ladies, who, from the gentlemen’s gondola were serenaded by a beefy accordion player and mouthy friend, the ladies chatting among themselves, sipping bubbles probably expensive and looking ostentatiously unimpressed. Not like the scary facelift women-of-certain-ages-wishing-to-render-said-ages-ambiguous and ending up with cheekbones like predatory animals, lips coloured-in, stretched up to the ears, again, like cats pretending they possess lips. But a sight.
Arriving at St. Mark’s we joined the already lengthening queue to enter the basilica. Russians let us in then ushered us in in front of them. The door requested we lose the backpack with decorous politeness, permitting that we be let in to the front on our return from baggage check. Which proved hard to find. The guy who swapped the pack for the token was writing manuscript. That was nice.
The basilica of St. Mark snaked through by the throng on mats to protect the tessellated floor was as Byzantine and wonderfully eclectic in style as I remembered. And also notably disparate in scale: going from the massive architectural forms of its construction, covered in gold mosaic, to statues no bigger than your shin – somehow human scale and for that less appreciably ‘sacred’ than St. Peter’s – our last monolithic basilica stop. Less fear-of-God-instilling I suppose. And throughout the experience of being there one is being reminded of how much the Venetians stole. Even to stealing the remains of St. Mark from Alexandria in the tenth century, when the first basilica was built. To house booty.
As it grew and changed, more booty added; from the Fourth Crusade, the famous Roman quadrivium of horses arriving, dated to the second century BC. And the Pala D’Oro itself – the Golden Rood or screen – partially thieved, a shining gold panel set with precious stones and miniatures in oil. A thing that used to be shown on festive occasions, processed.
Ascended to the Loggia and Museum at extra cost. Where the construction methods especially as regards the thoroughgoing mosaicking of the interior of the Basilica were laid bare. And the incorporation of mosaic at all must be counted in among those elements of the inheritance from Byzantium, of techniques and physical appurtenances to the Basilica, to Venice, bearing witness to the city’s debt to and re-casting of Byzantium in Christian form. To the glory of both Venice and Constantinople conquered. To the greater glory of …
Mosaic being a decorative form of classical provenance which flourished in Islamic cultures, eventually coming from there? But in terms of being more decorative than representational more readily associated with the Eastern than the Western Church. Its technical aspect being remarkable on two counts: one, that it required a hierarchy of editors or directors, placing the stones, applying a mortar to set them, then adding a second more rigid mortar to ensure their rigidity; two, that the stones were applied from the back of the image, the front having a support against which they were pressed, to give them uniform prominence, make a smooth surface, in other words.
The museum showed also exceptional examples of mosaic work, in some of which the stones were rice-grain thin, to make skin tones, the faces’ expressions near in representational power to oil-painting. Fine work attributed to the last major mosaicist whose name I did not record.
I did write down the name of the master tapestry artist, Giovanni Zen, one example of whose work was entitled, ‘The triumphal train of an emperor who, on a wagon drawn by white horses, is crowned by a figure of winged victory,’ displayed in the banquet room at the rear of the Basilica adjoining the Doge’s Palace. A room of classical proportion, with an impressive painted ceiling, in which also: the oil-painted cover panels, front and rear, of the Pala D’Oro, beautifully expressive works, incorporating compelling oddities, like the myth of Venice itself. Boats featured. And a panel showing St. Mark in the background with Doge and Pope celebrating in the foreground. St. Mark sort of popping up like an undead.
Instead of visiting the Doge’s Palace we instead crossed the Grand Canal to Giudecca by gondola, gondole traghetti, ferry gondola, displaying all sorts of temperamental oddities, as if the office of being a ferry were below that of being a gondolier. Shows of temperament reflected in the clientele. The French man ahead of us spent the entirety of the time waiting to be ferried and that during the ferrying complaining to his wife who did they think they were? Were they not simply a kind of glorified taxi? While she attempted to calm him down.
Next stop the Peggy Guggenheim Collezione. Giudecca proved immediately to have a calming affect, if not on the French man. A land of canal boulevards and gardens and art galleries and home it would appear to the more artistic of the denizens of Venice attracted by the Biennale. The staff at Peggy’s house – which it was – and is her final resting place – along with a plaque commemorative of her many little dogs, her children – seemed to be recruited from among the American emigre community and in the main spoke English as a first language. Which raises the question of the degree to which Peggy has been incorporated into the official Venetian sense of identity. Or possibly the degree to which that sense is purely expedient on circumstance or beneficial in the wider sense of helping the city keep current. Or a matter of commercial expediency.
Regardless, entering the sculpture garden was like entering an enchanted place of contemplation … in proportion to the way entering the Basilica was not. For a start there was nature. But there was also nature with a neon sign that read, If the form vanishes its root is eternal. (Mario Merz, 1982-9) There was Yoko Ono’s Wishing Tree, on which one was simply invited to hang a wish. An English couple, the man explaining that he was exploring the idea that the context of art was now a more appropriate arena for this kind of secular prayer.
There were fewer people. There was lack of popular appeal. Why? Mass tourism has still not come to terms with modern art? Surely it has in the case of Picasso. And the self-publicists of modernity.
Another sense: the religion of tourism against which the art is still a rebellion, an admonition against. Complicated by the fact that the Futurists feature so heavily in the collections.
I suspect that the connection between that which allows tourism – its technological side, or craft – and tourism itself constitutes a case history in itself: one where means delivering tourists to their destination ought to be deemed aesthetic, as media?
The highlight of the garden for me was the Giacometti, ‘Femme debout “Leoni”‘ (1947); it had its companion piece inside in ‘Femme qui marche’ (1936). Besides the Francis Bacon ‘Study of a Chimpanzee’ – which anyway looked more like baboon on a packing-case lost in a fuchsia sea – the other surprise was Max Ernst’s ‘The Antipope,’ (1941-2) – much better in the flesh than any reproduction. Much. And exciting to see Duchamp’s Valise, with mini versions of his oeuvre.
Lots of Ernst. De Chiricos. Miros with a real pathos and depth to them. A really great Rene Magritte. Pollocks. (The shop was selling Pollocked slippers.) And altogether a religious experience.
And walking back out into Venice was exhilarating. As if something had been added to being in simply a famous town. At a tourist destination.
Perhaps it’s the role of art in the city. Perhaps not.
But on the way back to our apartment thinking about how the gallery becomes a church and the church a mere gallery, we encountered something inbetween, San Stefano’s, featuring in a side room, three enormous Tintorettos. One an unusual last supper, with Jesus seated at the head of the table. Another notable canvas showed a particularly lurid slaughter of the innocents, dead blue babies, babies being wrested from their mothers’ arms, against a background of classical ruins. The ceiling of the nave impossibly high and constructed of decorative wooden ribs accentuating its height and length.
The difference between San Stefano’s and Peggy’s was not necessarily the quality of the art, it also consisted in the reverence with which the works were treated, hung, lit. San Stefano’s didn’t do its aesthetic attributes any favours in this regard. As if the art was itself a side issue.
I had to go to the supermarket, Coop. This on a brand of water: L’acqua chi elimina l’acqua.
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