Art, market and agency at the Venice Biennale, 1895–1993

ABSTRACT

This special issue focuses on one of the most longstanding, international, and large scale exhibitions: the Venice Biennale. The keywords ‘art’, ‘agency’ and ‘market’ act as methodological pathways to investigate the evolution of its rich visual library. The texts offer a diachronic approach highlighting significant points of friction and continuity. Marie Tavinor and Davide Lacagnina focus on the first two general secretaries Antonio Fradeletto and Vittorio Pica, who greatly contributed to shaping the institution. Giuliana Tomasella investigates the case of painter Alberto Salietti’s market success at the Biennale in 1942. Both Cristina Beltrami through the decorative arts, and Clarissa Ricci through the attempts at reopening the Biennale sales office, look into the complex relationship of the Venice Biennale with the art market. Lastly, a critical review of the large archival exhibition ‘Le Muse Inquiete/The Disquieted Muses’ held in Venice in 2020, reflects on the Biennale’s complex and fascinating history.

RIASSUNTO

Questo numero speciale é dedicato alla Biennale di Venezia, una delle più longeve e durature esposizioni internazionali d’arte. I testi offrono una visione diacronica, mettendo in luce alcuni momenti significativi di rottura e/o continuità dell’evoluzione della Biennale. I percorsi metodologici messi in campo per indagarne la complessità sono riassunti dalle parole chiave ‘arte’, ‘mercato’ e ‘agency’. Marie Tavinor e Davide Lacagnina rivolgono la loro attenzione alle figure di Antonio Fradeletto e Vittorio Pica, i primi due segretari generali che hanno notevolmente contribuito alla crescita dell’istituzione veneziana. Diversamente invece Giuliana Tomasella indaga il caso del successo di mercato di Alberto Salietti alla Biennale del 1942. Mentre Cristina Beltrami, attraverso le arti decorative, e Clarissa Ricci, con i tentativi di riapertura dell’ufficio vendite della biennale, affrontano la complessa relazione della Biennale di Venezia con il mercato dell’arte. Infine, la recensione sulla mostra d’a archivio Le Muse Inquiete (2020) offre una riflessione critica sull’affascinante e articolata storia della Biennale di Venezia.

KEYWORDS:

• Venice Biennale
• exhibition
• arts
• agency
• market

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Biennale di Venezia
• esposizione
• arti
• agency
• mercato

Introduction

Since 1895, the biennial exhibitions organized in Venice have created a visual library not only for the fine arts but also for the decorative arts, architecture, dance, music, cinema and theatre. Although its long history is complex and fraught with criticism that the Biennale has not always fulfilled its role as artistic laboratory, it has nevertheless offered access to a broad range of visual languages during the last 125 years, through the crucial aesthetic transformation of the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first century.

So far, fifty-eight international art exhibitions have been organized in Venice offering many opportunities to expand the public’s visual culture in an increasingly multicultural and global art world. The Venice ‘Biennale’ is an umbrella term covering a heterogeneous aggregate of different exhibitions, some organized by foreign countries in their own spaces or pavilions, some by groups, and since late 1970s featuring one or several propositions centred on specific themes put together by the officially appointed curator (Martini 2012; Donaggio 2002). The scope of the Biennale has increased dramatically to include the decorative arts from 1903 onwards, the first international festival of contemporary music in 1930, the first film festival in 1932, theatre in 1934, architecture in 1980, and finally dance in 1999 thereby transforming it into a multi-sector platform over time (La Biennale di Venezia, n.d.). This is without even mentioning the increasing number of ‘collateral events’ or non-official events organized during the course of the official Biennali, which sprawl over the city. This partly explains the overall fragmentation of the literature on the Biennale, which usually adopts two main perspectives: on the one hand a historical approach and on the other hand a typological analysis as part of the growing field of exhibitions and biennials studies.

