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EL ESPECTADOR

In Venice, The Irony Of Marxist Art For the Super Rich

As Venice's biennial art extravaganza reveals, sexual provocation is old hat, and anti-capitalism is the new means of selling expensive art to millionaires.

In Venice, The Irony Of Marxist Art For the Super Rich
Carlos Granes

-OpEd-

VENICE — Gone are the days when modern art used sex to earn your embarrassed attention. The latest Venice Biennale shows that to get international visibility these days, contemporary art must play with something much hotter: politics.

The Venice show, curated by Nigerian Okwui Enwezor, has brought together dozens of artists who, by different means and with varying effectiveness, denounce capitalist exploitation, colonialism, inequality and the destruction of nature. All human evils are on display here, as are sundry works and installations that denounce, denigrate and point an accusing finger at the vices of modern life.

Themes include the uncertain future that awaits us in the current capitalist system, and not surprisingly, Marx is a central protagonist. In one of the spaces, actors dressed in black read through Marx's book Das Kapital all day. This might initially seem disconcerting. But let's not forget that the first ones to arrive in Venice — most likely in their own yachts — were the art collectors and gallery owners who attend the Biennale's previews.

Reading Marx's Das Kapital — Photo: La Biennale di Venezia

You mean to say that pieces on display in the pavillons will later go on show, and sale, in galleries at prices that couldn't be described as "charitable"? And in addition, these devotees of art will be leaving a trail of money spent in Venetian boutiques, restaurants and hotels? Get out of here!

It's not as if visitors are traveling here to be told that the world is full of misfortune and greed. You have the news for that. The works shown in Venice don't tell us anything that someone with a minimal level of education or information doesn't already know. The novelty is instead the spectacle of Marx and anti-capitalist posturing mixing harmoniously with mass tourism, consumerism and multimillionaires.

What Enwezor's fair suggests is that criticisms of capitalism have become another cog in the wheel of capitalism. Marx and consumerism don't flee the flow of money generated by the art market and cultural tourism. It may be that many artists really believe that their art, besides pointing to the evils of humanity, must foment values such solidarity, brotherhood, environmental consciousness, collectivity and even gratuity. The paradox is that all these values, despite their anti-capitalist appearance, are extremely useful today in selling things.

In the 1960s, advertising used values such as revolution, authenticity, sex and youth. Today, judging by the luxury art market, a critical conscience, green issues and post-colonial discourse are more effective. Cities become ecological to attract tourists, post-colonial artists fetch high prices on the market, and critical theorists become international stars.

It doesn't seem so easy today to leave or criticize the system. Whoever does is more likely to be grabbing a rope that will take him to the top — the elite's nest. Is that good or bad? I don't know. I suspect it's another of the many paradoxes of our time.

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Society

Italy's Right-Wing Government Turns Up The Heat On 'Gastronationalism'

Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of "gastronationalism."

Dough is run through a press to make pasta

Creation of home made pasta

Karl De Meyer et Olivier Tosseri

ROME — On March 23, the Italian Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, Francesco Lollobrigida, announced that Rome would ask UNESCO to recognize Italian cuisine as a piece of intangible cultural heritage.

On March 28, Lollobrigida, who is also Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's brother-in-law, promised that Italy would ban the production, import and marketing of food made in labs, especially artificial meat — despite the fact that there is still no official request to market it in Europe.

Days later, Italian Eurodeputy Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of fascist leader Benito Mussolini and member of the Forza Italia party, which is part of the governing coalition in Rome, caused a sensation in the European Parliament. On the sidelines of the plenary session, Sophia Loren's niece organized a wine tasting, under the slogan "In Vino Veritas," to show her strong opposition (and that of her government) to an Irish proposal to put health warnings on alcohol bottles. At the end of the press conference, around 11am, she showed her determination by drinking from the neck of a bottle of wine, to great applause.

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