A Short History of the World's Most Important Art Exhibition

This is the world where art was invented. This is art in 1496, art in 1895. Here's Venice, home to the Venice Biennale, where every two years each nation on the map sends its finest artists to represent them on a world stage. Here it is in 1895, in 1972, in 2001. But what exactly are we looking at here, or here, or here? It's a visually demanding place. It's like an Olympic for art or something. With 120-year history just as rich as that of the Olympics, a history that shows Venice's ability to mirror political and cultural attitudes of the times again and again, which begs the question, what would the world be like without the Venice Biennale? Without the Biennale, Marinetti never would have dropped. Pablo never would have shocked. Peggy never would have showed. Robert never would have popped. Marina never would have slept. Major works by Kusama, Pollock, Klimt, and Modigliani never would have been unveiled. San Marco would be empty. The galleries would be out of business. Venice would be a ghost town. Well, yeah, maybe not exactly. What would the world be without the Venice Biennale? Without the Biennale? That cannot be. It's less, I think, what the world would be like without it, and more about how it's actually becoming more and more part of the world. The Biennale became a field where world events played out, like in 1968. After the May protests, Venice became a standoff between police and anti-establishment protesters. Canvases were reversed, pavilions were closed, the Biennale was declared dead. In fact, the Biennale was born from conflict, starting with Napoleon, who pummeled the city in 1797 and stripped it of its former glory. But Napoleon also left Venice a gift, a massive French garden, which Italians didn't really use. But the Giardini would become home to the Biennale in 1895, when four Venetians selected it for their first international art exhibition. Each nation was represented with its own pavilion, which curators and artists would adapt to suit their needs, and like each nation, the pavilions would change over time. What's really interesting is this idea of the reusing of space, because what we predict of the use of space is often wrong. If you can really harness the building entirely, that's when the pavilions really work. The Giardini would become a yard sale for Kusama in 66, a mountain for Hans Schabbas in 05, a dark room for Mike Nelson, a birdbath for Maurizio Cattelan, and a chocolate room for Ed Ruscha, who covered the American pavilion walls in sheets of silkscreen chocolate in 1970. I always say that when something like the chocolate room gets through the system, who fucked up and let this wonderful thing happen? Over the summer, ants ate away at the piece, and protesters carved anti-war messages into the chocolate. Ruscha approved. We carry enormous characteristics of the nation with us, so it's interesting to see how a nation represents itself. Edward Hopper represented the USA in 1930, Kandinsky, Germany, 58, Muniz, Brazil, 01. Ai Weiwei famously did not represent China in 2013. He represented Germany. Sometimes it's not about representing a nation, but a moment. I was thinking about how to signify something that was particular to our moment, and what will that represent later on. Maybe that's what Marinetti was trying to do when he dropped his manifesto from the San Marco clock tower in 1909, jump-starting a futurist movement that laid the foundation for the Mussolini years, when Benito and the King of Italy transformed the Biennale into a fascist state-run organization. When Hitler came to town in 1934, he too saw an opportunity to express his political ideals, overhauling the German pavilion's architecture and flooring. After World War II, the Giardini expanded. You have more and more nations that want to participate, that want to establish their own identity. Israel got a pavilion immediately after becoming a country in 1949, Egypt in 52, South Korea in 95, the Republic of Kosovo in 2013. This is a very important window to the world. As the number of countries increased, the Biennale spilled out of the Giardini into Venice. Montenegro now holds its pavilion at the Palazzo Malapiero, where Casanova once laid siege to Venetian women night after night. Iceland this year will use the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia, which is right next to where Madonna got picked up in Like a Virgin, and where James Bond was attacked in Moonraker. But not everything was so eagerly embraced. In 64, Rauschenberg wins the grand prize by bringing a new brand of art center stage. This signaled the official shift of cultural dominance from Europe to the U.S. and infuriated the French. Kuhn's infuriated critics in the 1990 edition. Picasso shocked the 1909 Biennale president for reasons I don't understand. Schneider's Piazza San Marco Black Cube installation proposal was flat-out rejected in 2005. But perhaps no show elicited stronger reactions than the 93 Aperto. The show brought together 13 curators, including Jeffrey Deitch, Helena Kontova, Francesco Bonamini, to feature over 120 artists. My idea was that it should be more reflecting on realities, that it should be much closer to what is happening around the world. Though it received a mixed response at the time, Aperto 93 gave us a snapshot of what was happening then. Collectors, curators, artists still talk about this 1993 Biennale as a particularly influential exhibition. In that same year, Hans Hacke made history by taking a jackhammer to the German pavilion floor that Hitler had built in 1938 and smashing it to bits. A world with no Biennale would rob us of these moments, when the present fights the past or just talks to it a little bit. That's what the Biennale is, after all. A conversation with time and the opportunity to watch a country find a new identity or reshape its past.