The historiography of the Venice Biennale has evolved considerably over the past century from early discursive publications (Stella 1913; Zorzi 1930), to the first academic book of note written by British art critic Lawrence Alloway (1969). Indeed a first corpus of publications on the Biennale includes reminiscences as well as anecdotal approaches aimed at a broad public (Bazzoni 1962; di Martino 2009). Then, the 1980s saw the first attempt at a full historical overview of the Biennale: published in Italian, it provided useful forays into visual highlights and significant historical events affecting its development (Rizzi and di Martino 1982). It also used some traditional critical tropes dismissing the aesthetic choices promoted during the early years of the Biennale which the more recent historiography has sought to revise (Romanelli 1995; Masau Dan and Pavanello 1995). An updated and more comprehensive history of the Biennale was published in 1995 (di Martino 1995) and translated in English in the first decade of the twenty-first century (di Martino 2007), in which not only the fine arts, but also the other artistic festivals that the Biennale has developed since the 1930s were included. This publication has been updated several times but its latest edition has not been translated into English (di Martino 2015). In addition to these overviews, the historiography of the Venice Biennale has been written by participating countries, often upon commemorative occasions. Their aim was broadly national as they sought to record highlights of their country’s participation to the Biennale and their contribution to the contemporary art scene: there is ample scope for research as so far publications have only appeared on Great Britain (Bowness and Phillpot 1995), Germany (Moore and Zeller 2009), Austria (Sharp 2013) and Canada (Légault 2020) completed with a study on the history of pavilions and the gardens (Re Rebaudengo 2013).

While the centenary of the Biennale in 1995 prompted more nuanced ways to look at its aesthetic history (Romanelli 1995), and renewed academic interest in its historiography (Szacka 2016; Castellani and Charans 2017; Portinari and Stringa 2019), articles have explored in more depth some key moments of political interference thereby acknowledging that aesthetics and politics could be closely intertwined (Vettese 2017). Unsurprisingly, historical periods such as the Fascist era and the Cold War have received most attention so far (Stone 1999; Tomasella 2001; de Sabbata 2006; Budillon Puma 1995; Bandera Viani 2001; Jachec 2007). Further to this, the role of politically active curators from the 1970s onwards has been examined (Portinari 2018).

Besides these varying historiographies of the Biennale, the other main academic perspective has focused on its typology. The history of exhibitions and exhibition platforms has gathered momentum in the past decades resulting in important publications on the subject (Ferguson, Greenberg and Nairne 1996). In particular more recent volumes aim at creating a ‘biennialogy’, i.e. a rigorous and distinct academic field studying the characteristics of biennials and their economic context (Filipovic, Van Hal and Ovstebo 2010; Ricci 2011; Martini and Martini 2011; Altshuler 2013). Mainly centring on the contemporary period, these publications have sought to analyse the growing phenomenon of biennials, art fairs, and the global art world (Green and Gardner 2016; Jones 2017). Of late, the growing academic interest in exhibitions and biennials has translated into the creation of a new academic journal, whose first issue used Venice as the origin and matrix of the phenomenon (Vettese 2020).

Whilst building up on these publications, the aim of this proposed Special Issue is to take a different approach which combines a diachronic account of the Biennale and a focus on its changing typology. Indeed the nature and scope of the Venice Biennale has evolved in its long history and we argue that its capacity to adapt to changing social, political and economic contexts contributed to its continuous relevance in a deeply transformed art world. To unlock the complexities underlying its evolution, the contributions to this Special Issue use inter-disciplinary approaches which we summarized in three keywords: Art, Market and Agency.

Art

While our first keyword ‘Art’ is the most obvious one, contributions in this Special Issue, treat it as a ‘contested’ protagonist whose role has to be continuously re-interpreted and understood. Art at the Biennale has never been simply ‘art’ but also, and sometimes mainly, a tool for political, cultural, national or international representation. It is not by chance that the status of the Venice Biennale as a laboratory of the visual arts has been a contested site since its inception. Recent contributions have sought to redress some of early assumptions that the Biennale was born ‘old’ (Rizzi and di Martino 1982, 15), while articles regularly criticize choices made by curators and national selections. Instead, this Special Issue encourages looking at the art on display in Venice as sites of negotiations in which individual tastes and aesthetic preferences have to contend with external forces, be they logistical constraints, group pressure or political influences. Famously, Picasso exhibited at the Venice Biennale for the first time in 1948. While this choice was praised as the overdue recognition of an internationally acclaimed artist, the delays in which such recognition took place are meaningful in themselves (Rodriguez 1993). Looking behind the scenes at how the artworks came to be exhibited is a route that opened up a broader understanding of this institution. As Staniszewski (1998, xxi) noted, ‘ellipses manifest historical limitations and mark the configurations of power and knowledge within a particular culture at a given time’.

