venezia blog

A Venetian Education

2012-02-15T18:26:00.001+01:00

This is not the exact mototopo our son took to school, but one like it

The other morning our son Sandro went to school in a mototopo--that is, in one of the long motorized workboats you see plying the waters of Venice carrying merchandise, food, or (as above) construction materials and workers. Of course it seems odd to me that my son should go to school in any kind of boat, but the vaporetto doesn't seem quite as exotic to me as it once did. He also gets a ride to school pretty regularly in our neighbors' little outboard motorboat. He was, and is, extremely excited about this and it used to seem quite exotic to me also--but not quite so much now. But a mototopo...!

A small yellow school bus was the most exotic form of transportation I ever took to school, and it wouldn't have been exotic at all if I'd been any older than five years of age. At that age just traveling anywhere, in anything, without my mother along was thrillingly novel.

But Sandro is becoming something like a real Venetian. This is one of the reasons he is now taking a boat to a school about as far from our apartment as one can go in Venice instead of attending the preschool just a few hundred meters away from us. At a certain point this year we began to ask ourselves about what kind of "real Venetian" we wanted him to be. This is actually a longer subject than I want to go into in this post, but when a child speaks one language at school and another at home it can sometimes seem that he is becoming rather a different person in each language. That is, what I'll call his repertoire of expression can vary greatly from one language to the other. It's not just that the vocabulary differs, but the parameters or breadth of each vocabulary differs and with them his range or mode of expression as well.

Put simply, in the absence of the good teachers he had last year (both of whom left), his Italian self was becoming much more aggressive, much more foul-mouthed than his English-speaking self. The models for his Italian self were not his teachers, who showed little interest in their students except when it came to yelling at them, but some particularly energetic classmates. Energetic in the sense of selvaggio, or wild.

But with his change of schools his Italian self is changing. He now has two teachers who actually model a much broader and calmer range of behavior and communication. He likes school again. Actually, he loves going to school again.

But he hasn't forgotten what he learned at his previous school--or what, I'm sure, he's still learning from older boys at his new one--and that in some contexts some people seem to even consider appropriate. As, for example, when traveling to school in a mototopo.

The other morning the mototopo piloted by the Venetian grandfather of one Sandro's classmates got held up for 15 minutes in a small canal in Cannareggio behind a garbage mototopo and a construction mototopo. Sandro and his classmate and her grandfather could do nothing but wait, floating in place, while the workers on the two other workboats did whatever it was they had to do. Or at least it seemed there was nothing for the two kids and the grandfather, Nonno Pietro, to do but wait, until Sandro started to yell in Italian at the workers in the other boats to "get out of the way" or he would "punch them in the stomach."

I think I blushed in embarrassment when this was first recounted to me and I blush even now in the typing of it, but Nonno Pietro told it not only with amusement but a certain approval. Perhaps more evidence that my son may yet become the Venetian I know I will never be.

Carnevale Internazionale dei Ragazzi Opens Today

2012-02-11T19:04:00.007+01:00

The black-light arts & crafts workshop room

I thought the most fun and spontaneity of all of last year's carnevale was to be found not in Piazza San Marco but in the middle of the Giardini Pubblici, within the central exposition space of the Biennale, at the Carnevale Internazionale dei Ragazzi.

Today the third annual edition of this kids carnival opened, with a greater number of participating countries (up to 7, from 4), more workshops in various forms of creativity, live performances, free hot chocolate for the kids, free pasticcio for everyone, and free (and quite tasty) vin brule for very grateful adults. This year's theme is Favole e pensieri (Tales and Thoughts) and features free workshops in making toys from everyday and recycled materials, carnival masks and costumes, art with painted lightbulbs, puppet theatres, and music--among other things.

And did I happen to mention that today there was free vin brule for parents?

The Carnevale Internazionale dei Ragazzi runs from today until 21 February. Admission is free, as are all workshop materials, and the hours are typically 10:00-18:00.

Much more information about it can be found at http://labiennale.org/it/Home.html

Clouds are a visual motif of this year's edition, but these inflated ones out front were redundant today

Dreams of Ice Skating on the Grand Canal, This Afternoon

2012-02-05T21:19:00.002+01:00

On the Outside Looking In--and Out

2012-02-04T19:52:00.001+01:00

Outside a wonderful pasticceria on the Salizada dei Greci, this afternoon.

A World of Pulcinellas at Ca' Rezzonico

2012-02-02T11:46:00.005+01:00

I'm a little obsessed lately with Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo's series of Pulcinella frescoes in the Ca' Rezzonico and January was a very good month to indulge this fixation. Even during the busiest times of year people rarely linger among these works--there are so many other things to see in the palazzo, including the famous ceiling frescoes of Domenico's father, Giambattista, on the piano nobile--but in January it was possible to hang with them (so to speak) almost without interruption.

In a city filled with grand gestures, with paintings intended for public spaces and functions, these frescoes were painted by the artist in the lesser ("non-monumental") rooms of the family's mainland Villa Zianigo between 1759 and 1797 for his own enjoyment. It's interesting to think about the significance of Pulcinella for the painter: a character he (as well as his father) painted throughout his career and to which he returned in a big way near the end of his life with a series of 104 wash drawings for Il divertimento per li ragazzi (Entertainment for Children).

But even more interesting, at least to me lately, is the significance of these Pulcinella paintings in our own time. As many other people have noted, the series of frescoes in Ca' Rezzonico is hardly just kids' stuff. No more than Pulcinella is.

Though famously a creation--and symbol--of Naples, the character of Pulcinella is traced by Pierre Louis Ducharte in his classic study of Italian commedia dell'arte to two different characters in the ancient Roman theater.

Befitting this dual paternity, the 17th-century character of Pulcinella could take two different forms: one, high-strung and given to a peculiar peeping sound, another, slow moving and reserved. Sometimes these two different manifestations appeared together in the same production.

But the Pulcinellas of Tiepolo's frescos riotously embody traits for which the character is most famous. Ducharte writes: "Never one to be bowed down by the cares and responsibilities of a profession, [Pulcinella was] eccentric and selfish..., strongly inclined to sensual and epicurean gluttony.... Self-centered and bestial, he had no scruples whatever, and because the moral suffering from his physical deformity reacted upon his brain at the expense of his heart, he was exceedingly cruel."

Collodi's Pinocchio would share many of these traits before he reformed himself and "became a real boy." But there's no hint of any possible reformation or self-improvement in Tiepolo's frescoes. His Pulcinellas carry on, unredeemed and unredeemable, to the bitter end.

And the end of certain things, we are told by Ca' Rezzonico's text on these frescoes, was probably very much on Tiepolo's mind as he painted these works. The end of the Baroque style exemplified by Giambattista Tiepolo, the end of the Venetian Republic itself, and perhaps the end of the larger Eurocentric world.

These last two points seem to be made most emphatically in a huge fresco of which I have no image entitled Il mondo novo. It's in a separate larger room from the Pulcinellas I'm focusing on and depicts a large group of figures, their backs to us, intently watching a performance we can't see in a small tent. It's a crowd of fashionably-dressed ladies and gentlemen and children and a solitary Pulcinella seen in wide-screen Cinemascope, and beyond them and the top of the little performance tent they fix their gaze upon lies the broad ocean and empty horizon.

But there's a more intimate version of this theme in the little room of Pulcinellas, too. Again, there's a luminous horizon and ocean but a group of Pulcinellas pays them no heed: they drink, they talk, and

one, foregrounded among an array of objects that represent almost the full extent of their customary concerns--a food basket, a wine pitcher, a shuttlecock and racket (only a wench is missing)--sleeps off his excess. Over the crest of the hill on which they stand, the conical top of a Pulcinella's hat is visible beside a flag. I'm not sure what to make of this. Indolent and indulgent as they are, might this tribe of Pulcinellas be considering a military campaign of some sort? This is far more worrisome than their sloth.

One thing seems certain though: if a new world is in the offing, it's beyond the awareness of these Pulcinellas. All their revels depicted in this room end in this image of exhaustion: self-absorbed and self-interested as ever, they seem blind to what lies beyond. A new world may very well be dawning, but there is the dark sense in this painting that it is bound to occur elsewhere, across the ocean, far away.

It's not hard to imagine why Tiepolo would have had this sense in the last years of the Venetian Republic but, sadly, it's a sense that most young contemporary Italians seem to share: a recent poll by The European Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies showed that nearly 60% of them are ready to move abroad. They've lost hope that anything can change in this country that is sometimes still derisively referred to (by Italians themselves) as "the country of Pulcinella."

But it's not only Italians who are concerned: Pulcinella's gone global.

I suppose that's what keeps bringing me back to these frescoes: a sense that they depict not just Tiepolo's time but our own more effectively than most contemporary art at the Biennale or elsewhere. That odd old foreign anti-humanistic art form of the commedia dell'arte seems more and more useful to me for conceptualizing blind human appetites and an almost infinite capacity for destruction. I mean, the corporate name Monsanto itself sounds almost like a stock character from the commedia dell'arte--though its greed, cruelty and viciousness puts poor Pulcinella to shame....

Follow these fellows at your own risk

Andrea Frank & David Rickard at Galleria Michaela Rizzo

2012-01-27T12:57:00.004+01:00

Sandro encounters "Internal Resistance" (an installation by David Rickard)

Located just a short distance from Campo San Maurizio, Galleria Michaela Rizzo is always worth a visit, especially from now until March 17 when it is hosting an exhibition of work by the German-born American-based artist Andrea Frank and the New Zealand-born London-based artist David Rickard.

"Untitled (Singapore)" 2007, courtesy of the artist

Frank's newest works in her Systems exhibition consider the way in which we are educated about our world. Her grids of taxidermy birds, glass botanical models, and entomological bee specimens suggest a knowledge divorced from the vital and inter-dependent systems and processes of our living world. A form of knowledge or a way of learning about the world in which the kind of extinction of species now going on around the world is, one might say, almost eerily foreshadowed.

These new works are the logical extension of her recent Ports and Ships project, also on display: photos of the behemoth cargo ships and city-like ports of a global economy of consumption operating at levels beyond the system limits of our natural world.

"Propane Dream"

The sculptures of David Rickard's Displacments challenge our usual sense of space and mass. In "Propane Dream" heavy gas cannisters of all sizes take on the airiness, the insubstantiality of their contents. Elsewhere, a large rectangular grid of small holes drilled neatly into the gallery wall casts a correspondingly-sized rectangle upon the nearby floor, composed entirely of the dust from the drilling and looking very much like a plane of sunlight through a window. In both works, the drilled holes suggest the material form that our (or at least my) conception of the immaterial, the atomic world take.

In "Internal Resistance", pictured at the top of this post, invisible forces all around us (such as gravity) seem to be given shape in a room-wide installation that both imposes itself upon our movements and vibrates systemically to our slightest touch.

A brief video containing interviews (in English) with the two artists and an overview of the show may be found at the Galleria Michaela Rizzo website: http://www.galleriamichelarizzo.net/

And here are the websites of the two artists:
http://www.andreafrank.net/index.html
http://www.david-rickard.net/home.html

Systems and Displacements at Galleria Michaela Rizzo (photo credit: Andrea Frank)

Foggy Sunset in Sant' Elena Tonight--and a Thank You

2012-01-22T21:00:00.004+01:00

"Asked what may be the leading color in the Venetian concert, we should inveterately say Pink..."
--Henry James, Italian Hours

I would like to thank Yvonne, the wonderful blogger at Hello World (http://ytaba36.wordpress.com/) for listing me as among her favorite Venice blogs. If you don't by chance know Yvonne's blog it is worth checking out, as she is one of those bloggers on whom--to quote Henry James again--"nothing is lost." From fritelle to feast days, graffiti to palazzi to pissotte, she seems to notice or track down everything of interest in this city of overwhelming interest.

Having been cited by Yvonne, it's now my turn to list five of my own favorite blogs. I can't pretend to read as many blogs as I'd like to, and I will of course leave out far more great blogs than I can list, but here are some that I like (in no particular order):

Churches in Venice is my go-to blog when I stumble across--or into--one of the many many churches in this city and want to learn more about it. Its author, Annie, combines reliable knowledge, a keen eye, and a distinctive take on every church she writes about. http://www.slowtrav.com/blog/annienc/

Written by a native Venetian, Alloggi Barbaria Blog is another of those blogs where I learn something new--or many things new--with every visit.
http://alloggibarbaria.blogspot.com/

AAA Accademia Affamati Affannati is a blog I just happened upon, which offers not only a consistently fascinating array of images of and insight into the city, but recipes as well.
http://aaaaccademiaaffamatiaffannati.blogspot.com/

Venessia nei arcani offers magical views into this most magical of cities. http://venessiarcana.blogspot.com/

When we were thinking of moving to Venice The Venice Experience--a blog written by an American about her own experiences settling into the city--was of obvious interest to us, and so it remains. http://theveniceexperience.blogspot.com/

The blog of Libreria Marco Polo keeps me in touch with my favorite bookshop in the city when I'm not able to get there in person: http://www.libreriamarcopolo.com/

And though I've already exceeded five, I can't help listing one other blog about the city we moved here from. A huge city whose continued survival as anything more than simply a Disney World of conspicuous consumption is, like Venice, in serious doubt: http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/

Long Time No See: San Simeone Piccolo This Morning

2012-01-19T18:09:00.006+01:00

If I remember correctly it was supposed to have been Napoleon who upon his first view of San Simeone Piccolo quipped, "I've seen churches without domes before, but never a dome without a church."

I think the scaffolding was up around the front of this church for so long that it would have been fairly easy to imagine--or hope--that they were finally getting around to building a church more in keeping with the scale of the dome. No such luck, but it's nice to see the church's old odd proportions revealed once more (even if they do make the dome appear, as always, rather unpleasantly pustular), and to have one less giant billboard on the Grand Canal.

Lido in Winter: Long Walk, Short Pier

2012-01-15T20:32:00.001+01:00

The Lido is a marvelous place to walk in the winter--though recently it's been so relatively mild and sunny here that the seaside isn't as deserted as one might hope.

It is here on Lido, at the end of the Gran Viale, that you can ponder the question of whether a pier that does not extend into water should be called a pier at all. Not even at high tide does the structure pictured above come in contact with the sea.

Perhaps it was simply intended as an observation deck, you might think.

No, my friend who has lived here for all of his 70 years (and oversaw much of the construction in Venice for many years) assures me that it was meant to be a real pier. But the comune ran out of money before it was finished. And so you have a pier that is not really a pier--or at least not enough of one--and a lasting monument, my friend suggests, to the competence of the city's government.

Teatro Marinoni on Lido: An Introduction

2012-01-12T13:21:00.003+01:00

The "introduction" I refer to in the title of this post was my own, as I'm sure some of you reading this already know Teatro Marinoni, and know it better than I do. But hand-printed flyers that I noticed recently appearing around the city suggested that even a lot of native Venetians knew little or maybe nothing about it--and invited them to pay a visit to the place and find out more for themselves.

The official introduction provided by the city of Venice (if it were to provide any introduction at all) would state that Teatro Marinoni is one of many abandoned derelict buildings in the Ospedale al Mare complex near the northeastern end of Lido that was sold in 2010 for 94 million euro to the same company that bought the famous Hotel des Bains (and is in the process of converting it into luxury condos).

What the city would not tell you is that Teatro Marinoni was designated as a gift to the residents of Venice by the man who built it, Mario Marinoni, and as such--argue a growing group of residents--cannot be sold to private developers without violating the terms of Dr Marinoni's bequest.

A detail from Giuseppe Cherubini's ceiling fresco

This group of residents, some of whom have taken to occupying (or "squatting") in the theater, would like to see the theater reborn as the public community cultural space it was originally intended and used as. In fact, they have already began holding cultural events in the space.

As more and more people have began to realize, the immediate peril facing Venice is not environmental or architectural, but demographic and sociological. (See The Venice Report: Demography, Tourism, Financing & Change of Use of Buildings, Cambridge University Press; or Veniceland Atlantis: The Bleak Future of the World's Favorite City by Robert L France: http://www.libripublishing.co.uk/veniceland/index.html).

