smArt travel

Nowhere are you haunted by death more than in Venice. Nowhere is your aesthetics challenged more than in Venice. Indeed, I have always maintained that only classical places can fully reveal true essence of contemporary art. But whereas even the most traditional cities such as Rome and Kyiv combine high-tech-style buildings and ultra-modern cars with ancient cathedrals and centuries-old architecture, thus making the interaction between the old and the new less painful, Venice does not make such concessions. The city on the water, ominous to Diaghilev, has suffocating beauty that suffocates everybody who dares to really step into the city. Everybody new to Venice is immediately and mercilessly haunted by the spirit Gustav von Aschenbach did not succeed in escaping from in Death in Venice. Given the aforesaid, can Venice do justice to contemporary art? Yes, it can.

Mrs. Guggenheim couldn’t have chosen Venice as the final permanent residence for her collection by chance. It is not just Peggy Guggenheim’s collection that is made special by the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, it is Art itself. When one finally reaches the venue after numerously getting lost in tricky Venice streets, one does not find a museum – one faces the place where Art resides, not where it is exhibited. One does not enter the Palazzo by a ticket (although one has to buy one) – one is coming there as a guest who has received a truly special honour of permission to be present in this still very private place. In Venice and especially at its Guggenheim museum the invisible struggle between different periods of Art History is particularly acute. One physically feels the pain and... beauty of Bacon’s Chimpanzee when it breathes the air from the Grand Canal. Alexander Calder’s works could not embody more meaning and succession in Art in any other place, and The Angel of the City by Marino Marini bids defiance to anyone obtrusively conserved, who is trying to doubt the freedom of creative expression and, thus, the freedom of one’s modus vivendi.

I have always thought that there are three things equally powerful in shaping the perception of Art: venue, viewers and an artefact itself. They are well-balanced in megalopolises such as London or New-York. But the Venetian Guggenheim challenges you on a completely new level. Situated in the uncompromising Venetian scenery, can it shatter your conformist view of Art succession? Yes, it can.