Venice Biennale: Art Blog & a NY Connection

Mario Cavalli The Venice Biennale, which runs until November, has an art blog, Blogwork. Contributors post about events as well as artists at the Biennale, and it just makes Gothamist wish we were going to Venice some time soon.

Also, in the spirit of mucking things up, the Times pointed out that Bloomberg L.P. was sponsoring (in fact, according to the press release, "Proud to sponsor") artist Chris Ofili at the Biennale's British Pavilion. Ofili is, of course, the Turner prize winning artist who freaked out Rudy Giuliani so much with his use of elephant dung in his paintings, specifically his painting of the Virgin Mary, that Giuliani tried to get fascist and shut down the exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

See a Giuliani painting with elephant poo.

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By Jen Chung in Arts and Events on July 24, 2003 5:56 PM

Comments [rss]

Oliver

well, it seems totally weird to be prudish about a thing as commonplace and wholesome as dung - after all, flying or not, only around 50% of people can absolutely count on seeing vaginas, flying or not, on any kind of regular basis. Dung, on the other hand, is much more dependable.

Max

Just wanted to point out the total hypocrisy of prudery with the whole dung thing on all sides. Everyone talking about dung, because they couldn't bring themselves to talk about the "flying Vagina angels" floating around the VM. Always thought that was very odd.

Jen

Poorly organized and a mess? That sounds like me, though! But it's true, I hate it when my art is that way.

Like, Thomas, man

The Economist seemed to think this year's Biennale was poorly organized and "a mess," although they seemed to like a number of the individual parts of it.