A recent headline in the local paper announced that the population of the lagoon has now dropped below 59,000 for the first time. The architecture and art of Venice may survive, but is a city without actual residents a city at all? Whatever jobs may eventually become available in the Hotel des Bains luxury condo site will not pay enough for the workers to reside in the lagoon. Nor will any similar luxury development of the Ospedale al Mare complex. As the ex-Thatcherite John Gray pointed out in his 1998 book False Dawn, untrammeled free markets (of the sort that now determines policy in Venice) have consistently undermined the very social institutions--family, career, community--they purport to value.

In any case, that is more than enough for an introduction. For more information I refer you to the website:

http://teatromarinoni.org/

And to some few pictures of the theater, present and past, below. I'll try to get more information on this group and its project soon.

The rear of the house and its balcony

Another detail from Cherubini's 1920s fresco: Neptune as a beach bum

The theater building during its heyday in the 1920s

Cinema paradiso perduto: the theater's small metal projection room

Above the theater are a couple floors of rooms that could use a little TLC

Last Glimpse of La Befana This Year

2012-01-11T22:57:00.001+01:00

photo credit: Jen

I'm surprised that La Befana is still hanging around five days after the Feast of the Epiphany but here's photographic proof, taken this afternoon.

photo credit: Jen

San Lazzaro degli Armeni, This Evening

2012-01-08T20:17:00.000+01:00

Presepe and Fishing Nets on Island of S. Pietro di Castello

2012-01-06T21:13:00.005+01:00

The Christmas season comes to a close tonight with the feast of the Epiphany and the visit of the witch La Befana to the houses of children throughout Venice. Tomorrow most of the Christmas decorations will come down, so I was glad I stumbled upon this particular window display tonight before it disappeared.

This being Venice, and this being the magazzino window of what seems to be one of the last working fisherman in the city, you'll find a few boats floating upon an aluminum foil sea in the foreground of the photo below, just behind the wise men gathered on the shore, and notice that the Holy Family has taken refuge from the elements not in the traditional manger but in the shelter of a sandolo turned upon its side.

And, naturally, instead of the star we usually hear so much about, you'll see in the upper left corner of the photo the bright beacon of a striped lighthouse summoning admirers to the newborn babe. Much more effective on a foggy night than any celestial light.

Honeymooners Above the Riva degli Schiavoni

2012-01-04T21:11:00.000+01:00

I hope you'll excuse the picture quality of this post--I only had a small point-and-shoot on me--but the sight of a couple wrapped up in matching white hotel bathrobes and luxuriously enjoying cigarettes in their hotel window above the busy Riva yesterday evening reminded me of various old movies such as Rear Window, with its standard running gag of two honeymooners who never manage to leave their room.

A similar idea pops up in The Comfort of Strangers--in which Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett fall into a period of not leaving their own room above the Riva at Hotel Gabrielli. But in that film it's taken into decidedly darker territory.

Let's just hope the above couple did not run into Christopher Walken if they did leave their lodgings.

Plunging Boldly (and Coldly) into the New Year

2012-01-01T21:30:00.003+01:00

It was so (relatively) mild this year that these people almost seemed sensible

It says something about the effect that expectations and context and memory have on our sense of present reality that as I made my way to the Lido late this morning I was thinking that it really seemed too warm to take a dip in the Adriatic.

It was about 10 degrees C (50 degrees F).

Of course I was not about to strip down to a swimsuit and venture into the sea to celebrate the first day of the New Year, but the Lido Ibernisti were, and the fact that the sun was bright, the sky clear and blue, and the silk long-johns I wore beneath my jeans felt almost unnecessary--these facts deprived the club's annual event of some of last year's thrill. The particular thrill one gets from watching a group of people do something both admirable and absurd, courageous and perhaps a little moronic.

Last year the sun took New Year's Day off. It was cloudy and cold and blustery and as the Ibernisti filed into a horizonless sea--water and sky one indistinguishable gray wash--it was almost like you were observing some mysterious Druidical rite. At least for me, as I always (vaguely and ridiculously) associate Druids with dampness, coldness, baleful skies and rituals that clearly seem deleterious to one's health.

This year it was like a beach party, with a live band cruelly playing hits from the 1980s and a big crowd, comfortable in their jackets and scarves beneath a cheerful sky.

Carrying red & white balloons, the Ibernisti make their way from what only appears to be a space station toward the sea

With the sun warm on my face I wondered for brief moments, "Why aren't I going into the sea today?"

Of course, as a local friend informed me, the Ibernisti do not only go into the sea on January 1. Starting from the time when lowering autumn chases fair-weather crowds from the shore, the Ibernisti go into the sea every day, rain or shine, throughout the winter.

They believe that doing so prevents them from getting sick, he told me--a little dubiously.

I didn't think I was up for that level of commitment. At the edge of the sea I took my jacket off and that was as far as I went. I still had on a knit cap, a light thermal long-sleeve shirt, a light flannel shirt, a merino wool sweater and a polar fleece pullover. And the aforementioned long johns.

No, I really don't think I'm Ibernisti material.

Bumper-to-bumper Traffic on the Riva, Tonight

2011-12-29T23:24:00.000+01:00

Le giostre have returned to the Riva near Via Garibaldi for their annual extended run

View Down Rio di San Barnaba, This Afternoon

2011-12-28T21:49:00.000+01:00

San Giovanni in Bragora, Christmas Night

2011-12-26T17:37:00.001+01:00

Holiday Snapshots

2011-12-22T10:36:00.006+01:00

The other day my wife Jen had a long errand to run and I suggested she take along our small camera, as one of the excellent photographers (Bert) who contributes to the Venice Daily Photo blog (http://venicedailyphoto.blogspot.com) has reminded me that one should never go out in this city without a camera. She seemed too focused on her particular errand to even consider the idea--but then she returned home with these.

She, like the city, is full of pleasant surprises.

Regatta del Panettone

2011-12-19T18:25:00.005+01:00

Yesterday morning was the 2nd annual La Regata del Panettone, a series of races among the members of la Remiera Francescana designed, according to its planners, less as a program of heated competitions than as a means of fostering group spirit and fellowship among the club's members.

I must admit that I was involved in a small incident that had exactly the opposite effect, at least for a short time, but we'll get that to a little later. For now it's enough to know that the morning was high-def clear, and frigid (0 C, 32 F) and wavy and windy, but beautiful beyond words--and photography (at least mine). But I hope the following pics will provide some idea of the scene.


The inner door of the club, within the walls of the Arsenale

The remiera, depleted of many of its boats, which were already on the water

Among the agonisti in the first race was Babbo Natale

I went out onto the lagoon with my camera in a light rather shallow-bottomed mascareta, with the club's youngest member--3-year-old Valentino (who's quite a good rower, actually)--his mother, and another man who joined the club about the same time I did. It was too windy and wavy for Valentino to do any rowing on the lagoon, though he wanted to, and I rowed very little as well, as I hadn't planned on going out in a boat at all, but just taking photos from the fondamenta.

But there I was, sitting in the prow with a bundled-up Valentino, while the waves rocked us rather mercilessly and the wind blew, and our little boat meandered about the lagoon with no definite destination. I think all of us realized we actually needed a more experienced rower among us, but we were making the best of it when we noticed that the first race had started and the entire field of two-man teams was headed our way.

At this point we really could have used an experienced rower among us, but she or he was on some other boat and all we could do was first strike out in one direction before realizing the field of contestants stretched even further on that side, then, disastrously, tack back another way.

Do I need to tell you that it is an extremely unpleasant sensation to be seated in a drifting boat while an entire field of Venetian-born and bred agonisti bear down upon you?

Might I add that this sensation is even more unpleasant when you remember that exactly such a Venetian-born and bred agonisti has described such a race as nothing less than a war?

If only we could have stopped at one point right where we were, in an open expanse of water between two onrushing boats, everything would have been okay.

We could not. Onward we drifted and onward the first place team came. There was utter helpless panic in our boat and fierce shouts from theirs as, like some diabolical geometry demonstration, our two paths approached their inevitable point of intersection.

Luckily, it was fairly tangential. They managed to swerve a bit, so the prow of our boat suffered only a blow from one of their oars--instead of a full-on collision--and young Valentino got to hear some very interesting and spirited language.

How I hoped that team would maintain their lead and come in first!

They finished second.

But when we finally returned to the club, after that race had finished, the preparations for other heats were under way and so nothing--at least as long as I was at the club--came of our little encounter.

When it's windy and wavy a mere ruin can look as welcoming as the isle of Capri

A familiar landmark seen from its other side, from the basin of the club

A welcome sight after our eventful ride, the water-side door of the club

The young members of the club receive instructions for the second race of the day--with which I, thankfully, did not interfere in any way

One Year Ago Today: White Week Before Christmas

2011-12-17T13:51:00.003+01:00

Stars Over Via Garibaldi, Tonight

2011-12-13T22:20:00.001+01:00

Lining Up for the Holiday Near S. Giacomo di Rialto, Today

2011-12-12T18:15:00.002+01:00

A Bit of Christmas in Campo Santa Margherita, Tonight

2011-12-11T20:17:00.001+01:00

The Largest Church in Venice

2011-12-10T20:37:00.001+01:00

Unione Venezia (in white) takes on Mezzocorona of Trentino, 8 December 2011

If, as many people have noted, calcio (or football or soccer) is a major religion in Italy, then the largest church in Venice is neither SS Giovanni e Paolo nor I Frari, but Stadio Pierluigi Penzo which, from what I've observed, few tourists ever enter.

As recently as 2002 the Venice team--or, at times, Venice-Mestre team--was in Italy's top league, Serie A. But since being declared bankrupt after the 2009 season (as it had been after the 2005 season as well) it has vied for top spot in Serie D as F.B.C. Unione Venezia.

A local friend who has rarely attended a game since its demotion from Serie A said that the stadium used to have a great many more bleachers, which were removed as the team's fortunes declined. To attend a Serie A game in the old fully fitted-out stadium was, he told me, a thrilling and terrifying experience. Thrilling because the fans were rabid in their support. Terrifying because the old metal stands never seemed particularly sturdy and when the crowd got to stamping its feet in unison, as it often did, complete structural collapse seemed certain and imminent.

Venezia fans still stamp their feet, and sing, and jeer their opponents, and are still as passionate as before--but there are far fewer of them. Perhaps 3,000 per game, as compared to more than 20,000 in the Serie A days.

A sampling of the team's most boisterous supporters

Unione Venezia sat all alone at the top of the standings--undefeated in 14 matches, with only 2 draws--when I went to my first game of the season last Thursday afternoon. It was a special holiday game against a team far below them in the standings, Mezzocorona, and Venezia played as if they resented being among the relatively few folks in town who had to work that day. Or perhaps they were contemplating the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, whose feast day it was. They certainly weren't thinking about playing defense. They were behind 2-0 at the end of the first period, and 3-0 as soon as the second one began. Nor could they conceive the least bit of creativity on the attack.

But the games are worth attending if only to observe the fans. I always sit near the large group of ultras in the Distinti section--there's another isolated group of them in the Curva Sud, behind the goal. The price for a seat in either section is the same, so I'm not sure why someone would choose the latter place, as the view is much worse, but there may be some details about each group of supporters I've yet to learn.

At least two or three of the ultras who lead the songs and chants and cheering spend the entire game with their back to the action--not even American high school cheerleaders see so little of what's going on. As there is no in-stadium screen showing instant replays, nor even a scoreboard, these young men miss everything. In the church of calcio they are the most selfless of sacristans.

But try as they might, there was no helping i lagunari this day. Venezia hardly even threatened to score. In frustration, I took to wandering all over the stands, then down close to the field, then up to the very highest most distant bleachers in the place, trying out different vantage points. But there was no beauty to be found in the so-called "beautiful game" last Thursday, at least not for a Venezia fan. So I turned my back to the field and looked out over the shipyard behind the stadium, the harbor, the lagoon. I was not disappointed.

When there's no beauty to be found on the field, there's always the lagoon

Little City at the Edge of the World

2011-12-07T11:20:00.005+01:00

photo credit: Jen

I read somewhere that Venice is only about twice the size of New York's Central Park. After a hard day's night of travel and the sadness of having to say arrivederci to family in the States, we were happy to see it again yesterday evening--though I have no idea what day it is today.

When I sit on a certain park bench at the far eastern end of the city I often see some airliner approach Marco Polo Airport along just the route we were following when this picture was taken. If I'm not preoccupied with other thoughts I usually imagine how pleasant it is to be in a plane as it finally descends to its destination, and how excited passengers must be to find themselves arriving at such a city for the first, or fifth, or tenth time. I don't think I'd ever gotten such a clear view of the city from the air as this photo presents, so now I can imagine the experience of those on the plane much better than I ever could before. And if you are one of those on the plane arriving you can imagine at least one guy, invisible, and miles distant, watching you come in for a safe landing.

Libreria Marco Polo

2011-12-04T17:25:00.001+01:00

Novelist Sergio Garufi is interviewed in front of the bookstore, Oct 15, 2011

Does everybody out there know about Libreria Marco Polo?

It's just a few minutes from the Coin department store, right behind the church of San Giovanni Grisostomo (with its great Giovanni Bellini), and always has an extremely interesting selection of new titles in Italian and a pretty broad selection of used books in English. It also has some titles in German and French, I believe, though I haven't gotten around to looking at those.

It's a small charming friendly place that reminds one that the quality of a bookstore is not measured by square meters (or feet) or numbers of total volumes, but by its distinctive intelligence. Librera Marco Polo is positively overflowing with that.

It also puts on excellent events, such as the one for Sergio Garufi's dark and engaging novel of bibliophilia, Il nome giusto, pictured above and below.

Check out the store's website and blog at:

http://www.libreriamarcopolo.com/

And when you're in Venice, stop in and see it for yourself.

The Afterlife of a Murano Glass Chandelier

2011-11-30T18:38:00.004+01:00

A good friend who visited us in August asked me more than once for suggestions about what one should buy in Venice. He had to ask more than once because I never managed to answer him, though I knew very well what he meant.

He was asking about the distinctive Venetian product--the thing made only, or most famously in Venice. Of course he already knew what those were: glass and lace and masks, but he was thinking I might have some inside information to give him on where deals might be found on these items.

I didn't. I could refer him to a lace shop I knew whose owners were knowledgeable and honest, for example, but there are no deals on well-made lace or well-made glass or well-made anything actually made in Venice.

So then he got desperate: How about ties? he asked me one day as we passed a shop displaying them in its window. I shook my head. They might be nice ties, but they'd likely be the same ones he'd find in Florence or Rome at a better price. I couldn't help him. I told him there really were no bargains left.

However, a couple of weeks ago I wondered if perhaps I found one: a particular one to be sure, a niche item, and not for everyone, but something.

About mid-way between the churches of San Francesco della Vigna and SS Giovanni e Paolo is a single antique shop with two storefronts on two perpendicular calle. One of its storefronts is near the end of the Calle Barbaria de le Tole; the other is about 10 meters around the corner on Calle delle Cappuccine. A small garden court leads from the backdoor of one to the the backdoor of the other. I'm not in Venice at the moment and remember nothing about the name of the place except the proprietor's first name, Valter. [Note added 13 December 2011: the name of the shop is: Valter Ballarin, Rigattiere in Venezia]

In any case, it was there that I bought the fondo of an old Murano glass chandelier. The fondo is the base of the chandlier, its bottom-most central element from which all its various parts branch up and out as the leaves of an artichoke emanate from its own fondo. There were all kinds of parts from old dismembered chandeliers for sale in the shop: sinuous floral pieces of various pale colors that some creative person could probably put to good use, for example. But the pink hand-blown element I bought, pictured above and below, had found second life as a tea light holder.

It was not the only piece born again to such a use. But the other tea light holders were slightly smaller in diameter and had previously adorned the base of one or another chandelier's candles. They, also, were beautiful: fairly shallow little cups, petaled like flowers, with a little hole at the center.

Here was hand-blown glass at an affordable price: 15 euro is what mine cost me.

