blue smoke of brittle leaves

Staring out to sea. The enormity. Calm even in storm? A far cry from Gatsby staring into the distant light of the past. A present sea washing away rot. Lowry and the Painting of Modern Life (Tate Britain). All those little figures in such a void. Was he painting emptiness or fullness? “People move about under chimney smoke, clustered or stranded or silhouetted, in their own little islands of space.” One of the most moving Lowry canvas, though, came up at auction a few years ago: a sparse view from shore out to sea. Which ever city we inhabit, then and now, aren’t we always caught between the bling and the blodge of the daily round ever searching for that still point in the turning world? If so, what so? Neither Baz Luhrman’s adaption of The Great Gatsby novel (with its embarrassing moments of 3D plasticity) nor Sophia Coppola’s re-tell rather than riff of The Bling Ring- bright young things of Los Angeles whose already full void thence overflowed with the overflow of celebrities from whose homes they stole designer gear- told us much about our ennui. Coppola’s film left you empty with the bounty of everything. Yet maybe that was exactly her point. Prison in American need be no set back to fulfilling your life. Busted for breaking into Watergate? No obstacle for some of its stars in doing ice-cream ads or selling real estate. A hard time we had of it seems not to enter conversations about the American dream. And yet are we talking about the same planet that bestows on us The Encyclopaedic Palace of this year’s Venice Biennale? Full of humans filling their lives to overflowing with imagination, practicality and dreams?

"We are going outside the parameters of the so-called art world," said Ralph Rugoff (a San Francisco escapee to Britain) director of London’s Hayward Gallery. "We are going outside the parameters of the so-called outsider art world" speaking of The Alternative Guide to the Universe. Morton Bartlett’s eerie physiologically precise models of boys and girls seen both in Venice and at the Hayward indeed may not inspire the viewer to loftier human pursuits. But surely the craftsmanship should. The Museum of Everything (founded in 2009) fills Hayward's nifty little project space with the work of sculptor Nek Chand. The tutti museum (that sprouts in all sorts of metropoli) very aptly blooms a bee’s breath from the Venice Biennale Giardini, in what for normal daily life (and that includes the Biennale) is a garden center. And maybe, just possibly likely maybe, the world is proving Deleuze and his capitalist schism inaccurate. The interviewer of Sophia Coppola on BBC Radio 4’s The Film Programme(July 4) kept prompting her into a dialectic about “fine things”. Bling needs not be tat, not rip-off, not kitsch. It is Design. Ah, now there’s the rub.

Remember the scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s where they go to Tiffany’s and all she has/can afford to be monogrammed is the ring prize from a Cracker Jack snack packet? The employee doesn’t bat a hair on his lashes- no token of love is too lowly to have Tiffany’s bestow its craft upon it. And it’s a point very pertinent nowadays to luxury brands. A month ago, Gucci’s CEO was quizzed on TV about how the brand and its bricks and mortar stores is surviving in the age of internet. Whatever one may think critically of Jeremy Deller’s representation of Britain at the Venice Biennale the ethos of the show appears to be the nature, decline and disappearance of craftsmanship and how that schism of what made Britain great manifests itself. It’s a Roman river running deep beneath the pavilion where one can sip English tea upon a terrace almost in reach of the Doge’s sea. Deller doesn’t make his own banners but does that matter? He employs a craftsman. Does it matter he uses the portrait drawings of prisoners rather than his own? That the prisoners appear to be oft times highly skilled amateurs? Austria’s pavilion (with the sleek robust lines of designer Josef Hoffmann) has Mathias Poledna's 3-minute creation of a Disney-like movie animation Imitation of Life that uses all the tradition techniques and crafts people even down to the orchestral recording of the score. And some may wink cynically at Italy’s pavilion hand in glove with commercial design (they’ve almost second guessed you with what first appears to be a street performer rolling around outside in designer garbage bags -actually Rubelli with Marya Kazoun). Russia goes the 'whole hog' by exposing 'shekels' from heaven raining upon the female only pavilion admittance below, while the men are allowed to join their male colleague dispensing the wealth upstairs.
Video HERE of Ragnar Kjartansson´s S.S. Hangover

In Vice versa 5 artists collaborate with Italian textile houses Bevilacqua, Fortuny and Rubelli- the latter's first year back since the 30's when it collaborated with artists such as Umberto Bellotto, Guido Cadorin, Vittorio Zecchin and Gio Ponti. Much fascinates too in Glasstress (collaborating with the Wallace Collection and London College of Fashion)- Facebook. Ron Arad’s interview

Macedonia's site is off Biennale grid in the streets of cheap one-star hotels. More craft with Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva (who lives and works in Brighton) using pure woven silk, silkworm cocoons, albino rat skins, curtains of steel sheet and, subject to permissions, live rats (didn't see any on my visit). Romania chooses memory with performers acting out tableaux vivants of artists' work in each Venice Biennale over the years. Against the Biennale, Spirit of Utopia at London's Whitechapel Gallery seems almost anachronistic in its anarchic ideas of wealth distribution e.g Time/Bank and Superflex. Better still, contemplate the stolen gelt “slave labour and a world order on the edge of collapse” so writes the BBC for their Wagner fest at this year’s Proms. Die Walkure with Bryn Terfel, Tannhäuser and much more. Or for the really wealthy and adventurous all aboard for Bayreuth as they stage the rarely heard early operas. “Children, do something new!” Wagner self-loathingly wrote to Liszt in 1852 about this stage of his career.

Cornelia Parker according to Frith Street Gallery “turns her attention to facets of the city streets that are usually overlooked, from the cracks in the pavement and accidental spills, to discarded pieces of wood, transforming them into evocative and highly charged images and objects.” If you like this check out Richard Wentworth’s sculpture and photography. Artifice of Paradise - Louise Thomas at Bischoff/Weiss: "Waterfalls, lazy rivers, and spas create an illusion of temporal tranquility upon backgrounds of modernist architecture sinking into Jurassic nostalgia. The paintings convey the cosmopolitan dream of escape mixed with the uncanny as they critique the mechanical structures of contemporary tourism, leisure, and entertainment industries."

One of the Biennale’s Romanian tableaux was Koons’ 1990 sex scene with La Cicciolina, porn star and his then wife. And one of the most provocative and interesting shows in recent memory about ‘what are fine things’ came from the unlikely candidate Koons. Or some might say the most obvious frontrunner. Frankfurt’s august Liebieghaus - 5,000 years of antiquities from Ancient Egypt to Neoclassicism- was juxtaposed in every room with Koons’ sculptures. With the result that you started asking yourself just what is great art? Just because it’s antique ain't necessarily mean it’s not kitsch? A re-release of Werner Herzog’s 1974 The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser may be an eye-opener to those who’ve never seen this classic. The German title is much more evocative and accurate: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (Everyman for himself and God against all). Nature/nurture: can one learn what are ‘fine things’? Watching Ruben Ostlund’s politically incorrect Play (UK released by Soda Pictures July 12) may make you lose that heart. And John Huth (who’s working on the Higgs Boson particle project)’s book The Lost Art of Finding the Way may give you hope. Psycho Nacirema, James Franco’s art installation (Pace Gallery) made with the Scottish video artist Douglas Gordon “ isn't supposed to be a homage” to Hitchcock’s film says Franco: “one man's imaginary life”. Director Nicolas Roeg’s book The World is Ever Changing is published by Faber on 17 July (the iPad edition July 16)

Food for thought as we change planetary gear…