Feelings of the Day: Modern art can be intimidating for others, as it was for me. Spain, two years ago, changed that. Seeing Picasso’s Guernica, Dali’s art, and other works at the Reina Sofia. It made me learn what I didn’t like, which was most of what I saw except for Picasso, Dali, and a handful of others. The Thyssen-Bornemisza, organized chronologically, had me liking most of their modern art selection. It showed me that, just like older art, not everything of an era's art is fantastic. You have to see what is out there and find out what you like, to make it fulfilling.
Full Day’s Events: It was time for a different kind of art. Something that shocked or attracted. Something that has freed the artists that made them and changed art forever. It was time to see the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.
Within the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal, Peggy renovated this unfinished palace property into her home. She began by displaying her collection to other artists, then seasonally to the public, and in 1980 (after her death) to the public all year. The entrance and first courtyard are very unassuming with wonderful wisteria reaching over the wall. You would not know what is inside except for the plaque. The natural world. Not at all shocking.
Most folks waiting for opening time had pre-bought tickets and the rest were like me, people who chose this date to see it. Right on time, at ten, two folks came out and started asking for the media (for a presentation and soiree on the roof of the building beside the canal) and certain special guests. Next were the pre-bought folks and last were the remainder.
There was also a Venetian group of young school kids here for a tour. At first, I thought they would not get anything out of the collection, but I rescinded that thought. I think children would be excellent modern art critics. I was proven right when I saw them later - as they entered the room I was in - looking at paintings with tilted heads, pointing, and speaking their thoughts in a cadence that indicated a question, in Italian, as to what they were seeing and experiencing with teachers and friends. Who doesn’t like an honest art critic.
After entering the ticket room, I paid and received my audio guide, I then exited into the garden with outdoor sculptures. These were all modern art attractors, in the first section, and they led you further in while tickling the mind. The first sculpture was a black granite slab, by Anish Kapoor, with two partial spheres carved into it and those divoted spheres were polished to perfection. When standing near they played with perception by reflecting imperfect images with the bottom one upside down. An apt ambassador to introduce folks to a modern art collection.
There were no impediments nor ropes on poles to stop me from getting closer to the outdoor sculptures. Ones I particularly liked in this second section are:
-Roaring Lion 2, by Mirko, a bronze pseudo lion with exaggerations and diminishing of proportion, an exaggerated screaming face, and as your eyes wander you see a snake coiled around two legs and biting one of the front ones.
-Opera 3, by glassmaker Egido Costantini and metal sculpture Mikuni Omura, caught the rising sun as I neared it and saw refracting light as plant detritus, from nearby, was rotting within its base.
Through the doors to the front building there was also a restoration room with work in the process of being repaired and a HUGE number of pigments on another wall inside. Another double door to the exhibition hall was currently closed as they were setting up the next one.
Walking across another garden, with more sculpture, to the main collection entrance I spied an old familiar friend in the world of modern sculpture. Sphere #3 by Arnoldo Pomodoro. My wife and I had seen larger ones, in Dublin and the Vatican museum, and while writing this I have now found he designed the original large one for the Montreal Expo ‘67. Its popularity had many organizations and galleries order their own, large and small. I like a multitude of things about this repeated sculpture that is hard to define.
Entering the main collection building I realized I should have gone here first instead of lingering in the gardens and exhibition/restoration building for an hour. Everyone ahead and behind me did this and so it was busy, alas. Moving ahead I searched for modern art that attracted me.
There were interesting early Picassos, a gorgeously colourful Gino Severini (Sea=Dancer), a wonderfully broken angular Albert Gleizes (Woman with Animals), and a Jean Metzinger (At the Velodrome) that made me smile from its visual skill and realize that this 1912 oil with sand and paper collage heralded a modern art movement to come. A multi-layered Irene Rice Pereira (Riflessi) that had me staring in contemplation at the square angels, vertical and horizontal only, except for two interesting rebel diagonals off to the right. All these were in the first room! Entering the next I sought out more.
An interesting Vasily Kandinsky (Upward) with bold colours and shapes, Fernand Leger (Men in the City) that made me imagine the multitude of conversations the artist was having with his audience and himself, some disturbing Dali’s which made me realize I much preferred the similar but more thought provoking Yves Tanguy’s surrealism, a haunting Lenora Carrington (They Shall Behold Tyne Eyes) that made me think of the Venetian ghetto for some reason, and a cheek slapping Rene Magritte (Empire of Light) that had me sit on the bench before it and just take it all the different darknesses conflicting with the blue cloudy sky. Rene was telling a story here that left the plot up to the viewer in ways that few artists can do.
There were many gorgeous works by Max Ernst, but his “Attirement of the Bride” also made me uncomfortable and disturbed when you know that he is channeling, consciously and unconsciously, his feelings of inadequacy because his wife was the great Peggy Guggenheim. Clifford Still (Jamais) paints a feeling of dignified sadness that made me linger and remember my sadnesses, Paul Klee (Magic Garden) brought forth a regressive burst of chaotic childhood that made me want to look away, glass sculptures of Egidio Costantini that were made after looking at sketches by Picasso and were displayed before a window looking onto the Grand canal for a perfect background, some weightless mobiles and balancing sculptures of Alexander Calder that are a perfect blend of engineering and art that made me smile and want to try it, and Afro Basaldellas’s use of shapes and colour to move the eye around the canvas in a soothing journey (Yellow Country).
There were some of Jackson Pollock’s art here. I didn’t like them. They didn’t have me lingering, like all of the ones mentioned above did. I tried, but I got bored. My apologies to the Pollock fans out there.
I wandered around the area on the Grand Canal and garden for a bit to sift and sum up this day and found that the early half of the collection, and earlier work done, made me feel the most emotions. They made me think. Perhaps it was the bold experimentation that drew me or the connections they had with past styles if you looked for them. Regardless, it was an enjoyable experience.
I headed back to my place for lunch and a break. Be aware of others when on the bridges that go across the Grand Canal. There are pickpockets and some groups, posing as families, have been caught.
In the latter afternoon I walked to the East, across a few islands by bridge, to visit the church of San Zaccaria. A monastic nun’s church, constructed in the 15th century, was built by the Venetian Republic to honour John the Baptist's father, the namesake accaria (Zechariah). Before this it was a 9th century smaller church that held the body of the saint, given by the Byzantine Emperor of the time.
Here there are works by Van Dyck, Bassano, Tintorettot, Tiepolo, Palma the Younger, Vivarni, and Giovanni d’Alemagna. I like many of the paintings, the scrollwork in some of the wood panels, and mosaics from the early life of the church. The crypts were a disappointment as they were small with no dead bodies, alas. Seeing the restorers at work, on the upper part of the area above the crypts and golden back chapel altar, was a treat. I looked at them vacuuming and using a paint colour laser spectrum device, for a while.
Meat sauce, veg spiral pasta, and an Italian cheesecake slice were my treats for the day. 5.3km, 5 flights, 8 previously crossed bridges and 2 new ones walked.
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