I don't think it would have worked for my friend, who doesn't seem like a guy who has much time for candles of any sort. But we've really enjoyed our fondo. In a dark room a tea light at the center of this very slightly asymmetrical piece of blown glass transports one back to its creation 40 or 50 years ago or more. The glass takes on an almost molten appearance--which it never had when it was part of a chandelier--and it's easy to imagine that it's fresh out of the forno. One can imagine the artist spinning it into a bowl-like shape at the end of his or her long pipe, then pulling and crimping into existence its two rows of angled leaves. The glass is returned to the fire, at least on a small scale, and the viewer is returned to an ancient process carried out on a specific day by an anonymous artisan otherwise long forgotten.

'Tis the Season: Acqua Alta

2011-11-26T21:42:00.000+01:00

If I remember correctly, some of the worst acqua alta of last year occurred during December, so I know what's waiting for us when we return home from our two week visit to the States. But far away from Venice, one can find oneself missing even acqua alta. The above photo was taken after my son's pre-school's Christmas pageant, last December. As fun as the pageant was, I think he enjoyed splashing home just as much.

Update: Hello, Bridge of Sighs!

2011-11-24T03:21:00.003+01:00

Two weeks ago I posted about the removal of the scaffolding from the Palazzo Ducale and noted that, however, the Bridge of Sighs had been newly covered. Well, the Bridge of Sighs has also been completely uncovered, all the scaffolding around it removed, and the view from the Ponte della Paglia is, once again (after three years), the famous one that even people who have never set foot in Venice (or cruised past it in one of those horrendous cruise ships) know so well.

One can get used to even the worst kinds of things, and so I guess I got used to all that scaffolding and the damned clouds and the wretched billboards and now that they are finally gone the bridge looks almost vulnerable, a little delicate. This is not a bad thing. I'd like to stand before it a long time and try to get a handle on how it looks to me now, in its natural state, so to speak, but I write this post from Chicago, Illinois and the photo above was taken Sunday, November 20, the afternoon before we left Venezia for a two-week visit to the States. So any further consideration of the bridge will have to wait.

More generally, nearly every time I pass over or by the Ponte della Paglia, packed with tourists, I wonder what it is that everyone is seeing when they behold the famous Bridge of Sighs. I wondered this most of all when the bridge was just a bit of architecture visible amid all those clouds and billboards: looking rather like a fingernail clipping nearly lost upon a gaudy bedspread. But I found myself wondering the same thing when all that extra stuff was taken away as well.

Do people find the bridge beautiful in itself? Or is it the pathetic narrative evoked by Byron's designation of it that makes it such a must-see? Every guidebook tells us we should be haunted by thoughts of those pitiful wretches glimpsing freedom for the last time through its constricted windows on their way to their fate. Are we? Do we even pretend to be? Or by this time is the bridge--for most or many of us--simply a celebrated sight: famous for being famous? Can we even really see it anymore?

I wish I could ask all those people crowded on the Ponte della Paglia, snapping away, but it's not the kind of thing most people would want to be bothered with. And even if I did ask, could they really answer, just like that--put on the spot? I don't think I could. I can't even now.

Foggy Morning in Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo, Today

2011-11-19T17:09:00.000+01:00

Condottiere in a blanket

Early morning appointment at Ospedale Civile and too much fog for the vaporetti to run, even with their radars. But it wasn't so bad, as Venezia in the fog is a lovely place.

Evening Market on Via Garibaldi, Tonight

2011-11-15T20:52:00.004+01:00

A new green grocer recently opened on Via Garibaldi in a spot that had been vacant for a little less than a year and it's quickly become a favorite of ours and many other folks. I've found myself referring to it as "The Five Guys," as that is about the number of men who seem to run the place, but there may actually be one or two more.

I had started to believe (sadly) that soft persimmons (or cachi) were done for the year, as even the grocers at the Rialto had only mushy blotchy ones on offer today, but somehow the Five Guys still had a good stock of them tonight. (I have resisted the urge to devote an entire post to that most sensual of fruit, the persimmon, as I feared I might inadvertently veer into R-rated territory and I'm trying to keep this blog decent.) In any case, this fruit and vegetable market is a great addition to Via Garibaldi, worth checking out if you're in the neighborhood, and, as you can see above, has a pretty good view of Santa Maria della Salute as well.

Boy Wonder on the Grand Canal

2011-11-13T20:28:00.005+01:00

Sandro's skills with a 35 mm camera are rapidly improving. Today he managed to take a picture of Jen and me that was well-framed and pretty much in focus--at least as well as I usually manage. But just as we were congratulating him on this--the three of us enjoying the perfect quiet beside the Palazzo Loredan dell'Ambasciatore--along comes the young marvel in the photos above and below (taken by me, not Sandro). And suddenly, much as I appreciated Sandro's developing ability with the camera, I found myself fantasizing about one day just a few years off when he'd be able to row his lucky parents (and no more than a few friends--we wouldn't want to overburden him) around in a gondola!

But it turned out that even gondoliere prodigies have their limitations. When it was time to turn off the Grand Canal into one of the side canals an adult took over. Gondolas really are quite huge--a gondola's oar is really quite huge in itself--and I was impressed the kid could maneuver one down Venice's own Broadway. But narrow side canals are even more of a challenge.

So much for my vision of Sandro rowing us around at the age of nine or ten... I'll have to keep working on my own rowing skills.

What a Racket!: Festa di San Martino, Today

2011-11-10T21:22:00.002+01:00

Hello, Good-bye: Palazzo Ducale, Bridge of Sighs

2011-11-09T12:03:00.009+01:00

Here's something that hasn't been seen for nearly 3 years: the southeast corner of the Palazzo Ducale. Finally, the famous early 15th-century sculpture of the drunkenness of Noah above the corner capital beside the Ponte della Paglia is once again visible to us all as a warning of the kind of embarrassment too much celebration can lead to. (Not that it's ever been heeded.) Also thankfully visible again: the second of the two older gothic windows with tracery that predate the 1574 fire--like an eye finally uncovered after a three-year-long eye-chart exam.

Gone, finally, are all those awful clouds--and all those even more awful ads, paid for by those awful advertisers who deserve only scorn and a lasting boycott for their participation in the defacement of what Ruskin called "the central building of the world."

Why can't more advertisers do this?

In fact, though the Venetian civic group 40xVenezia approached numerous advertisers about designing billboards more respectful of the buildings on which they are placed, only one company has responded to date: the kitchen design firm Scavolini.

You can see Scavolini's sensible effort to the left. It manages to suggest that the advertiser is a partner in the renovation of a valuable piece of history, instead of a vile cold-hearted opportunist preying upon La Serenissima's poverty to thrust himself upon her. If only more advertisers would follow the example of Scavolini...

In any case, that's the good news. The bad news, as you can see above, is that scaffolding has now gone up in front of the Bridge of Sighs. The fabric covering the scaffolding is transparent, instead of the usual opaque--and without ads! (at present)--but I imagine some visitors may be disappointed with this compromised view for the next, oh, 2 or 3 years. Though I'm not. I'd trade an obscured Bridge of Sighs for the departure of that gargantuan storm of ads any day.

Alas, when it comes to the Libreria Sansoviniana--praised by Palladio as the finest building since antiquity--there appears to be no similar trade-off in the works. The south face of that marvelous facade, the narrow side that so beautifully frames the Piazzetta as you cross the basin of San Marco in a vaporetto, is being covered with scaffolding. Okay, I thought, that must mean the billboard abomination right around the corner, on the library's long side, will be coming down.

Nope.

It appears that the south-eastern corner of the library will likely be subjected to the kind of wrap-around advertising that polluted the southeast corner of the Palazzo Ducale for so long. It's a shame, as it means that even from the Punta della Dogana the view of the Piazzetta is likely to be splatted with ads.

And people used to think those filthy mobs of pigeons were bad! When it comes to defacement, man (especially in pursuit of profit) always and easily trumps beast.

Some Greetings in Italian & Venetian Best Avoided

2011-11-07T13:42:00.009+01:00


A view from more linguistically innocent times: Sandro swinging off jet lag after our arrival last November

As was the case almost a year ago, when one of the first posts I wrote was about parolaccie, our son Sandro still seems to learn most of his Italian "bad words" from a certain classmate, the son of a gondoliere. This boy has something of a school-wide reputation--one mother we know has referred to him as maleducato (rude, ill-mannered), which I think is a little severe, as he only just turned 4. I tend to think of him as a little like Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio: that is, the original rambunctious head-strong wooden scamp, not the watered-down blandly-innocent Disney version.

Not all of this kid's words are actually bad, though, some of what Sandro picks up is just a bad idea, socially-speaking. For example, before the weather here turned cold we were eating on the upper deck of a double-decker restaurant/bus parked near the beach on Lido when a pair of young brothers familiar from the playground came up and greeted Sandro.

Sandro replied glibly with: "Ciao, puzzolenti!"

The boys, so sweet to begin with, turned away, looking troubled, and walked off. My wife and I, not recognizing the word Sandro used, had no idea what happened. Sandro, quite pleased with the exchange, offered no explanation.

When we got home and looked in the dictionary, we discovered the two brothers hadn't appreciated being addressed as "stinkies" or "smellies."

Nor, as Sandro would soon realize (after ignoring our warnings), do new acquaintances take warmly to being called "brutto" (ugly) or "cattivo" (bad). Though, as I noticed the other day, Sandro's friend still addresses other kids as all of the above and--for all his boisterous charm--only really manages to pull it off with his close friends, such as Sandro, who understand him.

But by far the worst form of address Sandro has employed was entirely of his own devising. One day as we walked into the city center Sandro was in a particularly gregarious mood. We'd pass this or that woman, or pair or trio of women, and he'd happily address some greeting to her or them that we didn't catch at first. We noticed it was only women he was addressing for some reason, but didn't know why until we finally understood what he was saying:

"Ciao, cocona!" Or "Ciao, cocone!"

This was actually rather shocking.

It's a Venetian word he learned during an August of swimming and bathing and running around naked with a female Venetian friend and classmate. It's the term Venetians use with children to refer to the vagina.

It, along with its male complement, pipoto, were, along with their referents, sources of great interest and amusement to a pair of skinny-dipping three-year-olds. No surprise in that. But that Sandro should, by a curious and cunning process of induction, decide to apply (and address!) the term to women he passed on the street...!

And thus began a new discussion whose underlying theme was that great and exciting as it is to learn and use new words, it's also important to learn the proper context in which they might be employed--productively and without offense.

It's such an interesting phase of language acquisition, contextual ramifications such as these, for anyone--not just kids--learning a new language. Such subtleties--each word's place within a social-cultural-historical web--are reminders of why the most truly poetic works of poetry can't really be translated.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is simply that Sandro has, in just a year, become more crudely Venetian than we ever could have expected. After all, these are the extremely blunt people who still call the little area beside one end of the Rialto Bridge where prostitutes used to congregate "Fondamenta Traghetto del Buso"--or "of the hole".

Postcard from Piemonte: Autumn

2011-11-03T14:06:00.007+01:00

photo credit: Dario Cavallotto

For today only we will stray from Venice across Italy to the beautiful region of Piemonte, famous for its wine, truffles and hazelnuts. My cousin sent me this photo that he took yesterday morning and though autumn appears in Venice in its own distinct way--with some of the most beautiful sunsets of the year, for example--I couldn't resist posting it.

The photo was taken in the Quartino di Loazzolo, between the small villages of Cessole and Bubbio, not too far from the hometown of the great writer Cesare Pavese. We made our first extended stay in Italy, from March through May 2010, in Cessole, working for our room and board on an organic vineyard/farm/agriturismo B&B, while our son spent part of the day at a pre-school (which he loved) in the neighboring village of Monastero Bormida.

The slender trees with the white trunks in the background are young pioppi (poplars) that are planted around the Bormida River and harvested (I believe after about 10 years) to make paper. Another horizon line of mature pioppi with their green-yellow leaves are arrayed a little further back, before the view hazes off into the distant trees on the justifiably famous colline (hills).

The field in the foreground, plowed so clean, I'd find austerely beautiful in itself if it didn't remind me of a few particularly arduous days of labor: one interminable day we spent planting 200 young hazelnut trees, and two others on which we, blinded by sweat, buried legions of ocular potato bits beneath earth’s heavy lid in record April heat.

Yet even such trying days as those, as the poet Leopardi pointed out, ultimately become achingly sweet in retrospect, the vista soft and appealing as the photo above.

Dolcetto o Scherzetto! (Treat or Trick!)

2011-10-31T21:05:00.013+01:00

Halloween is not an Italian holiday but it has been adopted to a limited extent in Venice and, because it involves a lot of elements that Italians like--ie, costumes, sweets, and kids on the loose--I suppose throughout most of the country. But here, trick-or-treaters don't go from house to house or apartment to apartment, but from shop to shop, as the kids will soon do for the upcoming Festa di San Martino on November 10.

Of course not everyone here is happy about Halloween's growing prominence. The Church of San Martino near the Arsenale posted a very stern notice--two actually, side by side--on the bulletin board in front of their door stating that they would have nothing at all to do with the holiday and its costumes and jack-o-lanterns and candy and other impious nonsense. On the evening of October 31 they would be saying a rosary for the souls of all the departed.

And so they were, murmuring their way from bead to bead, when our sugared-up son and his school friend, fully-costumed and toting maniacally-grinning pumpkin bags filled with their hauls of candy, decided that the best place to stop and goof off and break into ear-splitting banshee screams was directly in front of the open church door.

It's almost as if they took the church notices as a challenge. But as neither of them is yet four years old, and neither can read, it must have just been instinctive primal hooliganism.

Of course we told them to keep it down and hurried them along, but I did so with a very rare sense that at least for a couple of minutes all was right in the world. The Church had done its part and announced what it considered appropriate activity on such a significant night and the pre-schoolers had done theirs and spontaneously flouted that same activity con gusto.

For piety needs impiety to feel itself to the fullest, just as impiety needs piety to really have any fun.

Now in this sense the ostensibly pious have it better these days than ever: they need only turn the computer or television or radio to buck themselves up. Their ancestors might have had to leave their house, or at least look out the window.

While the poor would-be impious of the Western world...! Their case is almost hopeless. When everything and everyone is relentlessly telling you to indulge your appetites and cravings it becomes hard to even recognize those appetites as your own, or as yourself. The only truly transgressive act is to become an ascetic.

But last night at San Martino with the barbarians--or pagans--running wild at the door of the church it all balanced out perfectly, as it so rarely does anymore. I hope at least one cranky churchgoer, or maybe the priest, caught sight of the costumed racket at the door and benefitted from its contrast to his or her own focus. And though neither my unlettered son nor his friend could appreciate the dynamic, I could and did. I considered it my very own Halloween treat.

Chapel of Sant' Atanasio in Church of San Zaccaria, Today 11:30 am

2011-10-29T14:47:00.002+02:00

Among the paintings: an altarpiece of Mary enthroned by Palma il Vecchio that stood in for Gio Bellini's masterpiece in the main church while it was detained for 20 years in Paris, and a crucifixion by Anthony van Dyck above the exit

Venice Biennale: The Future of a Promise, Pan-Arab Exhibition

2011-10-25T18:22:00.004+02:00

At a certain point in the 20th Century it seems it became fashionable for certain cognoscenti to announce: Painting Is Dead. Then in the 1980s it was "miraculously reborn" as an obscenely lucrative medium, complete with its own latter-day de Koonings and Pollocks self-consciously mimicking the heroic days of those masters, and it was no longer so important--or even advisable--to assert its passing. Some people still do, of course, but as long as there's an international market for it it's not imperative to do so.

I was never qualified to make such a pronouncement and no one, not even myself, cared what I thought about Painting's viability. And, besides, as I have a sister who's a painter how could I take pleasure in the thought of its passing? But I must confess that recently during one or two of my grumpier days as I walked through this or that Biennale pavilion I was surprised to find myself sympathizing--and completely!--with those who talked of its demise. In our media-saturated age how could ancient old toothless Painting, depending entirely on so many now-familiar motifs and strategies, possibly still reach us?

Then I saw the work Al Maw3oud by the Lebanese painter Ayman Baalbaki and was reminded how.

