venice, day 2 (july 23)

george and paola in front of one of the many canals


today we started by walking around san marco piazza. we went into the museo correo (i think that is the name) and saw the lucian freud exhibition and their regular collection. i enjoyed the paintings on display, and even bought the catalog. the regular collection was interesting, but i did not appreciate it as much (perhaps because i dont know that much about venetian history). however, the same ticket also got us into ducale palace, which is just on the other side of the piazza.

ducale palace is interesting from the outside because of its pink bricks in diamond patterns on the facade. the building was to not only house the doge (the ruler) and his family, but is also used as an administrative building, like city hall. there were a lot of neat paintings on all of the walls by (mostly) veronese. he paints well, but i havent studied him too much, or been exposed to his stuff much. the palace also has a prison, which was interesting. one interesting prisoner was giacomo casanova, who is famous for being a good lover. in any case, he was also lots of other things, like a philosopher, traveler, etc, and he thought that his life was interesting enough to write a twelve volume autobiography. anyone who is cool enough to think that we should read that much about him, interests me enough (based soley on his own self confidence) to read an abridged version when i get home.

later we went to one of the main venues for the venice bienniale. we learned that besides the many galleries around town that are exhibiting artists, there are two main centers, a garden devoted just for the bienniele, and the arsenel base. today we saw the garden, which had many exhibitions. it was like an amusement park, and we went to the different galleries to see different exhibitions by different countries. to be honest, contemporary art is very difficult for me to comprehend or appreciate (in fact, i find a lot of it just stupid), and these exhibitions didnt change my perception. actually, the one that we did see that i liked was by taiwan, called ‘spectre of freedom.’ typically i dont like video art, but this one, in the context of this exhibition, really appealed to me. it was basically several television sets showing the different videos that were centered on the artist performing jackass-like stunts. it made me laugh. however, i saw it as brilliant due to the title of the exhibition title.

after the bienniale show, we walked around for a bit. something that i thought was interesting that is very popular here in venice are theater masks. at first, i thought that they were a bit silly, but they started to appeal to me since i saw the intracate detail and special attention that is paid to the design of these masks. they are basically masks that are worn during carnivale, which is a celebration before lent (like mardi gras, or carnivale in rio de janero). everybody runs aroudn with these masks on, wearing gowns to complete their masquerade outfits. the only place that i could relate it to was like the secret meeting in ‘eyes wide shut’ by stanley kubrick and starring tom cruise. i think that i want to buy a blank mask and try to make my own when i get back home.