Similarly, not all artistic media have received the same amount of attention, nor indeed all artists (such as women artists and artists of colour) and all countries have been equally represented in Venice. While being a topic of interest, comparative art history has recently shown how art works change as the context in which they are exhibited change (Wyss 2011; Steed 2019). Looking at art at the Venice Biennale is thus a complex matter.

As increasing amounts of artistic expression blur traditional hierarchical boundaries, so our understanding of them needs to broaden up. While the fine arts have traditionally provided the bulk of the exhibits thereby reflecting historical biases towards specific mediums (Graw 2018), this Special Issue selected a contribution on the decorative arts. Far from being a marginal topic, the decorative arts allow an insight on taste and collecting trends over time. Moreover the decorative arts were the gateway to the inter-disciplinary direction that the Biennale later took in the 1930s. Each artistic discipline appears to be part of a broader inter-disciplinarity which is not always visible (Pellanda 2011). However, the Biennale exhibition Le muse inquiete (The Disquieted Muses). When La Biennale di Venezia Meets History (29 August to 8 December 2020), which is reviewed in this Special Issue, celebrated drawing together all the artistic spheres making up the history of the Biennale over time.

Market

It is worth comparing the Biennale’s present goals to its founding goals as a convenient shortcut to assessing its overall evolution, especially in relation to our second keyword ‘Market’. The goals for the 2019 edition were detailed by former President Paolo Baratta on the institution’s website. The Biennale is an international exhibition, ‘an instrument of knowledge, imperfect yet dynamic’ offering a platform for ‘permanent (artistic) revolution’ which promotes sustained dialogue and openness (Baratta n.d.). Baratta therefore emphasizes an ontological perspective which focuses on the ‘essence’ of the exhibition and its ‘rhizomatic’ interaction with the participating public (Deleuze and Guattari 2013). Before him, the first general secretary Antonio Fradeletto’s aims were outlined in an annual report. In comparison to Baratta’s, Fradeletto’s objectives seemed more linear: firstly to present to the public the most noble and characteristic examples of contemporary artistic creation; then to promote and refine an aesthetic culture; and lastly to create a substantial art market (Fradeletto 1908, 19).¹ His aims were more directed to the receiving public, intended both a viewers and consumers of the art on display.

In a way, the shifts in objectives described above are not surprising. Indeed they illustrate the intrinsic differences between modern and post-modern modes of exhibitions in which art’s role has morphed from an education tool to a medium of communication. Therein probably lays one of the secrets of the Biennale’s longevity, i.e. its adaptation to changing needs and evolving artistic cultures.

In spite of Fradeletto’s signalling the importance of setting up the Biennale as an art market, this topic has not received a lot of critical attention. An important publication in Italian appeared in the 1990s which loosely covered sales from the 1920s to the 1950s (Gian Ferrari 1995), followed more recently by an unpublished PhD (Tavinor 2017) and conferences.² Our contributions develop and expand on these takes by using a more diverse range of case studies across time and mediums. During the period covered by this Special Issue, the presence of the sales office arguably provides a continuous backbone underpinning the development of the Biennale, until its closure in the 1970s. Its history together with the latest attempts at reopening it in the 1990s is traced in English for the first time here and provides a convenient timespan for this Special Issue (Ricci 2017). In our analyses, the concept of ‘sales nexus’ goes hand in hand with the notion of ‘agency’ which fits in with the discipline of economic sociology (Granovetter 1985). Indeed our contributions explore how networks, cultures and politics at the personal and institutional levels shaped the consumption and transactions of art at the Biennale. From that perspective, readers will look in vain for econometrics or an economic analysis of the years under scrutiny.³ Figures and statistics are used sparsely but in conjunction with analyses of the social fabric which illuminate them. To borrow American sociologist Mark Granovetter’s term, the economic activity of the Biennale was ‘embedded’ within a sociological, artistic and cultural context, of which it cannot be detached without losing its full meaning. This is true both for the presence and the absence of market data at the Biennale. Indeed, shifts in culture and society were broadly responsible for the demise of the Biennale’s sales office as art transactions became increasingly ‘repugnant transactions’ (Roth 2007) during the 1960s and 1970s in the context of anti-capitalist protests. Yet in spite of the changing climate and corresponding shifts in the Biennale typology, it is interesting that several proposals to revive the sales office took place between the 1970s and the 1990s, the last one taking place in 1993 as Clarissa Ricci’s article reveals.