Painting could still be monumental and striking, complex and suggestive of any number of contradictory ideas all at once. Instead of seeming like the oldest medium on display it could seem like the freshest and most immediate. At least to me.

detail of Al Maw3oud

But, then, there are a number of striking pieces, in different media, on display in The Future of a Promise. Another, by the Saudi artist Ahmed Mater, struck me as having far more to suggest about one of the defining myths of America--and its reality--than any of the momentarily eye-catching and costly pieces in the American pavilion which, finally, I can only describe as high concept, low impact.

At first sight, I thought Mater's The Cowboy Code was nothing more than a homey American needlepoint sampler recreated on an absurdly massive scale.

But then I stepped up close to the piece and discovered the entire thing was composed of the plastic ammunition discs for a toy cap gun, as you can see below.

It's a dark witty piece that, unlike a number of other works in the Biennale, does not stop at wit, at a knowing punch line. I find myself thinking of the piece still, days later.

A Last Look at Summer: Fisherman

2011-10-21T11:29:00.004+02:00

My friend and neighbor, who has lived here all of his nearly 70 years, remembers swimming right off of Sant' Elena (where this fisherman is set up) when he was a boy. He also remembers, as an adult, when dead fish started showing up in great numbers on the surface of the very same water. The quality of the water is somewhere between those two states now and you can eat the fish you catch in the lagoon. Though I doubt it's a great idea for children or pregnant women to do so, or for anyone else to do so too often. But you'll need to get a fishing license before you cast your line (or lines), and these days you'll need a lot more clothing; this pic is from late August.

Rowing in the Venetian Style

2011-10-17T16:15:00.020+02:00


The calm before the struggle: the caorlina of my first rowing experience photo credit: Nicola Capuzzo

Yesterday morning I made my second try at rowing Venetian style, standing up, facing forward, with an oar that's longer than the average New York City studio apartment is wide.

After the first attempt, made one week before yesterday, I was convinced I would have made a terrible galley slave. It's not a position one associates with a lot of job-training, but rowing in time with others is much harder than it looks in those old Hollywood biblical epics.

The first challenge a novice faces is getting the hang of the particular wrist movement needed to position the oar correctly: that is, horizontal to (and out of) the water as you move it into the forward position, then vertical to (and in) the water as you push into the stroke.

Well, actually, let me back up. The first challenge a novice faces is stepping into--and staying inside--the boat. The first boat I went out in was a caorlina (a rather large and heavy boat with places for six rowers, as used in the regatta storica) and I was told to step only on the thin ribs that spanned its bottom, not on the broad inviting and much more stable open spaces between the ribs. I didn't ask why, I was too busy trying not to fall out. But it's a comfort to the novice to see that even expert rowers move quite gingerly aboard the boats. In fact, even the two cats belonging to the remiera, or rowing club, moved very carefully around the neighboring boat they were exploring.

In any case, once you're in the boat, and have properly positioned your very own forcola (or carved oarlock) in its designated opening in the side of the boat by hammering little wedges of wood around it, you must concern yourself with that wrist rolling I mentioned. Just before pushing forward with the roughly 12-foot-long oar into each stroke you must roll both wrists back as you would roll just your right wrist if you were riding a motorcycle and wanted to increase its speed. You must also dip the oar into the water. The latter action is of course obvious. But that doesn't mean it's easy. Especially when the lagoon is wavy in the wake of one infernal vaporetto after another and the surface of the water, or the boat's position on it, is no longer where it's supposed to be.

The Remiera Francescana is located near the Celestia vaporetto stop within the Arsenale, and after a bit of warming up in one of that massive old structure's placid basins, we headed out into the lagoon in the direction of Murano. I recalled noticing on my way to the remiera what a beautiful early morning it was, with the Dolomiti clear and brilliant beyond the western edge of the lagoon, but once I was in the boat I might as well have been rowing inside a small dark barn. My eyes were fixed on the end of my oar, to be certain it was how and where it was supposed to be at every moment. In fact I was supposed to be watching my friend just ahead of me, at the front of the boat, and rowing in time with her. Almost impossible, no matter how I tried to utilize peripheral vision. I considered it a great triumph to be rowing at all.

Something like a pupparino

I had the distinct suspicion by the time we reached Murano that I had contributed very little in the way of actually propelling us toward that destination, but that didn't stop me from feeling a certain pride when we tied up the craft beneath curious tourists' eyes and popped into a cafe for a quick espresso. Once on land no one can tell what a drag you may have been in the water, and my co-rowers were much too encouraging and polite to mention it.

Yesterday, however, I was much better. And the conditions were much worse. Initially, my improvement seemed to make up for the high winds and rough water, but as I tired Nature (as it or she always will) got the upper hand.

Yesterday I went out with just three others--two experienced rowers and one novice like myself--in a pupparino. "Pupparino!" my fellow (but more knowledgeable) novice rather anxiously exclaimed when our instructor told us what boat we'd be on. A pupparino, I learned, is a smaller, lighter, shallow-hulled boat, in which the possibility of capsizing seems to come into play much more than it does in a caorlina. Imagine a dry leaf tossed upon a rough-running river and that was a little like our pupparino yesterday.

Rowing into a strong head-wind, on a lagoon just barely lacking whitecaps, we got nowhere near Murano yesterday. But the issues with hand and oar position that obsessed me my first time out vanished--to be replaced by others involving leg position. Yet it was, nevertheless, infinitely easier. I was at the very front of the boat and was able to get into what seemed to be a regular rhythm. And when I switched positions with the woman behind, I was even able to follow her movements rather than being obsessed with the end of my oar.

And there, all around us, was the Venetian lagoon! There, beside us, was the cemetery island! And then, thankfully, there, right there, at last, after our strenuous jaunt, a venerable archway of the once mighty Arsenale welcoming us back! Which, I must admit--the water all wild with wind and waves and the wake of a water taxi--we actually crashed into just a bit before passing safely inside.

But neither boat nor arch were damaged, everyone remained standing and dry, and it was probably the first assault upon those old walls in many years. Sore as my muscles are today, I can't wait to get out on the water for a third time. After two outings as a guest, I've decided to sign up as a member of the remiera and, amazingly enough, I think they'll actually let me.

Lagoon Sunset, This Evening, 7 pm

2011-10-08T22:16:00.000+02:00

From Lido, with no photoshopping or color intensifying settings

Venice Biennale: Ukraine Pavilion Part 2 (San Fantin)

2011-10-07T19:40:00.005+02:00

A dark rainy day like today was the perfect time to see Oksana Mas's work in the beautiful (and usually closed) church of San Fantin.

You can read about and see images of other parts of Mas's massive work (including close-ups of the 1,000s of wood eggs that make up the works), as displayed at San Stae, here: http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/06/venice-biennale-ukraine-pavilion.html

Chiesa San Martino Tonight, 8:45 pm

2011-10-03T21:57:00.000+02:00

In the course of trying to take this picture I realized how oppressively well-lit parts of Venice are: high-powered floods, even a surveillance camera or two. Perhaps it's just because this area is around the Arsenale with its active military presence, but it's no longer the gloomy Venice of Donald Sutherland's and Julie Christie's Don't Look Now. At least not in this campiello.

Campo Ruga Today, 5:30 pm

2011-10-01T21:00:00.002+02:00

Poetry Slam at Ca' Tron

2011-09-25T14:36:00.004+02:00

Gigi reads. Off to his right, the panel of 5 judges; to his left, the poets' score sheet.

I thought I was going to see the American poet Michael McClure read last night as part of the international event 100 Thousand Poets for Change at Ca' Tron, near San Stae. (A few of the 99,999 other poets were also on the bill, but the rest were spread out at different venues around the globe). Information for the event that I'd found online said the event would begin at 9 pm.

Actually, it began at 5 and, from a report I got from a friend, was packed. I didn't know this when I arrived, nor even as I enjoyed a poetry competition among local poets of all ages, which I imagined were the opening acts for McClure. Until the competition wrapped up, a young raggae band set up on the stage, and I ran into my friend.

Have I ever mentioned how challenging it can be to get accurate scheduling information in Venice? Even for natives. For example, no one with kids in my son's preschool--not even the typically in-the-know-head-of-the-PTA types--knew exactly when the first day of school would be. We had a general idea, but didn't find out for sure (well, almost for sure; few things here are for sure) until two days before school opened. Only the day before it opened did we get some idea of what the actual hours of the first two days of school were likely to be. Though those were inevitably revised on the opening day itself.

In any case, I missed McClure. But if you ever have the chance to catch a poetry competition at Ca' Tron, which is the seat of the Università IUAV di Venezia (an architecture, urban design and arts school), it's worth a visit, even if your Italian is limited, just to take in the scene. They also host films and other events open to the general public.

Refreshment tent and Ca' Tron behind a good crowd

Last night's competition was won by Gigi, an older poet who uses dialect in his works. Though he's often in Venice for business, he told me as we caught a ride home together on the vaporetto, he lives on the mainland, in the countryside. He grew up in the mountains, near Belluno, and though the language he grew up speaking would be considered part of the Venet language spoken throughout the old Venetian Republic, he told me about the differences between his native tongue and that spoken in the lagoon. He also reminded me that such differences between mainland and lagoon were hardly surprising when one considers the differences in language spoken even to this day by natives of, for example, the Giudecca compared to those of Castello, of Castello to Chioggia, of Chioggia to Malamuoco....

In light of which the complexities or ambiguities or multiplicities of scheduling seem to pale.

Electric poet: Rudi, one of the night's three finalists

Venice Biennale: Arsenale Fuel Tanks

2011-09-22T22:03:00.004+02:00

There's no end of competition for the contemporary artist in Venice. As good as the works are in the Chinese Pavilion, I couldn't help becoming obsessed with the huge old fuel tanks lining the walls of the massive warehouse.

A little like the work of some contemporary of the young Rauschenberg & Jasper Johns

Time's incidental beauty

Yang Maoyuan's piece, All Things Are Visible, is visible on the floor

Procession of the Madonna, Church of Sant' Elena, This Morning

2011-09-18T20:48:00.002+02:00

How Mary rolls: amid a bed of flowers and amplified

Backing into the church

To see 2 short videos of this same festa being celebrated by Italians on the same day at practically the opposite end of the earth (Australia) go to:

http://ytaba36.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/maria-ss-della-quercia-in-atherton/

This same blog also has a lot of excellent photos and information about Venice.

Venice Biennale: Italy Pavilion: Garibaldirama

2011-09-15T12:58:00.000+02:00

A thicket of Garibaldis: detail of the work Innocente Italia by Lello Esposito (acrylic on canvas, bronze and iron).

Regata Storica 2011: 5 Views

2011-09-07T13:13:00.012+02:00


The competition for pics of the corteo storico can sometimes rival that of the races that follow


It may not have a view of the finish line, but there are worse places to watch from than Ca' Barbaro


I might as well admit I'm as interested in the colors of the boats & background as in the race results


Blow-up: one group of viewers on the Grand Canal

Clinging to August: Sunset

2011-09-06T16:20:00.001+02:00

It's hardly been more than two days since we got relief here from the high temperatures and humidity of August and, having complained more than enough about the oppressive weather (and being without a functioning air conditioner), I would have expected to be happy now that the temperature has dropped into the high 70s (or mid 20s C). Instead, having suddenly noticed the fallen leaves under my feet, I'm already ridiculously nostalgiac for summer...

And so, indulging this absurd nostalgia for a month hardly past, I post a photo below taken at sunset on August 11--right in the thick of the heat (but when our a/c was still actually working). Imagine yourself sitting on a bench at the edge of Sant' Elena, coated with a light layer of perspiration, and with the mosquitoes really starting to come on all around you in the heavy air, and it will almost be like you're there.

Though you, unlike me, may have the good sense to simply enjoy the first signs of autumn (if you're in the northern hemisphere). To which I promise to resign myself soon. But not just yet.

Venice Film Festival Exclusive Pics: Madonna, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet...

2011-09-04T21:56:00.011+02:00

Continuing the Lido theme of the last few posts, today we head down the beach a ways to the Venice Film Festival with some exclusive photos--available only on this site!--by photographer Federico Roiter, who was previously kind enough to provide photos of the the Spettacolo dei Burattini (or traditional Italian puppet show) from the Festa di San Pietro di Castello (http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/07/festa-di-san-pietro-di-castello.html).

photo credit: Federico Roiter

I'm no expert on film, but I think Madonna is one of the worst actors I have ever seen. Thankfully, she's at this year's festival as a director--of a story based upon the romance of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII. The film itself hasn't gotten very good reviews, but the woman does know how to make an entrance.


photo credit: Federico Roiter

I don't know if Federico was in a tree to get the above shot of the director with two of her stars (Andrea Riseborough, Abbie Cornish) behind the scenes, but I find it an interesting contrast to the photo below, as she approaches the press conference stage with the determination of General Patton.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow co-star in Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, which, like the Madonna film W.E., is being shown "Out of Competition" at the festival. That is, as an "important work by a director already established in previous editions of the festival." If anyone has any ideas about what Mr. Damon may be showing to Ms. Paltrow on his iPhone I'd love to hear them.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

George Clooney is at the festival this year as the director and co-star of the in-competition film Ides of March, in which a young campaign press secretary played by Ryan Gosling finds out just how nasty American presidential campaigns can be. Evan Rachel Wood, pictured above, also stars.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Kate Winslet stars in no less than three films being screened at this year's festival: Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce, Steven Soderbergh's Contagion, and Roman Polanski's Carnage, set amid the "mean streets" of our old neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn. Actually, Carnage involves a meeting between two pairs of parents who get together to discuss what should be done about a playground act of bullying perpetrated by one couple's son against the other couple's son. In such gentrified surroundings and with such civilized intentions everything should work out just fine--but this is a Polanski film... And one that I'm eager to see.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Finally, who is this man? He looks so very familiar, I'm fairly sure he's a director, but Federico did not label the photo and I haven't gotten in touch with him yet to find out. Help...

P.S. For even more candid--much much more candid--glimpses of three major Hollywood leading men (and lovers of Venice), I refer you to one of the early posts of this blog: http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/02/il-sputinato-di-venezia.html

Pizza & Wine: on the Gran Viale, Lido

2011-08-26T18:46:00.000+02:00

A garden of earthly delights, with table service.

Blue Lido, This Evening, 8 pm

2011-08-25T22:15:00.004+02:00

For 12.50 euro per day you can rent one of these umbrellas + chair (7.50 euro for each additional chair) and experience a little bit of Venice's capanna culture: the central part of many native Venetians' summer experience, with its own very particular traditions and laws. It deserves a post all its own, which I am hoping my wife, who has much more experience of it, will soon write.

Lido This Evening, 8 pm

2011-08-21T23:01:00.001+02:00

Venice Biennale: Anish Kapoor at S. Giorgio Maggiore

2011-08-19T17:30:00.003+02:00

I should say right off that I like the work of Anish Kapoor. His "Cloud Gate" in Chicago (which he hates to be called what everyone naturally calls it: "The Bean") seems to me like the most successfully integrated and engaging public sculpture I've seen. And I liked his deeply pigmented works before he went all reflective on us. So I was excited to hear that he would have an auxilary work in this Biennale.

Having finally seen "Ascension", though, I've realized that the sound of eight towering stacks of powerful fans beneath a dome of one of Palladio's masterpieces is every bit as annoying as the canned music that certain other great Venetian churches--such as San Francesco della Vigna--insist on ruining their spaces with.

This explicitly-labeled spiritual work also reminded me once again that while the poor may still possibly be able to find relatively low-cost consolation in Religion, when it comes to Spirituality these days huge amounts of money are required. In place of the more traditional distinctions between these two terms I'd like to suggest what I think is now a more relevant formula:

Madonna, Sting and Oprah are all extremely spiritual.

Someone like Mother Teresa, having taken a vow of poverty, could only have been religious.

In America at least, anything that pitches itself as spiritual typically requires a platinum American Express card.

In the case of the mystical almost immaterial experience promised us by Anish Kapoor in "Ascension", it requires all those fans burning through unimaginable quantities of kilowatt hours and major corporate funding. (Like the work? Buy the commemorative espresso service!)

