In the Late Afternoon Sun

11 February 2015 (above and below)

Carried Away in Piazza San Marco

 

The main figures in the above image, taken on 3 March 2014, seem to conflate a number of motifs from Giandomenico Tiepolo's wonderful series of Pulcinella drawings, as seen below. Well, at least they do in my mind. But then I'm always happy to recall this series of images, and if you can get your hands on a copy of the large-format complete edition of the drawings published by George Braziller in 1986 and entitled Domemico Tiepolo, The Punchinello Drawings, (with an Introduction and sometimes dubious interpretations by Adelheid Gealt), take a look at it. Or, better yet, buy it, as they're not too easy to find in good condition.

 

 

The birth--or rather, hatching--of Pulcinella

Frenzy: In the Days Before Social Distancing (5 Images)

I always found the photographers as interesting as--if not more than--their static, masked, posing subjects, so that it's long seemed to me the ubiquitous porcelain-faced mime images which are synonymous with contemporary (ie, post 1980) Venetian Carnevale not only don't give an accurate sense of what the experience is (or was) actually like, they miss the most lively part of it (all images: 28 February 2014).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Procession, Piazza San Marco (and Photog Feeding Frenzy on the Molo)

Above and below: 27 February 2014

Costumed Carnevale Melodrama

These folks costumed for Carnevale didn't just dress up, they struck textbook poses: in the above case of that old melodrama favorite, The Fallen Woman. (taken 27 February 2014)

Pensive Clown with Sequin Tears

23 February 2014

Long Time No See (or Post)

Campo San Stin, 23 December 2014: Social media has replaced campi and streets as the site for skirmishes akin to the one above--but between adults (though no less infantile). It's the kind of interaction to which social media lends itself and, in fact, actively promotes.

I find myself too busy with and preoccupied by things in North America to post anything about Venice lately. These are dangerous and ominous times in the United States, and as ugly as might be expected when a country's fond fantasies about itself finally collide with facts. 

America's most recent Vice-President and Attorney General met with and praised Hungary's authoritarian ruler Viktor Orban, while just two days ago its most recent president explicitly stated that on January 6, 2021 he attempted to "overturn" the results of an election he admittedly lost, encouraged his supporters to take to the streets should any attempt be made to charge him with crimes, promised pardons for any of his supporters who committed crimes on his behalf, and depicted the investigations of his criminal activity as "racist" (that is, "anti-white witch hunts" undertaken by African-American officials).

In other words, the anti-democratic coup that occurred on last January 6 continues, and has been adopted by the Republican Party itself as its political platform. Much of the news media--craven, sloppy, greedy, and cynical--falls into Orwellian haziness when referring to political systems like Orban's as "illiberal democracies." It makes them sound as if their worse crime is tipping waiters badly. Orban's Hungary is a one-party state: to call it anything else is to become complicit with its obfuscations and crimes. A one party state is also the aggressively, relentlessly, and openly pursued goal of America's Republican Party. 

But none of this is the subject matter of this blog, even though there's more than a little Trump in Venice's current non-resident mayor. (About a year after Trump took office my son went with his fifth grade elementary school class on a tour of Ca' Farsetti: the seat of the city's government. Mayor Brugnaro was not there--not surprising, I suppose--but they were allowed to visit his office. On a small table directly behind the mayor's desk sat a red "Make America Great Again" cap, my son reported to us when he came home that afternoon.)

So, it's better that I write nothing than veer inevitably off topic. To that end, beginning tomorrow I'll post an image a day this month from past years of Venetian Carnevale; some of which I've posted before (usually as part of a group of images), others I've never posted. 

Because the hosting site seems to have ceased updating its filter protecting blogs from spam comments--at least this is what I assume based upon the torrent of such computer-generated ads I get in the Comments section of old posts after I put up any new post--I may decide to disable the Comment section. But the "Contact Venezia Blog" box in the right margin of the blog will continue to function.