Too bad for that which is in fact a duty

The Pinault collection trash art is exposed in an exceptional setting.

OF OUR SPECIAL ENVOY TO VENICE.

These 5,000 metres square there were chatting around the globe. François Pinault opened the week last in a place emblematic of Venice, just next to the famous church della Salute, to Saint Mark's square, the new place of exhibition: the tip of the customs. It is now this triangle dated 1675 building which is the figurehead of the collection. At its end throne, as previously already at Palazzo Grassi, next to the Italian flag, the breton flag, symbol of the origins of the former lumberman. The Japanese Tadao Ando signed the architecture of the place, which required 300,000 hours of rehabilitation after 30 years of abandonment. The result is remarkable. Emerges from the site a feeling of harmony which plays with the lumber, the raw stones of some walls, concrete qualified by "marble of the 20th century" Ando and works.

However, it cannot say that exposed all, Mapping the Studio, breathing serenity. François Pinault, French honcho known to appreciate abstract painting, white American Agnès Martin materials, scribbled on Cy Twombly thick pasta, entries here shows a different art, singularly trash. There is much talk of violence, sex and death, as is the case more generally in the international artistic landscape.

The generations of Cattelan

Thus, exhibit visible at the edge of the Customs is a giant curtain transparent, sometimes red, sometimes white plastic beads. Installation, called "Blood", is signed to the American Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It symbolizes the AIDS, a disease which the artist died in 1996, forty-nine years. Enter the Museum, to push the curtain of the disease.

Above the porch has been hung, in height, a piece that can easily miss. It is the work of one of the most talented American Negritude cantors, David Hammons. He has imagined, as often, a hybrid object, fruit of the popular culture of Harlem and that of the dominant white. It is a basket of basket decorated and Artic crystal chandeliers topped with candles. A "ready made" version Black Power. The route ends while also striking manner by a set of sculptures of the troublemaker of the Italian contemporary art, the provocateur Maurizio Cattelan. He then signed a masterful work, certainly the best of the Museum, "All". Nine sculptures in Carrara marble which repeat the principle of the effigy of the middle ages. Except that here, it is not deceased Kings but anonymous figures, certainly victims of the Mafia, all covered with a sheet of white stone.

Christ, sex and Picasso

Several parts of the Dogana make reference to the history of art. Marlene Dumas, South African who lives in Amsterdam, is known for his paintings of expressionist style. Here, we see two rectangular works that are specifically reference to the "dead Christ", Holbein, always exposed to the Basel Kunstmuseum. It's a Christ seen in profile, as lying in his coffin. Marlene Dumas restates the principle, but with "Mr. and Mrs.", a man and a woman in their coffin. A little further, as to avenge Picasso who had appointed a portrait of his mistress Dora Maar, "Weeping woman" she painted: "the woman who had seen Picasso cry."

The Puritans will be shocked by the installation of Paul McCarthy who staged a series of characters style Grand Guignol, very resembling a George Bush alcoholic engaged in sexual activities between them. Sex, specifically male gender, there are everywhere in the now forgotten American Lee Lozano or on the walls covered with wallpaper of Robert Gober. Morality There is not. The writer Max Jacob said: "art is a game." Too bad for that which is in fact a duty.

It should be noted that the tip of the customs did not strong in some stars of the art market. Jeff Koons has a discrete presence. Damien Hirst, it is altogether absent from the two places. Because the exhibition continues at the Palazzo Grassi. But that, in the Palace of the 18th century, hooking up does not support comparison with customs. Several works are presented in a very "Deco" spirit Contemporary art is in the close.