It's an extremely strange work of art in that it requires nothing so quaint as a "willing suspension of disbelief" but, instead, an extremely determined kind of tunnel vision. Having seen the posters for the piece around town, which showed the most ethereal of works--nothing more than moody smoke--I was shocked to walk into the church and encounter not just the fans and their din, but a huge circular nearly-six-foot-tall base (whose form and material suggested the reception desk of a contemporary medical center), and a massive curved ventilation pipe extending out into the space below the center of the dome--its size and shape like something out of Dr. Seuss. Comical in the context, a little wacky.

As the photo illustrating this post shows, I was determined to have the pure experience promised by the publicity material. There's no sign of the huge Seussian ventilation pipe drawing the funnel of smoke upward, and the stack of fans are relegated to the edges of the frame.

Only after leaving the church did I realize how completely insane this was. I willfully ignored 90% of the experience of the work in order to capture the more picturesque and completely unrepresentative 10%.

This is the kind of willful self-deception required by politics--and advertising--not good art.

"Ascension" was originally created for a specific site in a very poor street in Brazil. In such a busy setting I imagine the noise of the fans and all the rest of the very material construction required to create the immaterial effects of this work seemed far less intrusive--and, thus, far less absurd. I'm surprised that an artist who has been very outspoken about his belief that most public art is bad precisely because it has no relation to its site (see Charles Ray's "Boy with Frog") would allow it to be installed in a space in which it fits so poorly.

For in the church of San Giorgio Maggiore it seems like a work of unintentional self-parody. Reminiscent of those traveling spiritualistic charlatans of the 19th and early 20th-century and their elaborate stagecraft, but presented in the grotesquely bloated terms of our own day. Or like some satirical Rube Goldberg-ian contraption whose enormous expenditures of energy, money and materials produces only a little smoke for the viewer--and its own self-perpetuation.

Lions and Dolphins and Cherubs...

2011-08-14T13:30:00.000+02:00

Or are they sea monsters? Whatever they may be, there are enough of them arrayed around the choir of San Giorgio Maggiore for a Busby Berkeley musical extravaganza--awaiting only the arrival of Esther Williams to get started.

Wall of Commedia dell'Arte

2011-08-13T19:48:00.025+02:00

Arlecchino, Pantalone, Brighella, Colombina, Pulcinella et al hang out at Zacaria's, a small shop right beside La Fenice in which all the objects (including the pictured figures, as well as large fully-functioning marionettes) are handmade by the owner.

Venice Biennale: Unofficial Venice Pavilion: "Nude Outside Bath"

2011-08-09T11:07:00.006+02:00

I don't mean to slight the official Venice Pavilion in the Biennale but the installation I saw (and posted about) Sunday in the Brazil Pavilion by Artur Barrio reminded me of another, well, exhibition I recently saw on the edges of the Giardini Pubblici.

One of the focal points in Barrio's site specific installation is a scaffold which, with its dirty sheets and two sacks of grain for pillows, its variety of empty bottles and glasses, scraps of building materials and other waste, attests to the process of the work's creation and the former presence of the artist. Messy life, or at least traces of it--some of them still rotting (the fish in the crates of salt near the make-shift cot), some of them just the usual plastic waste of our society--defy and disrupt the pristine order we might expect in an exhibition space.

Does it surprise us and pull us up short? Well, no, in this context it's kind of what one expects.

Unlike the work pictured below. Another site-specific installation, on the edge of the Riva dei Partigiani, right next to Carlo Scarpa's once-floating/now stationary Monument to the Women Partisans.

Like Artur Barrio's most famous works, his "situations", the above installation is constructed of the most modest materials and yet has a disorienting impact upon its surroundings. But the above work is not by Barrio. Nor is it, as far as I can tell, intended as art.

A man really does seem to live here, at least part of the time. Like most residences, the decor changes periodically. For a time there were two chairs (a visitor was expected?). Before the tricolore appeared last week, there had been a large umbrella. One afternoon I saw the older man whose place it is sitting in a chair beneath the umbrella reading. For a while I thought that perhaps it was just his terrace away from home. It's a great location, with a great view, unmatched even by those with an apartment on the Riva (in Manhattan it would rent as a one bedroom for $2,000 per month). When some people get tired of being indoors they have a favorite park bench they like to sit on. I thought this might be something like that, only expanded and more intensely domesticated.

But I now think this is his only, or at least primary residence. I say this because while I have never passed by in the evening and seen him sleeping there, I did pass by a few weeks ago and see him at his morning bath. He was standing in the middle of his living area--that is, the slightly lower level with the chair--completely naked except for a blue towel draped over one shoulder. A white haired man, probably in his 60s, with a round belly. He had a hand mirror and was shaving, facing in the direction of the Partisan sculpture.

It was about 9:30 in the morning and he seemed entirely at ease, perfectly natural. Nothing insane or squalid or threatening about him. Just another naked guy shaving in what seemed to be the privacy of his own bathroom. As if the walls and roof of what had once been his own little house had suddenly vanished, but he hadn't noticed.

Others did notice. While I stood watching him a crowded vaporetto passed by less than 50 yards away. But while I could see the vaporetto passengers watching him with amusement, he seemed completely unaware of them.

Vaporetto traffic is just one of the facts of life in such a location; live there long enough and I'm sure you reach a point where you don't even notice it anymore.

This is the kind of display that would get you in trouble in the United States--and perhaps in any other Italian city in which homelessness is more visibly a problem than Venice. But the man and his residence remain, undisturbed by the authorities as far as I can tell. I should probably try to find out more about him, what his situation is. But for now I simply hope that his run extends beyond that of the Biennale.

Venice Biennale: Brazil Pavilion

2011-08-07T19:07:00.011+02:00

It's a hard thing to be an artist these days. Especially in something like the Venice Biennale.

At one time I'm sure it was supposed to be a great honor to be selected to represent your country--but that phrase alone, to "represent your country," involves the contemporary artist in all kinds of problems involving nationalism and politics and representation of any and all sorts.

A walk through the Biennale can sometimes seem to me like a walk through an ingenious system of exquisite torture, in which artists find themselves in the most impossible of positions, struggling mightily to maintain their credibility as subversives in the most institutional of settings.

It's a losing proposition. Back when the Biennale began an artist could simply exhibit his (mostly) or her (sometimes) work. But many contemporary artists feel the need to call into question the whole notion of "exhibition" and "national pavilion" and a lot of other once seemingly straightforward terms that can only be handled safely within quotation marks now, lest the artist become infected by them.

The Brazilian installation artist Artur Barrio bravely does without the quotation marks in his work, but the setting of the Biennale seems to present particular challenges for him. Barrio specializes in subverting the ordinary contexts of the everyday by preparing odd unidentifiable sacks of things--for example, a raggedy bloody bag about the size of a human torso, filled with bones and entrails and other unappetizing things--and leaving them anonymously behind on a sidewalk in Rio, for example, then recording the reactions of passers-by. One of the two rooms in the Brazil Pavilion documents two such works from the early 1970s.

At at time when "para-police forces" in Brazil were "cleansing" the streets of delinquents and poor children--that is, murdering them and dumping their bodies outside the city--Barrio's "placement of five hundred plastic bags containing blood, nails, dung, waste, and other debris in downtown Rio during the peak of the dictatorship’s repression” (Ramirez, Mari Carman and Olea, Hector, Inverted Utopias: Avant-garde Art in Latin America, Yale University Press) was a way of marking these disappearances, of trying to engage Brazilians personally in what their government was trying to keep out of sight.

These were brilliant works by an important artist--but how much can he possibly do within the Brazil Pavilion at the Venice Biennale? He has created a site specific installation but the setting of the Biennale works against him. No one is really surprised to find dried fish heads in crates of salt or an ersatz bed and refuse, empty bottles of wine, writing on the wall, scraped-off plaster, ropes and so forth; we're used to seeing a bunch of junk scattered around in contemporary art. There are so many other pavilions to see, viewers don't even slow to take it all in, much less react in any way.

He knows what he likes

Except for one viewer, that is. A pigeon happened to walk in while I was looking at the installation and he became very engaged with the piece. Specifically with a plastic sack of dried corn kernals hanging on the frame of the cot.

He watched the corn and I watched him. Then he leaped onto the plastic bag and, wings flapping, tried to break into it. He tried this a number of times with no luck.

He spent far more time with the piece than any human who passed through while I was there. Then, finally giving up, he walked out of the pavilion through the same door he came in.

It was the most intense interaction with any of the Biennale art that I've witnessed in my half dozen visits to the pavilions and, no surprise, it was by a creature whose appetites remained undimmed by the aesthetical institutional setting. If I were the artist it might not have been all that I'd hoped for but, considering the context, I'd be pretty happy with it.

Venice Biennale: Finland Pavilion

2011-08-02T21:10:00.020+02:00

I went to the Venice Biennale late Sunday afternoon. I'd been writing, looking at words for over 5 hours, and the last thing I wanted to do was have to look at more of them. In such a frame of mind one is struck by just how many damn words there are to take in at the Biennale as part of the works themselves (not just as catalog copy). So much text to read, and even to hear--both spoken and sung.

But not everywhere. Below are images from Vesa-Pekka Rannikko's work in the Finland Pavilion. In fact, the below images represent only the video portion of the work, as the work as a whole also involves obscuring the outside of the original building designed by Alvar Aalto with "construction elements" (panels, 2x4s, etc).

So, in truth, the below images, presenting just part of the work, should be considered "details" of the whole, which when seen in its entirety plays with 2-dimensionality and 3-dimensionality, architecture, painting (as object and act), and exhibition space. But enough with the words already!

Venetian Song to the Hermit Crab (or Paguro)

2011-07-26T20:19:00.011+02:00

We were supposed to go to Sant' Erasmo again last Sunday with friends in their boat but--and I hate to say this because of the awful heat in parts of the US--it was actually too cold. A storm came in Saturday night with high winds, rain, thunder and lightning, and the winds and colder temperatures stayed through Sunday.

I was hoping to take a photo of the hermit crabs one finds off Sant' Erasmo (and elsewhere in this area) to illustrate the following very short Venetian song which will, based upon what I witnessed on our first visit to Sant' Erasmo, coax even the shyest paguro out of its shell.

Though perhaps "coax" is not quite the right word, as the song basically makes the little crab an "offer it can't refuse."

Bovolo, bovolo

Vien' fora

Se no
Te magno.

Snail, snail

Come out

If you don't
I will eat you.

The first two words of the song are of course familiar from the famous Scala Contarini del Bovolo staircase near Campo Manin. And the song is also sung to garden variety snails which, unlike i paguri, are actually eaten. (My Sicilian grandmother in California would capture her garden snails, imprison them in a glass jar and feed them a steady diet of either parsley or bread for a particular length of time I've now forgotten, and then cook them up. For herself alone, as no one else would eat them. I don't recall that she ever sang to them.)

I think that pasta e paguro has a nice ring to it, but I guess when it comes to cooking a catchy name only goes so far.

In the course of looking for an illustration for this entry I found more than I was expecting when I came upon a report online that researchers in Belfast have discovered that i paguri not only feel pain but also have memory. The short article is in Italian, and here is the link, along with the image of a particularly photogenic paguro that goes with it:

http://www.100scienze.it/index.php?/archives/9-Dolore-e-memoria-nel-paguro.html

It's enough to make a guy feel guilty for singing such a bullying song to them, even if the tune itself is rather sweet and lullaby-like.

Sagra di San Giacomo dell'Orio: 3 Views

2011-07-25T20:54:00.000+02:00

photo credit: Jen

Belly Up to the Sandbar: "Locals Only" off Sant' Erasmo

2011-07-24T13:04:00.006+02:00

Domestic outposts anchored on either side of the sandbar

There are times when one hears or reads the statement that "There are no Venetians in Venice" so often that one is almost tempted to believe it. This is something quite different from the statement that the population of Venice has been declining for decades. The latter is a verifiable demographic fact; the former is a favorite among a certain kind of English speaker (or writer) who is troubled by what he or she fears is the lack of "authenticity" to be found in the city, and who usually ends up implying (or stating outright) that the Venetians one sees in shops or in calli or campi are not quite real people at all. That they have no actual life apart from the roles they perform for the tourists.

I suppose one reason such a view is so alluring is that it seems so "knowing", so superior to all the flimflam that takes in lesser mortals.

But don't believe it.

There may not be too many Venetians left, but I've been struck by how strongly they maintain traditions very particular to the city--beyond the big spectacles that draw crowds of tourists or even the more intimate feste far away from the centro storico.

For one thing, as a Venetian recently told me, "there are two different Venices: one you experience on foot and with the vaporetti, another that requires your own boat."

As much as my wife and son wish otherwise, we do not have our own little boat. But on a recent Sunday we were invited by Venetian friends to spend a very hot late afternoon with them off--not at or on--the island of Sant' Erasmo.

Now a vaporetto does actually run to Sant' Erasmo, which seems to have its own beach scene and at least one restaurant--though I can't tell you anything about them. We never got closer than several hundred yards from the island. We like, dozens of other boats dropped anchor--to a depth of only about 3 feet--on either side of a very long and narrow sandbar some way off the island's shore and extending in the direction of the MOSE in the Lido inlet. Our friend said that when the tide is very low the sandbar is completely exposed from Sant' Erasmo to the inlet.

I feel safe in asserting (as I'm actually only repeating what I was assured) that the sandbar scene really is "locals only." I've certainly never seen anything like it. It's a little like an old American drive-in burger place, where you park in one of a long line of spaces, order your food and eat it in your car. Except in this case, you're in a boat, there are no designated places or curbside service, and the "curb" itself will, if you stay long enough, disappear beneath the lagoon.

As beaches go--well, I'm a native northern Californian, so it doesn't seem fair to make comparisons. The sand is muddy, the water is shallow and too warm for my taste, and, at least on one side of the sandbar, thick with mucky weeds.

As the tide rises real estate gets scarce

But, then, if one is looking for a sublime Nature experience Venice is not really the place to come. At the sandbar, as everywhere else in the city, it's all about human society.

Venetians of every age hang out at the sandbar: entire families (including grandparents), groups of teens, couples of all ages. One early-arriving family, as you can see in the photo above, staked a claim to a large enough plot of sand for a table, chair & umbrella. Groups of adults meet on the sandbar as if it were Via Garibaldi to catch up. Small kids play on the sandbar and as the tide rises struggle, like their Venetian forbears, to deal with the encroaching waves all around them.

But the vast majority of people spend most of their time at the sandbar in their own boat: eating, drinking, and (that favorite Venetian pursuit) sunbathing. Each boat becomes an outpost of the family's own home: a floating living room--small but persistent examples of the Venetian talent for domesticating the lagoon.

Because it was so hot we went late in the day, for maybe 3 hours, but most people seem to spend much of the day there. One of our friends was concerned that she had seen a good-sized family she knew, including a grandmother who generally didn't fare well in the heat, setting off in their large open boat before noon to spend the entire day at the sandbar.

We didn't see this family at the sandbar but did happen to pass them in the Canale di San Pietro in Castello in their large beautiful old wooden boat as they and we made our way back home around 7:30 pm. Nonna looked absolutely fine, as did all the rest of the family--except for one member stretched out flat on his or her stomach and fast asleep near the boat's prow. A day at the sandbar can be exhausting.

Kids play in the muddy sand as a sunbather behind them catches the last rays

After Mahler's 7th Symphony at La Fenice

2011-07-17T23:07:00.003+02:00

The audience leaves La Fenice after tonight's performance of Mahler's 7th Symphony by Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, conducted by Eliahu Inbal. Considered a journey from night to day (not that anything in Mahler is ever that simple), the symphony seems the perfect selection to conclude this Festa del Redentore weekend.

Festa del Redentore: 4 Nocturnes from a Boat

2011-07-17T01:39:00.002+02:00

Friends in I Giardini Pubblici

2011-07-13T21:37:00.003+02:00

Each evening in Venice, as all over Italy, people gather in calli or campi--or via, viale or giardini in Castello--to catch up with friends before dinner (a ritual that the journalist Beppe Severgnini has called a "daily dose of social antidepressants"). It's something I've never seen in New York, or anywhere else I've lived in America. One group of elegant older women--ranging in number from 2 or 3 to 6 or 7 members on any given day--meets regularly in the public gardens right near the statue of male beauty (is it Adonis?) not far from Viale Garibaldi. I can't help but pass by without admiring their style, maintained even in the heat of summer.

