Images for Artist Fernando Ortega

Morte a Venezia

Jun 19th 2003 
From The Economist print edition

WHEN the high point of a Venice Biennale is an exhibition of corpses that isn't part of the official show, you know something is not quite right. The bleak subject matter notwithstanding, Marlene Dumas's images do at least exude a sense of visual power and artistic strength that is largely missing from the 50th Venice Biennale. Her paintings also served, at least in the opening week, as unlikely icons for the viewers who had to trek through a record number of art works in a heat wave so bad that three people died and the children of Venice were jumping into the canals.
Launched more than a century ago, the Biennale should bring together the world's best new art in a series of national pavilions. In recent years, it has been the Biennale director who has gathered together the most dynamic selection in the old shipworks and the rope factory of the Venetian republic. This year, however, the new director, Francesco Bonami, abandoned any attempt at curating the event himself or presenting a coherent vision of the state of art today. Instead, Mr Bonami invited nine other curators to create a series of conflicting exhibitions, which jostled against each other in the vast spaces of the Arsenale. …