Agency

Academic publications have usually used the finale stage of the Biennale exhibitions, i.e. how they appeared to the public, as a starting point to develop their analysis. On the other hand, our aim is to gauge the dialectical relationship between the displays as encountered by the public, and their construction behind the scenes thereby building untapped links between art and our third keyword ‘Agency’ (Alloway 1969, 36). Indeed the Biennale catalogues, and more generally the information distributed by the organizers, only tend to document the end result of many negotiations, i.e. the tip of the iceberg. On the other hand, the articles gathered here aim to study the forces pulling the Biennale’s official visual language together, hammering and chiselling it into shape through a combination of aesthetic preferences, and social, economic and political forces. Whereas many historical accounts of the Biennale present its history as a teleological concatenation, we focus instead on some of the human relationships which form the backbone of its historical fabric. This Special Issue aims to show how fruitful it can be to probe its evolution as the open result of human negotiations, interactions and agency.

We therefore privilege an analysis of the micro level which looks at human interactions. This approach draws both from sociology and from network analysis, the latter finding increasing favour with researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Freeman 2004). However, network analysis also has obvious limitations linked to its emphasis on capturing snapshots of human interconnectedness at a certain moment in time (Yang, Keller and Zhang 2017). Without ignoring the benefits that network analysis may bring, our choice of a diachronic approach fitted better with the concept of ‘agency’, as it usefully explores the qualitative and dynamic nature of human relationships.

Indeed in anthropologist Alfred Gell’s view (Gell 1998, 23), ‘Agency’ highlights ‘the overcoming of resistance, difficulty, inertia’ in interpersonal relations and decision-making processes. As the contributions to this Special Issue show human drive, negotiation and persuasion extensively shaped the Biennale’s visual library in the form of relational networks and divergent views on risk-bearing decisions, for example (Eisenhardt 1988, 57–59). Likewise the acquisitions discussed in the articles show that consumption and transactions also depended on a number of interactions between ‘agents’ and ‘patients’ (Gell 1998, 16, 22).

This proposed Special Issue therefore offers a diachronic approach of the development of the Biennale’s visual library highlighting significant points of friction and continuity, from ‘heroic’ beginnings through historical crises to the significant transformations of the post-war period. Our triadic methodological approach of art, market and agency opens up perspectives to analyse the evolution of the Venice Biennale. Firstly we privilege case studies and micro analyses while broadening the artistic media under scrutiny; then we use the Biennale’s identity as a commercial platform to explore its changing typology and the impact on the exhibitions and lastly we place a strong emphasis on the importance of agency in order to underline the complex evolution of the Biennale’s visual library.

Overview of this Special Issue

The first two articles gathered here both use ‘ego-centric’ case studies for analysis, i.e. a focus on individuals as particularly illuminating of the organization and evolution of the Biennale (Cachero 2017). Indeed, people and personalities shaped the Biennale throughout its history, however not all have received the same amount of attention nor have they all attracted fair coverage. This is the case of the first two general secretaries of the Biennale, Antonio Fradeletto and Vittorio Pica who are the objects of the first two contributions by Marie Tavinor and Davide Lacagnina.