Festa di San Pietro di Castello: Spettacolo dei Burattini

2011-07-10T12:04:00.007+02:00

My son Sandro and I were introduced to traditional Italian puppet theatre last weekend at the Festa di San Pietro di Castello. I can't remember the last live performance of any kind I went to that was so entertaining, perhaps not least of all because the audience was so deeply engaged in it. Kids not only responded enthusiastically to any questions addressed to them by the puppets, but did their best to influence the action. I wish I'd had a video camera to record the way one little girl stood up and, with hands pressed together, pleaded with Brighella not to drink the bottle of wine that had just been dosed with magic sleeping powder by the evil magician. She could've been auditioning for the most heart-rending scenes from Open City or Aida.... Except, of course, she wasn't acting.

The play, Arlecchino, Brighella e i due maghi, was performed by Compagnia Teatrale L'Attimo.

I did not have a camera, but fortunately the local photographer Federico Roiter was there. The photos below were taken by him, and he was kind enough to let me post them here. A google search will turn up more of his excellent photos of events in Venice.

I'd only ever seen puppet shows of this type in old Italian or French movies and had always thought the kids' response was exaggerated for theatrical purposes. At San Pietro I found out it was not.

photo credit: Federico Roiter

Photo credit: Federico Roiter

Venice Biennale: Haiti Pavilion Part 2

2011-07-01T19:09:00.007+02:00

Five works by Jean Hérard Celeur (close-ups of front 2 pieces are on my first post about this Pavilion)

The Horsemen of the Apocalypse


Bawon Samedi by the artist André Eugène


The first of 3 crucifixion pieces by André Eugène

by André Eugene

Conceived specifically for this site on the Riva, Haiti's wealthier neighbors in the Caribbean are represented by the yachts regularly docked nearby, making this area of Venice something like a changing map of the Caribbean Sea. Above, a yacht from George Town, Cayman Islands beside the shipping containers of the Haiti Pavilion.

Today, July 28, was the last day for the exhibition. Tomorrow it is to be removed to make way for a massive cruise ship to dock there--where absolutely positively no one wants it. But the Haiti exhibition may, I hear, possibly travel to a museum in the Netherlands.

See the pavilion's website at www.deathandfertility.org

My earlier post on the Haiti Pavilion can be found at:

http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/06/venice-biennale-haiti-pavilion.html

Venice Biennale: United States Pavilion

2011-06-30T18:55:00.001+02:00

A work by American artists Allora & Calzadilla

As the old song says:

Running on, running on empty,
Running on, running blind,
Running on, running into the sun,
But I'm running behind.

Venice Biennale: Ukraine Pavilion Part 1 (San Stae)

2011-06-28T19:56:00.005+02:00

Passing in a vaporetto by the Ukraine Pavilion in front of San Stae you could swear you were looking at a detail of a painting depicted on an outdated Jumbotron--that is, one of the massive video screens used in American sports stadiums. An experience that didn't exactly thrill me, until I got off the vaporetto and walked close enough to the three-sided piece by the artist Oksana Mas to discover that what I had taken for some kind of lo-fi electronic video screen was actually a vast wall of hand-painted wood eggs.

Each of the three sides of the pavilion at San Stae, as well as the Ukrainian pavilion near La Fenice, are details, in painted eggs, of the Van Eyck brothers' large Ghent altarpiece. Some of the eggs are covered in decorative motifs, many others with figures, symbols or brand names. According to one source I found online (http://www.fundgp.com/en/media/news/190/) different people were asked to paint their idea of sin on the eggs. One egg per person? I don't know. But I suppose that might explain some (but only some) of the images you may find in the more detailed pics below if you click on them and look closely enough. Though if this is the case I'm dismayed by how many people still seem to equate the nude female figure with "sin". Perhaps just wishful thinking on their part?

In any case, this would explain only partly who painted some of the eggs, and with what in mind. Another panel, the one which depicts a detail of Mary's face, is composed of eggs painted in floral motifs and has nothing to do with any notions of sin so far as I can tell. Botanists or gardeners or disciples of John Ruskin may correct me on this.

There's more to find out about this, and no doubt more that could be written, but better to show you some images--and here is the artist's website: http://www.mas-art.com/home

Detail of Mary's mouth

Detail of the detail of the crown of the Ghent altarpiece

You can see images of the central part of Mas's massive work, as displayed in the Church of San Fantin, here:

http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/venice-biennale-ukraine-pavilion-part-2.html

Tonight Near San Giacomo dall'Orio

2011-06-27T23:08:00.002+02:00

Festa di San Giovanni in Bragora

2011-06-22T20:10:00.006+02:00

The Solstice Rites get off to a blazing start

If the Catholic mass had featured a flame-breathing shaman in a peaked wizard's hat when I was a boy I probably would not have dreaded Sunday mornings so much.

Or if they'd kicked off with guided group folk dances, given away hand-tied clusters of wild flowers and herbs with medicinal qualities, and free wine.

Well, I suppose they did have the wine, but not in any quantity, and it certainly wasn't serve yourself.

The opening night of the six-day La Festa di San Giovanni in Bragora last night featured all of the above--and there was not a priest in sight.

In other words, the whole thing seemed at least as pagan as it was Catholic. Or perhaps it just foregrounded the pagan roots of Catholicism (if I can write such a thing without getting in trouble).

For as much fun as the dancing was, the Rito del Solstizio held after darkness fell was the main event, with an opening shamanic invocation accompanied by didgeridoo, and then the reading of history and fables.

An Italian woman I met last night--a Venetian resident, but raised south of Naples--told me that San Giovanni and the Summer solstice were considered one of the calender year's two "doors" (the Winter Solstice and Christ are the other). I'm not exactly sure how to take this, but others may know.

She also told me to sleep with the little cluster of flowers and herbs I was given under my pillow and, basically, make a wish (of, say, good health for me or my family, or success in some endeavor). Along with lavender and sage, the little bunch included iperico, or St. John's wart, which she told me had potent powers.

I'm sorry to say my dreams last night were no more interesting than usual, but I consider this no fault of, nor reflection upon, the flowers and herbs. They smell wonderful.

Putting together the flowers and herbs

The man in the white hat reads by flashlight into a microphone, kids enjoy some flowers

Venice Biennale: Haiti Pavilion Part 1

2011-06-18T22:36:00.013+02:00

Among all the various Biennale sites spread out around Venice and its various islands, I can't decide whether the Haitian Pavilion is the hardest or the easiest exhibition space to miss. On the one hand it's not far from the main exhibition area in the Giardini and situated all alone in the middle of Riva dei Sette Martiri. And yet people walk right past it, completely unaware that it's there. Or, more to the point, that it's a Biennale pavilion at all, as it consists (as you can see below) of two large freight containers, arranged in the shape of a Tau cross, in the red and blue of the Haitian flag.

The Haiti Pavilion

I've only seen a little of the Biennale so far, but among so many expensive spectacles and international art stars (gee whiz, there's Cindy Sherman in costume again, but in a bigger scale than ever!) the Haiti Pavilion acts as something like a counterweight. Entitled "Death and Fertility" it features the work of three artists (Jean Hérard Celeur, André Eugène, Jean Claude Saintilus) from Port-au-Prince who have reinvented Haitian Vodou figures in particularly suggestive contemporary materials: "engine manifolds, computer entrails, TV sets, medical debris, skulls and discarded lumber [which] transform the detritus of a failing economy into deranged post-apocalyptic totems." (Leah Gordon, adjunct curator of the exhibition)

For more information on the exhibition, more images of the work, and an excellent documentary on the artists, check out the Pavilion's website at http://deathandfertility.org

Below are two works by Jean Hérard Celeur that in a city filled with countless figures of saints atop buildings, within niches, and upon altars--figures of ceremonial, religious, historical and political import--I found especially striking. In them the history of international commerce, in which Venice played so major a role, is brought up to the present, depicted from the other side of that looking glass in which Westerners have traditionally seen only their own reflection.

A madonna and child unlike any of the many others in Venice

You can see more photos of the Haiti Pavilion at:

http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/07/venice-biennale-haiti-pavilion-part-2.html

On Making a Spectacle of Myself at the Regata of the Maritime Republics

2011-06-16T19:50:00.002+02:00

photo credit: Jen

The Doges of Venice and Genova greet each other in Piazza San Marco

Each year for the last 56 years La Regata Storica delle Antiche Repubbliche Marinare Italiane has been held in one of the four old seagoing republics of Italy: Amalfi, Genova, Pisa, or Venice. It consists of a race between four large galleys constructed according to 12th-Century models, each with a crew of eight rowers and one helmsman, over a straight 2 km long course. Before the race there is a long procession (or corteo) in which 80 representatives from each city are dressed in the late 15th-century costumes of doges, knights, clergy, tradesmen, ladies and noblemen.

After the long decline of the Venetian Republic began--their trade routes superseded and their coffers depleted by a long futile war against the Muslim East--it became possible for rich outsiders to buy their way into the Venetian nobility for a small fortune.

My temporary elevation to Venetian nobility, for the purpose of the corteo, cost me nothing but the embarrassment of being seen in tights. A cost, I'd soon realize, that fell more heavily upon any observers than myself.

I didn't know a thing about what I was agreeing to do when I said yes. I was at a birthday party in the piano nobile of a palazzo near San Zaccaria. My son Sandro was running maniacally around the frescoed portego with three other pre-schoolers, and I was doing my best to follow conversations being carried on in Italian beneath a large arbor on the terrace. A friend suddenly turned to me and said they needed two men the following week for a parade. I didn't think to wonder why none of the other Venetian men around me offered to do it. One actually begged off because he said he was blind without his glasses, and his glasses wouldn't have gone with the period dress. But why not the heir to the palazzo, who lived there with his two parents, and whose family tree I'd just seen hanging on a wall inside, going back nobly to the 15th Century? Wouldn't that be something?--to see the descendants of actual noble Venetian families in the dress of their forebears!

Well, perhaps there were such descendents among the 80 of us arrayed behind the banner of San Marco, but my roots in Venice stretched back to last November. There were moments in our slow march from just east of Via Garibaldi to Piazza San Marco that I felt more than a little disingenuous as some excited tourist aimed a camera in my direction. I'd remind myself that plenty of outsiders lived in the 15th-century Republic of Venice--but none of them, it's safe to say, were born in California or moved here from Brooklyn.

Luckily, there were plenty of things to keep me from obsessing overly much on issues of authenticity. The sun, for one, which was quite hot and blinding. And my hat.

I'm sure that among the countless old sayings of at least one of Italy's many dialects there must be something that runs along the lines of:

Don't fret too much about the tights because it's the hat that will kill you.

For the four days since I'd gone to the Lido to try on the velvet doublet and mantle of my costume I'd been worrying about wearing those damn tights. But it turned out my hat was so tight I literally I had no space for any thought other than how much my head hurt.

In the dressing room I'd pondered, hopefully, perhaps it's just supposed to rest precariously upon my head like a Jackie O pillbox. But none of my fellow noblemen rocked their hats that way.

I mentioned it to the man in charge of wardrobe. He assured me in melifluous Italian that the hat would stretch once we got out into the heat of the sun.

It didn't. Or if its circumference expanded at all in the heat, so did my big head.

But, as I mentioned, there was the sharp lance of the sun in my eyes to occupy me as well, and, in a short time, the slow but steady formation of blisters on my feet.

The noblemen with whom I shared a row also tended to lag too far behind the row of courtiers in front of us, so a very helpful women associated with the Venetian contingent would appear suddenly at my side gesticulating enthusiastically and repeating, "Avanti, avanti!"

I wanted to tell her it really was not my fault. I knew we'd dropped too far behind the guys in front of us, but I was bound not to break ranks with my fellow nobles--they who seemed so relaxed in their properly-fitting caps as to even play to the crowd a bit. Not all of them, but the two nearest to me. They looked good doing it, I thought, regal but friendly. We hadn't had the least bit of dramatic coaching before the march, no guidance of any kind on our particular characters, so this was all improvised as far as I could tell, or born of the experience of previous processions. I thought of doing some of the same kind of thing but I was so absorbed in standing up straight, not tripping, not limping, and not grimacing in pain, that I'm afraid I cut a rather sober figure. A noble with just the slightest hint of a smile, hiding the pain of some great lost love...

And yet through all this discomfort the whole thing was quite fun. I'd never done anything like this before--no Renaissance Faire or Shakespeare plays or plays of any kind. And I had no idea how popular an event it was until someone said, just before the start, that RAI 2 was filming live, and I saw all the people crowded along the parade route, and the large grandstand stretching along the south side of the Palazzo Ducale, its VIP box filled with uniforms and sashes of office.

Next year the regata will move on to Amalfi and I hope I'll have the chance to do it again. And, more immediately, there is the big Venetian Regata Storica in the fall--in which one gets to be rowed down the Grand Canal in historic dress. How nice that would be! No need to worry about being seen in tights or getting blisters. And I'll make sure to try on my hat at the fitting.

Festa di Sant' Antonio at S. Francesco della Vigna

2011-06-14T00:25:00.004+02:00

I'm sorry to say that I missed the solemn procession with the wooden statue of Sant' Antonio this evening, but every other part of tonight's festivities was truly marvelous. San Francesco della Vigna is a wonderful church in an extremely interesting part of town, and this festa is worth noting on your calender if you're in town. Proof that not everything in Venice is oriented toward the tourists.

A parish band greeted churchgoers as they left mass

The evening was capped off with a contemporary commedia dell' arte

3 Views of the Vogalonga

2011-06-12T11:03:00.001+02:00

I generally don't mess around with my photos much on the computer but in this case (& also some below), thinking of Thomas Eakins' rowers, I reduced the noise & juiced the saturation a bit to give it a painted look.

The Querini rowing club's famous 18-man disdotona

Along for the ride

Vogalonga Eve

2011-06-11T21:25:00.005+02:00

A group of rowers prepares their equipment for the 30 km "long row" tomorrow. The park on Sant' Elena harbors about three dozen mostly multi-person boats tonight, as well as a dozen Hungarian rowers who are camping out. 1,600 boats are expected to take part in tomorrow's annual festival of the oar.

Loving Venice to Death

2011-05-31T22:39:00.002+02:00


Imagine a parking lot of diesel cars idling outside your apartment on the Riva all day

The monsters have returned in full force.

No, I'm not talking about tourists, but about cruise ships. A recent article in the New York Times lays out some of the serious concerns over the number of cruise ships now passing through the Giudecca Canal and the Basin of San Marco and their potentially disastrous effects on the city, its foundations, and structures. Here is the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/world/europe/13iht-venice13.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

The massive stern of a cruise ship dwarfs the home (center) of the famous seafaring Cabots.

Additional information on cruise ships in Venice (among many other things) can be found in the excellent publication The Venice Report: Demography, Tourism, Financing, and Change of Use of Buildings (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009). A must-read, as they say, for anyone interested in the challenges facing the city today. Among the most interesting statistics reported there:

The average stay of a cruise ship in Venice was 22 hours at the time the study was being prepared--but I strongly suspect that that amount of time has decreased to allow for more ships to pass through the ports. In other words, like the vast majority of visitors to Venice, the tourists off cruise ships are day-trippers.

In fact, of the 16.5 million total visitors per year who visit the city, 12.5 million are in town for just a few hours.

And according to the Venice Report, the average total expenditure in Venice of those here for a few hours is 19 euros.

19 euros.

To return specifically to those who visit on cruise ships, just over half of those 1.6 million whom the Times says visited last year bother to disembark at all. 60% according to the Venice Report.

Such statistics, along with information included in the Times piece, makes me wonder who exactly, aside from the infamously irresponsible cruise lines themselves (eg, http://www.foe.org/getting-grip-cruise-ship-pollution), is profiting from this huge and perilous increase in cruise traffic?

As various American cities have been plagued by drive-by shootings, so Venice is plagued by cruise-by tourism.

It's perfectly understandable that so many people around the world would wish to see Venice at least once before they die, but it would be awfully nice if they'd do so in a way that does not contribute to the death of the city itself.

