Gaudy as the handles to the French doors of the piano nobile of Palazzo Grassi are (see an example of one above), I recently turned to them--and really noticed them for the first time--as a respite from the massive display of kitsch filling the center of the palazzo's exhibition space: Damian Hirst's Andromeda and the Sea Monster (detail below), which is a comically overwrought combination in bronze of, among other things, woman-in-peril pulp fiction and comic book covers of a half-century ago with the unconvincing rubber sharks that surfaced in popular films of around the same era (and then, most famously and profitably, in Spielberg's Jaws).
So much has been written about the Hirst show that I've never felt any need to bother with it myself. You can still catch it until December 3. There is no time limit on when you can have a look at the flashy door handles, about which, I must admit, I know nothing.
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| Sometimes a piece of art, no matter how spectacular it aims to be, only becomes interesting in the presence of viewers. |
TBH I thought it was overblown and tacky, but, hey it’s hella popular
ReplyDeleteOvverblown and tacky, Rob? Why you say that as though those are bad qualities! Mr Hirst made out like a bandit in Venice: http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/damien-hirst-on-treasures-of-the-wreck-of-the-unbelievable.html
DeleteI really wanted to love it. All that work and money and marble! But it was ridiculous...
ReplyDeleteI'll look for the handles next time. Thanks for pointing them out.
I thought some of it was very funny, JoAnn, and was surprised that other people around me on the day I was there didn't seem to share my opinion. It's all about money, as Hirst himself admits, and so bothering with aesthetic opinions seem--well, there must be better things for me to do with my time.
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