Chaos in Venice

A couple of vaporetto stops in the direction of the Lido, from near Piazza San Marco – fortified, perhaps, by a cold glass of wine and some lively light music from the immaculately dressed band outside Florians – and you are in the merciful shade of the public gardens, where some of the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale have stood, designed like temples, for a hundred years or so. Here, every two years, you can be sure that, in the form of chaos, all hell will break loose.

,img>It will break loose quite soon during your passionate search for a glimpse of up-to-the-minute visual delight or significance. Visual art is the focus in theory, but other issues compete for the viewer’s attention. Art politics, for example, are about as ‘covert’ in this Biennale as the military operations in Afghanistan, overtly announced as such by President Bush, thereby giving some of the game away.