Venetians have much more reason to fear cruise ships than cruise ships have to fear Venetians

Back Doors to the Biennale

2011-05-26T23:15:00.005+02:00

The 54th Venice Biennale opens on June 4 and preparations now seem to be going on almost around the clock--at least in some pavillions. Below are photos (taken this evening) of the back doors of a large pavillion officially considered part of the "Giardini" venue, though it is located not in the public gardens themselves but across a little bridge on the island of Sant' Elena.

In a strange way the old graffiti I walk past nearly every day (& that you see below) seems to have suddenly become, even before the Biennale has opened, an integral part of the exhibition.

Every inch of this large exhibition space is as purple as its back door.

The glow of a painter's lamp seems to promise all the significance of a video installation.

A graffiti plant thrives among real ones; a real shirt hangs among paintings.

Found Still LIfe

2011-05-25T22:39:00.004+02:00

Fresh from the Rialto Market

I doubt my wife, Jen, was thinking in terms of composition when she left these on the counter the other morning...

I'd never tasted Costoluto ("ribbed") tomatoes before and bought them only because Sandro and I both just liked the way they looked--but I know now that they're more than just picturesque.

I've seen references to both Costoluto Fiorentino and Costoluto Genovese varieties, but whichever these might be they were grown, I was told, in the south of Italy.

"Boy with Frog" as Installation

2011-05-23T12:33:00.011+02:00

Detail from "Boy with Frog" installation

Ever since Marcel Duchamp first displayed a urinal in an exhibition a certain strain of art has asked us to think about how our sense of the "aesthetic qualities" of a work can depend as much upon the context in which we see something as on the object itself. It asks us to pay close attention to context, as in some cases the context is everything.

I don't think context is everything in the case of "Boy with Frog," but I now realize that, actually, it's far more interesting and suggestive than the sculpture alone.

One can say that the "Boy with Frog" subverts, through its subject matter and materials, the tradition of monumental marble public sculpture in Italy. But more simply it subverts this tradition far more thoroughly in another way: it is not a public sculpture.

It is a private sculpture, commissioned by François Pinault, displayed in one of the most prominent public spaces of Venice. It is a part of Pinault's massive and influential collection of contemporary art. Pinault also owns the art auction house of Christie's.

If people can debate the merit of the sculpture itself, there can be little debate about the work's value. That is, market value. We are reminded of that quite literally 24 hours a day. By the armed(!) guard stationed at the "Boy's" side while the Punta della Dogana is open; by the protective case that surrounds it after hours.

In contrast, say, to the Mona Lisa, whose fame (and value) long pre-dated her special security measures, Charles Ray's "Boy with Frog" entered the world with its security apparatus intact. The security insists upon (one could argue creates) the sculpture's worth right from the get-go. Which is what leads me to suggest that "Boy with a Frog" be considered not as sculpture but as installation.

The fact is, that armed guard and that large protective box are as integral to the work as the frog itself. (The boxing of the sculpture each evening and its unboxing each morning are as ceremonial, in their own their own small way, as the Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace.) It is impossible to see the work without either the one or the other--and to ignore either guard or protective box is to miss what I now think are the most suggestive aspects of the work.

"Boy with Frog" as installation is an exemplary work of contemporary art precisely because of the way it foregrounds (among other things):

--the privatization of public space, and public works, and public welfare, that is occurring throughout the West. (Venice's Carnevale itself, to cite a fairly innocuous example, is now run by a private company.)

--the way in which the market value of a work of art is manipulated from the very outset by those who have the most to gain (quite literally) from it.

--the way in which private interests require the constant surveillance of public space. (Imagine the auction house value of a sculpture displayed for years on such a prime Venetian spot.)

I'm generally no fan of graffitti, but in the case of Charles Ray's "Boy with Frog" installation, the first sign that the work has finally become an actual public part of the city in which it resides will appear with the sloppy spray of a paint can or scrawl of a marker.

You can see more on this sculpture here: http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/05/whats-that-boy-doing-here.html

What's That Boy Doing Here?

2011-05-21T15:37:00.005+02:00

Art Appreciation (click for enlargement)

Considering Charles Ray's "Boy with a Frog" was commissioned especially for the site it now occupies at the Punta della Dogana the thing I find most striking about it is how very little it has to do with its place.

For one thing, in a city long committed to its own glorification, to awe-inspiring displays of wealth and power, it is a deflating piece of work. This is in no way a bad thing. In fact it may be just what is needed: a distinctly contemporary gesture in a city that trades on its past.

Except that the great old Italian figural tradition of public monumental sculpture to which it alludes is of very little importance here in Venice. Sure, there are Sansovino's figures of Neptune and Mars in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, but these big guys are far from the first, or second, or even seventh thing most people think of when they think of Venice.

Florence or Rome would provide the appropriate sculptural context in which the subversive intent of Ray's work would be foregrounded. Ray has added one more monumental figure for any tourist following the standard itinerary through Italy to photograph: Trevi Fountain (check), Michelangelo's David (check), and Venice's giant Boy (check). But of course there is nothing heroic about this last work, about the boy's accomplishments. He has the youth of David, and some of his stature, but in contrast to the public civic aim of David's act (and Michelangelo's work), Ray's physically immature boy is wholly absorbed in a conquest of only small, private and rather cruel interest.

In Ray's presentation there is perhaps a healthy skepticism about the public uses and abuses of heroism--but what it's doing in Venice I couldn't really say. As far as the subversion of heroism and certain inflated notions of masculinity goes, I'd suggest that Donatello's "David" in Florence was actually more immediately to the point. True, I suppose Ray's "Boy" in some sense conjures the Venetian sculptor Canova's "Perseus with the Head of Medusa" but that work, in addition to itself being a late and rather unconvincing example of heroic marble sculpture (heroism wasn't exactly Canova's thing), is also nowhere near Venice. I've seen it in NY's Metropolitan Museum--which I think might actually be a better venue for Ray's work as well.

For aside from the fact that while one can still see crabs, for example, in the waters of Venice--and any number of other salt-water creatures--that frog, and the boy who holds it, strikes me as thoroughly American born and bred. One can claim that Ray's large whiter-than-marble-because-it-ain't-marble work is the final step in the moribund tradition of Italian monumental public sculpture (dead boy walking), evoking David. But it's Huck Finn I've always seen when I look at the work and, gratifyingly enough, it was Huck Finn, according to an interview I've just found online with Ray, that the artist says he was actually thinking of as he created this figure.

He may also have had in mind the (rather cloying) work of American sculptor Edward Henry Berge (1876-1924) who crafted his own versions of a boy with a frog for public spaces in the early 20th Century.

Edward Berge's "Boy with Frog" in Baltimore

In any case, none of this is to say that I think it's a bad work. On the contrary, I think it suggests very interesting ideas about humanity's relationship to nature, contemporary notions of the self, of power, heroism, narcissism... Well, I have to stop myself from rambling on about it. It intrigues me to think of it located in New Orleans. Or, more pointedly, on the Mall in Washington DC.

But I don't know exactly what it's doing in Venice. Here it succeeds simply as big budget spectacle, and in the world of contemporary art I suppose that's considered enough.

You can see more on this sculpture here: http://veneziablog.blogspot.com/2011/05/boy-with-frog-as-installation.html

Evening in I Giardini

2011-05-16T23:32:00.000+02:00

The air around i giardini pubblici is fragrant with more flowers than I know the name of, so you don't even need to stop in order to smell them--but of course it doesn't hurt to.

What Do Gondoliers Daydream About?

2011-05-09T15:59:00.000+02:00

guest photo by Larry Castek

Many of us whose work is done on solid ground (literally if not figuratively) find relief from our labor in daydreaming of languid hours spent in a gondola, being rowed through the quiet back canals of Venice. But what do gondoliers daydream about during their working hours?

Click on the below detail from today's guest photo by Larry Castek for one answer:

Pope in a Boat

2011-05-07T22:30:00.005+02:00

Pope Benedetto's 2-day visit to Venice kicked off this evening with his arrival by helicopter at the Naval Military School Francesco Morosini on Sant' Elena, at the eastern tip of the city. Crowds lined the Riva of Sant' Elena and, I suspect, stretched all the way to Piazzetta San Marco, where he was scheduled to speak at an outdoor stage centered not far in front of the columns topped by the lion of San Marco and San Teodoro (not in between them, where the old Republic was wont to execute people).

He arrived an hour later than scheduled, which was not such a bad thing, as the evening light just kept getting prettier and prettier as I waited with a group of about 200 people atop a wooden bridge near the gate of the school, not far from where he was due to land (behind hedges), and with a view of a pathway where two lines of military types (some students?) awaited him. I've noticed that being in a crowd of Italians awaiting an event can often be as entertaining as the event itself turns out to be. This evening was no exception.

When, ten minutes after scheduled arrival, a large green military helicopter passed over the crowd then began to lower itself behind the academy's tall trees and hedges children called to their mothers to stop talking to friends and come watch with them, fathers picked up their small children, everyone readied their cameras, the military people and MPs all came to attention.

But it wasn't the Pope.

First false alarm: Ready, focus... No Pope.

"Eh, of course not," was the general response, everyone defaulting to the kind of bemused resignation common to lines of people waiting in Italian post offices, or the office of the town's registrar (ufficio anagrafe).

Then, a short time later, the sound of a second green helicopter. "Eccolo!" ("Here he is!") people declared, amused at themselves for ever thinking the Pope would be arriving on the first helicopter--like some over-eager Nobody.

Again the same jockeying for position on the bridge and military readiness.

Again, no Pope.

He arrived in the third large 'copter--of a pristine white, not some dingy military green--and when it came within sight the bells in the campanile of Sant' Elena began to ring deliriously without cease. A nice touch.

All of us on the bridge could barely see him when finally he appeared at a distance of some 300 yards, but there was a spontaneous burst of happy relieved applause. In fact, it was hard to tell exactly which glimpse of crimson was the Pope, which the Patriarch of Aquileia, because the color (and whoever was wearing it) vanished immediately behind the black garb of the Church and security retinues.

As it turned out, the Pople was much easier to see as he passed in his boat along the Riva.


This particular security boat directly preceded the Pope's boat. Years of Catholic education gave me a very guilty conscience, but tell me that scary dude in the back ain't staring hard right at me.

Mr. Fashionably Late

Sciopero Generale

2011-05-06T20:32:00.005+02:00

"Let's be realists, let's dream the impossible"

--Che Guevara

As every visitor to Italy knows, scioperi come and scioperi go--almost always before I can even glean what the strike was against, or what for. In fact, few people seem to know the purpose of all the various strikes, which tend to shut down our son's school about once a month, and the vaporetti for most of two Fridays per month.

But today's strike was different. This one was in favor of 12 concrete and admirable proposals, ranging from issues affecting women, students, immigrants, workers and pensioners to upcoming referendums opposing nuclear power and the privatization of the water supply. Copies of these proposals were well circulated, and simultaneous demonstrations organized in three other towns in the region in addition to Venice. In Venice there was a march from Piazzale Roma to Campo Santo Stefano, where the rally you see above was held.

I'm terrible at estimating the size of a crowd. There were at least 1,500 people. Perhaps 2,000? More than typically attend the games of Venice's Serie D calcio (soccer/football) team--and this was heartening to see. There was a good turnout of students from the university.

One man in the crowd--I kid you not--was smoking Che Guevara brand cigarettes. I saw him take one from a small vivid red box adorned with the face and name of the revolutionary. Don't know if Che would've been in favor of this kind of branding. At least it could have been cigars.

Venice's Graphic 3D New Phonebook Is Here!

2011-04-29T14:08:00.000+02:00

Acque Alte Particolari

2011-04-26T23:07:00.000+02:00

Acqua alta is of course synonymous with Venice but I was surprised to learn the other day that not all visitors have the same notion of what the term means.

A Venetian friend who deals with tourists all day in his shop mentioned last week that lately a number of Japanese visitors have expressed a very particular concern about acqua alta here. Still reeling from the recent disaster in their own country, they conceive of the danger to Venice not in terms of subsidence or rising ocean levels caused by Global Warming, but as sudden flash calamities--basically, little tsunamis. He says he reassures them that acqua alta is fortunately nothing like that, but can't help but be saddened by how profoundly their sense of the world has been altered, by how they carry images of the disaster with them thousand of miles from home.

Then he said that he'd once met an American couple who--well, he didn't know what they imagined acqua alta was like.

"After the tsunami in Japan?" I asked.

"No, no, a couple of years ago," he said. "Nothing to do with tsunamis. They asked the strangest question. When acqua alta comes, they wanted to know, what happens to the pigeons in the Piazza?"

My friend shook his head, as incredulous and helplessly bewildered, still, by the recounted question as he was when he was first asked. He shrugged and opened his eyes wide, saying, "I mean, I don't know, they were afraid maybe they all drowned... I explained, they are birds," he flapped his arms demonstratively, "they fly away."

Pasquetta Voyage

2011-04-25T21:37:00.004+02:00

On the day after Easter--which is a holiday itself in Italy known as "Pasquetta"--it is a tradition for Italians to leave the town or city where they live and go for a picnik in the countryside. In Venice the tradition is for families who live in the city to take their boat and picnik on one of the less populous, rural islands in the lagoon.

But as the photo above shows, it's not so simple for a family in their little boat to get away from it all these days in the lagoon... Just as on terra firma, there's traffic to contend with.

(There are no less than 9 vessels in this photo.)

Myth & Medicine

2011-04-22T11:17:00.015+02:00

If you really want to experience something of Venice as it was 400 years ago just get into a discussion of health with a local. Immunology, microbiology, virology, all of these remain as foreign to most Venetians' thinking about illness and health today as they would have been to Titian.

Recently a virus has been making its way through our son's scuola materna; half his class has been likely to be absent on any given day. Yet last week when Sandro came down with the fever and all the other symptoms his peers have been manifesting and had to be kept home from school for three days my wife's friends were unanimous in tracing the pathology to two hours he spent playing on the Lido's beach one day after school. It was windy that day, and the wind gave rise to the fever.

My wife objected that their own kids (in the same scuola materna) had also had the illness. Well, yes, the mother of one admitted, her daughter had gotten it from being too long in the sun one day. She had not gotten sunburned, nor any color at all from the exposure, but the child wasn't used to the sun yet and thus the fever. The other mother offered no explanation for her own daughter's illness, but stubbornly adhered to the too much wind/sun diagnosis for the other kids.

My wife mentioned something about viruses as the cause of illness: her listeners enjoyed a good laugh.

And so it goes here... I haven't had so much exposure to something like the ancient science of the four humors since the Shakespeare course I took in college. One day in February at the height of flu season we mentioned to our very intelligent well-traveled neighbor that Sandro had been up vomiting the night before. He nodded sympathetically and said, "Ah, yes, his stomach must have been exposed to a cold draft while he was at school."

This summer when we go to the beach with Italian friends we are steeling ourselves to confront "The Three Hour Rule." This is a theory--no, wait, the law--that states that any child who enters the water less than three hours after eating lunch will die almost instantly. A friend insists upon this law and has even, at our urging, explained its scientific basis, which goes something like: if a child enters cold water while his or her stomach is still occupied with digesting lunch the swift change of temperature will instantaneously cause a fatal congestion in the stomach, causing all of his or her other organs to also instantly seize up and cease functioning.

Our friends are completely in earnest about this; absolutely nothing we say will change their minds.

Yet the same parents who keep the toes of their children out of water for three hours after eating allow them to ride bikes and scooters without helmets. And in the very same country where an emergency alarm cord dangles above every public toilet and in every single shower, you can't find a single smoke alarm (though the number of lives saved by smoke alarms has been well-documented).

It's funny, and sometimes exasperating, but, alas, as an American I have no room to be smug. For if you ever want to experience something of life in America as it was lived 120 years ago amid the most destitute and unschooled of shoeless, toothless dirt farmers you need only ask almost any contemporary American in a mall--or Republican politician--about the origin of life on earth. Well over half of them (61% according to a recent Gallup poll) are likely to tell you that old Charles Darwin was full of beans and that God, wearing a long white beard, created the earth wholesale in 6 days exactly 10,000 years ago. They are also likely to reveal a stubborn belief that the earth is the center of the universe, regardless of the work of that famous resident of the Venetian Republic, Galileo.

