"On or about December 1910, human character changed," wrote British novelist Virginia Woolf in 1924. "I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless."
Woolf's famous quote refers specifically to an exhibition of naturalist paintings. More broadly, 1910 marked the approximate date of a huge shift in the world of art: out went the traditional goal of creating beauty, replaced by the modernist goal of promoting ideals and imparting a political message, especially one that would épater la bourgeoisie (shock the middle class). Toward this end, rudeness and ugliness is inherent to the progressive goal of irritating, disturbing, and teaching.
Italy, home of the Renaissance, widely considered to be the apogee of artistic achievement, offers a striking place to observe this contrast, as my recent travel to twelve Italian towns brought home.
Since the Grand Tour began in the seventeenth century, the traveler's dominant experience in Italy has been to go and immerse oneself in its beauty. In part, it's the country's natural attractions, from rolling hillside vineyards to dramatic seaside vistas. But mostly it's the Italians' artistic accomplishments: Roman statuary and ruins, Renaissance piazzas and paintings, Venetian canals and bridges. The lesser arts also hold their own: pastas, sauces, and olive oils pay homage to the fine art of cooking, celebrated nowadays even in gas station stops along limited access highways. Like innumerable foreigners before me, I have been captivated since my first visit in 1966 by the classic Italian devotion to beauty, by the historic areas and their remarkable cultivation of beauty.
But that's just the historic areas. Leave those and ugly modernity quickly intrudes. In Bologna, for example, once you exit the Renaissance town center, you bump into Stalinist-style buildings, hideous storage tanks, and oppressive graffiti (an Italian word, by the way).
 Stalinist-style buildings outside Bologna's historic center. |
 A holding tank and possibly the ugliest site in Bologna. |
 Graffiti is an Italian word, as these store-fronts in Bologna remind one. |
If architecture is the most ubiquitous expression of decay, painting, sculpture, and music suffer from the same woes, a point extravagantly proven every two years by the famed Venice Biennale. Opened in 1895 and held during odd years for an interminable six and a half months, its contents contrast spectacularly with the transcendent beauty of its host city, Venice. Among the unique blend of canals, gondolas, medieval palaces, and baroque churches, neighbor to the highest of the arts, sit a former factory and warehouse full of the sad and miserable excrescences known as modern art.
 Venice' transcendent beauty, as seen from a water taxi. |
I traipsed from hall to hall of the 57th biennale, expecting to find didactic, pedantic, and politically radical exhibits. To my relief, overtly left-wing politics were nearly absent; instead, I found the dreary vacuity of mostly pointless shapes, pictures, and words. Most artifacts seemed childlike, relying on boisterously primary colors, simple shapes, and simplistic messages. Skill, beauty, and meaning were all conspicuous by their absence: A hammock loaded with random papers. Hanging sneakers with plants growing from them. A mural made up of audio cassettes.
 The Biennale's management is particularly proud of its primary colors display. |
 Studied interest in a hammock stuffed with miscellaneous papers. |
 Fascination with hanging sneakers stuffed with plants. |
 Not quite Leonardo da Vinci; a mural made up of audio cassettes. |
Only a perverse exhibit of mock corpses that featured rotting organic matter contrasted with this blandness; the catalogue has the nerve to call these nauseating figures an "aesthetic and ecstatic transfiguration" creating "a new magical world."
 Dangling corpses made out of rotting organic matter are "magical" or "sexy"? |
It came as no surprise to learn that the New York Times' review of the Biennale's current iteration berated it for being too apolitical in the age of Brexit and Trump. Fine: But calling the decayed-corpse exhibit "sexy" appalled me for its overt implication of necrophilia.
I felt tempted to shout out to the horde of art worshippers, "The emperor has no clothes. This is a fraud. Leave this bleak place and instead visit Venice's exquisite streets, waterways, churches, and palaces." But exhibit-goers had each paid an entrance fee of €25 (US$30) and, judging by the many photographs being snapped and the learned discussions underway, the Biennale cheerfully satisfied their artistic tastes. So, I stayed mum.
Two concluding observations: Venice is arguably the world's most exotic and beautiful city; how ironic that it spawned among the most prominent purveyors of dreck masquerading as art. One hundred and seven years after Woolf's December 1910 turning-point, one wonders how much longer the farce of modern "art" will continue, when leading artists will repudiate politics and instead rediscover the ageless goal of creating beauty?
Mr. Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes) has enjoyed the arts in 88 countries. © 2017 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Dec. 29, 2017 update: See the exchange between Brian Yoder and myself here. The topic is Fred Ross' philosophy of the Art Renewal Center.
May 6, 2019 update: What will the Biennale come up with next? A floating coffin. ArtNews reports:
On April 18, 2015, a fishing boat that left Tripoli, Libya, carrying hundreds of migrants crashed into a cargo ship coming to its rescue and sank in the Mediterranean Sea. A United Nations investigation concluded that more than 800 people died on the ship, which was designed to be operated by a crew of about 15. Only 27 people survived. ...
More than a year after the tragedy, the Italian government brought the shipwreck to the surface and transported it to a NATO base in Augusta, Sicily, where it has been for the past three years. Now it is coming north, to appear in the central exhibition in the Venice Biennale, "May You Live in Interesting Times."
 The shipwreck being moved to its Biennale installation in Venice. |
July 7, 2019 update:
Here's a mischievous but deadly serious question:
Which is the more awful "art", #Stalin's or the Venice Biennale's (@la_Biennale)?
- Both are political kitsch
— Daniel Pipes دانيال بايبس (@DanielPipes) July 8, 2019
- But #SocialRealism is for the simple minded & #AvantGardism for the sophisticated
- The one lies, the other perverts pic.twitter.com/mgd1DX1FPF
#JamesJoyce: "I've put in so many enigmas & puzzles [in "Ulysses"] that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant & that's the only way of insuring one's immortality."
Me: I've finally found the key to "serious" modern art. It's for the professors. pic.twitter.com/zmGm2esQp0
— Daniel Pipes دانيال بايبس (@DanielPipes) December 25, 2020
Sep. 25, 2021 update: Modern "art" is so absurd that the audience cannot tell what's art and what's a janitor making a mistake:
Philippe Pareno's exhibit at the French gallery Luma Arles was inundated with water on the floor, the Economist reports, when "the triangular pool in one corner of the gallery on the ground floor began to overflow. Visitors were more entertaining than upset as the water mercilessly penetrated across the parquet floor. The circular blue carpet in the center of the room darkened, and even when it got dark, spectators suspected it was part of the show." In fact, however, "Penetration from the overflowing pool in the corner of the gallery turned out to be the result of craftsmen accidentally leaving taps [on]."