In many respects, it is convenient to compare and contrast men who held the same position at the helm of the Biennale. On the one hand, Venetian politician and writer Antonio Fradeletto (1858–1930), first general secretary (1895–1914) has generally been hailed as ‘the right man at the right place’ whose tireless energy and dedication to Venice ensured the safeguard of the young exhibition platform, not yet known as a ‘biennial’ (Rabitti 1995, 27).⁴ On the other hand, Neapolitan art critic Vittorio Pica (1862–1930), second general secretary (1920–1926) has long suffered from the historical context in which he operated as well as his uneasy tenure between Fradeletto and artist and politician Antonio Maraini (1886–1963), general secretary (1927–1942) during the Fascist era. The latter is discussed in Giuliana Tomasella’s contribution. These three men brought varied networks, ideologies and aesthetic preferences to their position, which are therefore explored through different lenses. Firstly Tavinor’s article privileges Fradeletto’s political personae as an MP representing Venice at the Parliament in Rome, in addition to his function at the Biennale. In particular she examines his acknowledged Anglophilia through his support of the British section, thereby highlighting negotiations involving art and politics taking place behind the scenes. The scope and limit of Fradeletto’s agency in shaping the course of the Biennale are explored through his political and cultural biases and evidenced through sales in the British section. On the other hand, Davide Lacagnina’s re-evaluation of Pica’s legacy focuses on agency in relation to aesthetic preferences. Indeed Pica was known for his strong taste for some of the ‘isms’ which by the 1920s had been broadly institutionalized, and yet not shown properly in Venice. Lacagnina’s article shows how Pica instigated a transition in the Biennale’s visual library from those established nineteenth century artists who still enjoyed commercial success in the 1920s. The article details the erosion of power Pica suffered from, the negotiations and resulting compromises; finally the aesthetic tensions between tradition and modernity in the context of shifting political and institutional forces during the crucial years of the rise of the Fascist regime and the re-organization of the Biennale structure. The gradually eroded function of the general secretary since the mid-1920s and the shifting power structure explains Giuliana Tomasella’s diachronic perspective in which Antonio Maraini becomes but one of the protagonists pitched against National Education Minister Giuseppe Bottai (1895–1959), young Milanese art dealer Ettore Gian Ferrari who is appointed director of the Biennale’s sales office in 1942, and successful artist Alberto Salietti who sold twenty paintings at the Biennale in 1942. By limiting the scope of her study to the crucial years 1940 and 1942, Tomasella analyses this specific moment when interwoven issues such as investment, prestige, nationalistic intentions, appreciation of specific subjects and stylistic features determined the purchases by private and institutional collectors. Alberto Salietti’s success is used as a meaningful case study which allows an in-depth exploration of the mechanisms of a complex and unpredictable war art market.

The Biennale not only contributed to creating a visual library, but it was also strongly connected to the promotion of the city of Venice. It originated in a local political and economic context essentially tied to the tourist industry, and in the cultural awareness of the city’s role as a centre of art and culture (Mimita Lamberti 2020). The evolution of the Biennale is therefore shaped in part by tensions between local interests and international ambitions, a topic which has garnered academic attention of late (Citvarienè 2015). Cristina Beltrami’s article should be looked at from these multiples perspectives as it investigates how the Biennale influenced the development of the market for Murano glass. The Biennale’s display of the decorative arts developed over time from mere furnishings to a dedicated exhibition space in the Padiglione Venezia built in 1932. Exploring economic concerns from local glass producers and pitching them against the Biennale’s international ambitions, Beltrami analyses the agency exerted by local producers while probing the tensions between crowd-pleasing designs and avant-garde taste in glass making. Her article thereby ties in very well with Lacagnina’s in showing some of the discrepancies between artistic and economic aims at the Biennale.