Burano Lace: The End of the Line

2011-04-20T11:32:00.036+02:00

The first day I met A., in his father's lace shop not far from Piazza San Marco, he tossed off in passing: "This place will be a museum soon, not a store."

The location of the store seems a little museum-like as it is, composed of two separate showrooms (on slightly different levels) tucked away, grotto-like, off the worn stone entrance halls of a 16th-century palazzo. A's father has owned and operated the shop in this same location since 1958.

Recently his father, Signor L, stated things more explicitly: "In about ten years there will be no more Burano lace being made."

The youngest of the masters who make the lace for their store, he explained, is 75 years old.

"What about the lace schools I see advertised?" I asked. "Aren't younger people learning to make it?"

He shook his head, said, "Those people are learning a hobby. It is not the same."

He estimated that 98% of the lace, and 60% of the glass, for sale in Venetian shops is made in China. He carries Chinese machine-made lace in his own shop because sometimes that's what people want, but he keeps it sequestered in a windowless, almost closet-like space all its own far from the main showroom, and does not pretend it's something it is not. At first, he said, the quality of such lace wasn't too bad for being machine made, but it has gotten worse. However for those who want to buy a lace tablecloth in Venice, such lace is often the only type they can afford. Though he does carry some smaller tablecloths and table settings partially hand-made in Tuscany that are quite reasonable.

A restauranteur I once met while working in a New York bookstore advised me never to eat cheap sushi or sashimi because the quality of fish needed for it does not come cheap--and he said he'd hate to know the origin or age or state of the cut-rate stuff.

Real lace also does not come cheap.

A circular work of Burano lace just large enough to serve as a coaster for a beer bottle costs 200 euro and represents a week of labor. A work of Bobbin lace--a different method practiced on the island of Pellestrina south of Lido--about the size of a small salad plate costs 150 euro. The small 30 euro pieces displayed with signs of "Hand Made" in shop windows around the Piazza and elsewhere (including Burano itself) may in fact have been made manually, but far far away from the Venetian lagoon.

No matter how high the cost of Burano (or Pellestrina) lace, the economics simply don't work out anymore. There's just not enough money in it for the skill and time put into each piece. There aren't enough people around who appreciate the craft enough to pay for the labor.

My friend A. says that Japanese visitors to Venice are an exception. They're familiar enough with Chinese lace to recognize what makes Burano lace so special. And of course there are the very rich, like international art star Mathew Barney and his Indie-rock star/actress wife, Bjork, who can spring for an authentic full-scale Burano tablecloth (which they had dyed black).

Something that always catches my eye when I visit the shop are the small framed pieces of old Burano lace. They are floral elements, ranging in size from just a bit larger than a man's thumbnail to just a bit smaller than the palm of one's hand, cut out of damaged remnants made in the 19th Century or earlier. The gauge of thread used back then has not been manufactured for quite some time. It's truly gossamer.

The other day Signor L noticed me peering at one of these small scraps and motioned me over to a display table. He opened a drawer, took out a small bundle, then carefully unfolded a perfectly-preserved 200-year-old Burano lace table runner.

"You almost never find a whole piece like this anymore," he said. "They have all been cut up."

He had acquired this one about a dozen years ago from a local woman selling off the possessions of a recently-deceased elderly relative.

It was amazing, with all the complexity and depth of design for which Burano lace is famous. It was impossible to take it all in at once. You had to read it like a novel, taking the time to follow out the development of each of its main themes. Finally I found myself fixed on the most attenuated line of floral ornamentation stretched like a spider's trail between major motifs: garlands of tiny flowers made of that thin-gauge thread long unavailable. Each three-dimensional flower just four tiny petal-shaped loops of a single airy thread around a spherical center formed, incredibly, of smaller rounder loops. It was hard to imagine the person who had worked on such a scale.

I wondered about the cost of this piece, but couldn't bring myself to ask that. Instead, as a preliminary, I asked, "Will you sell this?"

"No, no," Signor L said quickly. "Never. This is mine."

Venice's Ways

2011-04-10T14:23:00.001+02:00

Of central importance through all of Proust's long great In Search of Lost Time are two very different paths that the narrator and his family take when they go for walks in the country. The shorter route, which the narrator (a boy at the time) knows well, is called the Méséglise way (also Swann's Way by the family). The much longer route, with a very different landscape and inhabitants, is the Guermantes Way.

Upon the simple facts of these two different routes layer upon layer of meaning accrue for the narrator (and reader) over the course of the book. They become for him (and us), not just very different paths and landscapes and experiences and fantasies of his childhood but a kind of template for all of his life that follows--orienting the development of his psyche and imagination well into his adulthood. We, like him, become used to seeing the world of the novel in terms of what seem to be these two irreconcilable "ways" and it is a distinctly gratifying shock when after some 3,000 or more pages he discovers that the old paths of his childhood are actually not distinct at all, but connected.

I'd never had any experience that even remotely resembled this in the real world until the other day in Venice. For in Venice, like no other place I've ever lived, one's entire sense of the city, of how one sestiere relates to another, of the distance between two points, of the city's entire size and shape, can be magically reconfigured by the flukey discovery of some narrow previously unnoticed series of calli linking a certain campo to another. All of sudden the very campo that had seemed so definitively anchored within the bounds of Castello--the focal point around which so many of my ideas of that sestiere arranged themselves--turns out to be just a short easy stroll from a church that had uniquely embodied for me what I'd thought of as the obscure center of the sestiere of San Marco.

Ever since cities have existed writers have exclaimed at--in indignation or joy--the sensory overload that assails a visitor to them. Venice isn't unique in this regard. But as everyone knows, Venice can easily seem like the most illogical city one is ever likely to visit in the West. When you are really lost in Venice the map you hold your hand is as worthless as a car to get you where you really want to go.

One is so rarely in the clear in Venice, it's difficult to orient oneself. In most cities you can look for a landmark, peer down an avenue to figure out which way is north. In Venice the Grand Canal could serve a similar function--if only it were straight.

Learning your way around Venice is like learning a language. You can learn some essential routes like you learn essential grammar, but fluency comes only with unexpected whole-body experiences. The well-trod path that runs between the Rialto and Piazza San Marco, or between the Piazza and L'Accademia (following Via XXII Marzo), are like the utterances of a phrase book offering the most limited of communications, the narrowest of experience--like the well-known path I'd come to rely on to get me home from my Italian class in a predictable amount of time.

During those very rare very brief times when I feel I've really learned some bit of the Italian language my memory, my mind recedes far into the background. It's not that I'm translating what I've heard or consciously remembering a phrase, it's just that my ear instantaneously catches what's said, and my mouth miraculously produces the response seemingly all on its own. And so too at those times when I feel like I've learned a bit of the city, my eyes catch every significant detail without thought, and my feet themselves seem to feel the way forward.

Perhaps because there are so few really useful street signs in Venice, so few of the things that our sense of logic depends upon to orient us in other cities, imagination can, if we have the time to let it, come to the fore. Associations come thick and fast. We remember our way because of the way the sun falls upon a certain facade at a certain time, the way the cobblestones become uneven just at this stretch, the way a certain group of people seated at an outdoor table once caught our attention just before the calle where we must turn left.

Venice: the city of many ways.

On Finding My Way--Then Losing It

2011-04-04T18:59:00.003+02:00

Everyone writes and talks about the experience of losing one's way in Venice but today I was struck more forcefully by the experience of finding it.

In Venice, more than in any other place I've ever lived, I always feel like I'm missing out on something-- or on a lot of things--when an appointment forces me to take a familiar route from point A to point B. No sooner do I congratulate myself on resisting the allure of some flashing vista down one calle than a few steps further on another major threat to punctuality appears: a church I've never seen or never seen open before, a low sottoportego as curiously inviting as Alice's rabbit hole, a certain tint of plaster or pattern of brickwork or shape of doorframe glimpsed in the corner of a corte. In Venice there always seems to be another way to go, another path to take, of potentially remarkable splendor, or splendorously remarkable decay--even if it does turn out to be a dead end. To a person with hungry eyes, the city offers a feast of infinite courses; to give into just a few of them is to risk never getting to your intended destination. Of sacrificing any claim to social or civic responsiblity--leaving your friend or the officer at the Questura waiting forever--for the sake of following out just one more calle. Of ending up utterly exhausted and lost, led far astray by curiosity and desire.

And oddly enough, as I've just discovered, you need only try to describe your very literal experience of making your way through the city to suddenly find yourself completely lost in what appears to be some treatise on morality, psychology, or the unconscious. Like so many other writers over the last 1,000 years...

Maybe we Western descendents of Plato and the Judeo-Christian monotheistic tradition--distrustful of sheer multiform appearance, believers in some true path--can't help but get lost in the metaphorical implications of literal old Venice.

Though, alas, my point was not about getting lost. But having wandered far off enough already I should wait till the next post to try to re-find my intended path.

Spring, Foregrounded

2011-03-30T10:03:00.000+02:00

Near the center of Venice it's rare for nature, even cultivated nature, to cast the constructed marvels of the city into the background--but not impossible.

Long Time No See

2011-03-29T21:43:00.000+02:00

Some people doubted they would ever see the Accademia again, but I'm happy to post this pic taken today to prove their fears were unfounded. (Okay, maybe well-founded, but still...) I'm sorry this photo doesn't do it justice; it really looks wonderful, even with the construction material still all around it and that crane.

And could those be solar panels on its roof--or just skylights?

The Language Teacher

2011-03-29T21:21:00.002+02:00

About a month ago my 3-year-old son corrected my pronunciation of a simple Italian word.

"An-chee-o," he instructed--not that I'd asked. I thought I'd said it correctly.

I tried again.

Still not quite right. He demonstrated again.

He's actually a pretty good teacher. Even last year when he was two, and after only a couple of months at an asilo nido in Piemonte, my Italian cousins said his accent was very good. And in contrast to my Italian instructor here in the state-sponsored language course for stranieri (foreigners) he doesn't yell at you if you make a mistake.

It comes as no surprise that one's child develops a life distinct from the one he or she has with you at home, but a second language only emphasizes this. To us he has always been "Sandro". At school they call him by the name on his birth certificate, "Alessandro," or, quite often, "Ale" (Ah-lay)--a common Italian nickname we'd never heard before.

This afternoon he brought home a painted bas relief figure of a person (& tree) made of dried dough on paper enclosed within a shallow cardboard box (framing it like a children's puppet theatre) labeled "Il Folletto dell' Inverno" (or "Elf of Winter"). He just made it, so my wife and I were surprised that it was not an elf of spring--but only because we have no clue yet about this elf's story. Like La Befana, the witch of the Epiphany (whose appearance on his class's Christmas-themed calendar first struck my wife and I as some mistaken leftover from Halloween), this winter elf's appearance in our home at the end of March is a small reminder that our son is being educated in a culture not our own.

We're in the fortunate, even luxurious position of being able to accept such differences as invitations for us, as much as for Sandro, to learn something new. But it's not hard to imagine that for other parents in other places--or, of course, even here in Venice--such differences in culture and language could easily take on a more worrisome aspect. And for other kids as well.

I suspect my parents' own history of being able to speak only Italian when they started first grade in two different small towns in California had a lot to do with their unwillingness to teach any of their own kids the language. But perhaps because he started at an earlier age, in an atmosphere of mostly play, Sandro hasn’t seemed bothered by the fact that he does not—or did not—speak the same language as his classmates.

He understood Italian before he could speak it much, and now as his Italian facility increases he seems quite content to combine the languages as necessary. Though he does seem to be aware that they are two different languages with different words for the same object. So when I recently referred to a tartaruga in a pond, he responded by telling me that, no, there was no tortoise there.

This past weekend my wife was on a bus on the Lido with Sandro, his 4-year-old Italian classmate (who knows very little English), and her Italian mother. Sandro has really started to use a lot of Italian lately around his Italian friends—but not only Italian. He was telling his friend things like: “Guarda that rossa macchina” (“Look at that red car”).

And “Non si giocare with the toy cosi” (“One doesn’t play with the toy like that”).

“Ah,” my wife’s Italian friend joked to her, “Sandro speaks English like you speak Italian!”

Spring Is Here, for Some...

2011-03-23T21:16:00.005+01:00

Spring has arrived in Venice for some, not so much for others, and for others yet, not at all...

The way your neighbors react to the changing seasons suggests a lot about the people you're living among. When I lived in Manhattan I was struck every autumn by how prematurely people broke out their fall wardrobes. You'd have barely turned your calender page to September, the temperatures would still be very close to those of summer, and yet all around you'd see people in dark wool jackets and coats, set off by the nicest scarves in deep autumnal hues. They looked great, and seemed as pleased with their clothes and themselves as kids who'd finally grown into some long-promised outfit. It was bracing just to behold them and inspired a swell of seasonal sentiment ("Autumn in New York, why does it always seem so inviting?" as the song says). The only thing that ruined it was the 82 degree temperature (28 celsius) and my intimate knowledge that I was sweating in just a light cotton shirt and jeans.

Today in Venice the high was a brilliant 61 degrees fahrenheit (16 C). At the Midwestern college I attended not far from Chicago, this would've been bathing suit and beach towel weather. Here, most of my neighbors were not so willing to get anywhere close to jumping the gun--they kept safely in their winter coats and hats.

Partly it's a matter of age; Venice has the oldest population in Italy, which is saying a lot. It's understandable that for many older people 61 degrees might not seem all that much of an improvement over 51 degrees (10 C) or 45 degrees (7 C), no matter how bright the sun. And contrary to the United States where someone who is 75 often seems pressured to prove they are no less callow than someone of 20, older Italians seem less inclined to believe that life's greatest pleasures are available only to those in the throes of puberty.

And Italian kids... This is another post all its own, which could range from the 3 hours we've been told must pass between the last morsel of food to enter a child's mouth and that child's first step into a swimming pool, to the serious health hazards of a breeze on a child's tummy. Needless to say, those small kids in the company of their grandparents or mothers this afternoon were more often than not wearing something along the lines of a down parka and a wool hat.

But even in the case of those between one or the other extreme of age, most Italians I saw today were cautious not to get too carried away and recklessly start shedding layers. I saw no one nowhere "lying out"--regardless of how important a good tan seems to be to many Italians. A light merino wool sweater over a light cotton shirt was too hot for me this afternoon, but most other people I saw kept their jackets on--and buttoned. For well over 1,000 years Venetians have survived amid changing tides, threatening seas, and potential enemies on every side. They were not about to put too much faith in what the calender said, nor trust overly much in a single warm day. They were taking nothing for granted.

I'll be curious to see how they react to the next two days when the weather is supposed to be even warmer.

Sea Horses in Venice(?)

2011-03-22T11:02:00.002+01:00

"Mind you get a fisherman to bring you two or three cavalli di mare, & put them in a basin in your room, and see them swim. But don't keep them more than a day, or they'll die, put them into the canal again."

--John Ruskin, in a letter of 1857 to Charles Eliot Norton

I had no idea there were ever sea horses (or cavallucci) in and around Venice until I came upon the above mention of them in a long letter quoted by John Julius Norwich in Paradise of Cities: Venice in the 19th Century.

I supposed they must have vanished from the lagoon long ago, but I asked a Venetian friend, born here in 1941, if he had ever seen any and he answered, yes, of course, when he was a boy. There were a lot of them in the lagoon then, and when the waves became rough on the Lido--agitato is the word he used, which was hard for me to imagine as I've only ever seen the Adriatic lapping calmly as a lake--they would wash up on the strand.

I asked him when they disappeared from the lagoon and he said he didn't know. Though I remembered a previous conversation with him and his wife when they'd referred to a time when the lagoon became littered with floating fish, I think in the late '60s.

Metal or brass sea horses sometimes appear on gondolas, but unlike, say, dolphins, I don't recall sea horses being a prominent decorative motif in Venice. But maybe I've been overlooking them?

A short underwater video on Youtube claims to show a sea horse off the shore of the Lido but, to be honest, it's pretty hard to make out the isolated little fellow--or to be sure he's there at all.

Are there still sea horses around Venice? Has anyone seen them?