Lastly, those economic aims are best understood through an analysis of the Biennale’s sales office since its inception until 1972, and its evolution within the Biennale’s managing structure. Tomasella’s article mentions an important personality from this perspective, Ettore Gian Ferrari, who was in charge of the sales office in 1942 and then continuously between 1950 and 1968. Giuliana Tomasella’s article discusses Gian Ferrari’s contribution in some depth but her scope is restricted to the war years. To date, there is no extensive publication on Gian Ferrari’s contribution to the Venice Biennale, a regrettable gap in the literature.⁵ Although appointed during the Second World War, he fostered a substantial increase in the sale of the art on display, especially by attracting private collectors. The closure of the sales office is usually thought to have taken place in 1968 at the end of Gian Ferrari’s tenure, as a consequence of the student protests. However this narrative covers a complex discourse on the transformation of the Biennale’s exhibition format from a proto-fair into that of a modern-day Biennale. Clarissa Ricci analyses this transformation as the result of a long-standing reflection on the Biennale’s relationship with market forces over several decades, from the 1968 anti-capitalist protests to the last attempt to reopen the sales office in 1993. After giving a historical outline of the mechanisms of the sales office, Ricci explores these attempts, notably the two most relevant ones in 1984 and in 1993. In so doing, Ricci unveils agencies and negotiations involving both economic and moral dimensions which became hotly debated in the 1960s onwards. In Venice, these caused the separation of the exhibition platform from the art trade as a way of highlighting the ethical and moral value of contemporary art.

Finally, this Special Issue closes with the review of the first inter-disciplinary exhibition organized by the Venice Biennale in 2020 and entitled Le muse inquiete(The Disquieted Muses). When La Biennale di Venezia Meets History. Conceived as a large archival exhibition about the history of the Biennale, it was displayed in the central pavilion and encompassed a time frame going from the 1930s to nowadays with such highlights as the year 1948 usually remembered as a landmark when Peggy Guggenheim displayed her collection of Surrealists and early abstract expressionist artists in the Greek pavilion. Similarly the arrival of Pop Art in the Giardini in 1964 constituted another landmark in the changing aesthetics of the post-war period which unfortunately are not covered in this Special Issue. Both episodes have received academic attention but would benefit from further exploration. The exhibition which picked up on the Biennale’s ambition to be a multidisciplinary institution, tackled its changing role and its continued endeavours to update its format and cultural mission. A wealth of documents, letters, pictures, posters and videos witnessed many significant moments in the institution’s history. While reinforcing the Biennale’s iconic function as a referential visual library in the twentieth century, it also points to its own complexities and to the need for scholars to adopt a nuanced approach when dealing with its history. In conclusion, this Special Issue is also an invitation to other scholars to look at the Venice Biennale and to explore a complex and fascinating institution.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clarissa Ricci

Clarissa Ricci is lecturer at the University of Bologna. She was a recipient of the Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art (2019–2020) and previously she was entrusted by Iuav University in Venice (2017–2019) with researching the foundation of Arte Fiera. Moreover she was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City and was awarded a Library Research Grant by the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She is author of an upcoming monograph on the 1993 Venice Biennale (Marsilio 2021) and has written numerous essays. She was editor of many volumes such as the one on the Venice Biennale entitled Starting from Venice. Studies on the Biennale (2011), latest being Double Trouble. Exhibitions facing fairs in Contemporary Art (2020). She has also published the entries of ‘Venice Biennale’ for Grove Art Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2018). Moreover she is founder and editor of OBOE journal.

Marie Tavinor

Marie Tavinor is Programme Director of the Executive Master in Cultural Leadership at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. She specializes in the history of art, collecting and the art market and she is a founding member of the Society for the History of Collecting. Her PhD investigated the consumption of British painting in the early years of the Venice Biennale (Royal Holloway, 2017). She regularly publishes and lectures on the subject internationally.

Notes

1. Romolo Bazzoni’s memoirs (1962, 14) also insisted on the double aesthetic and commercial objectives of the founding fathers of the Biennale: ‘il duplice scopo di giovare al decoro ed all’incremento dell’arte e di creare un mercato artistico dal quale la città potesse ricavare non lieve vantaggio’.

2. A conference was organized in London in February 2016 and a workshop followed up in Venice in May 2016 on the links between the Venice Biennale and the art market between 1895 and today: Marie Tavinor, “The Venice Biennale and the Art Market; the Venice Biennale as an Art Market: Anatomy of a Complex Relationship,” Conference, London, February 2016, and Francesca Castellani, “London at Venice! La Biennale e il mercato, la Biennale come mercato,” Workshop, Venice, May 2016.

3. For an economic and statistical overview of the Biennali 1895–2001, see Vecco (2002).

4. The early name of the exhibition was: International Exhibition of the City of Venice (Esposizione Internazionale della Città di Venezia).

5. Ricci (2017) mentioned his contribution.