Blessing, in Disguise
Since the things one misses at the Venice Biennale can be as valid a measure as the things one sees, let’s start with an official Maori blessing of the New Zealand Pavilion, complete with prayers and songs and whatnot. This had a lot going for it. Such as, when else is one going to see such a thing? Also, what better way to kick things off than to witness a blessing ceremony, and maybe even be blessed by proxy, thereby perhaps eschewing some of those inconvenient things that happen in Venice, like getting lost and not finding off-site pavilions. And yet, the decision to dash over to the Maoris’ thing was complicated by the fact that the U.S. Pavilion had arranged for a couple of water taxis to shuttle journalists from one off-site Bruce Nauman exhibition to another — plus the U.S. Pavilion was in fact a tripartite affair including two off-site locations in addition to the standard pavilion in the Giardini — and so there was some Venice-specific calculus to be done. On the one hand, without the boats, one might get lost. On the other, the Maoris would do their thing just the one time; Nauman’s pavilions would be open for another six months. But still.

“Get Out of My Mind! Get Out of This Room!”
It would have been insulting and masochistic to watch the Maoris with a guilt-induced medley of grating Nauman sound pieces rattling around in one’s head, from the crazy-making “Think! Think!” to that low voice seething with anger and a tremolo of schizophrenia that says, “Get out of my mind! Get out of this room!”

It was a good idea to go with the Nauman pavilions, in part because so many people don’t make it to these off-site things, and that’s where Nauman’s two new sound pieces, Days and Giorni, were, in addition to those classics. And there were few people there that day, the better to experience them, and — flash-forward — Nauman won the Golden Lion for best pavilion!

Nauman is arguably the towering art figure of the past, say, 40 years. And the installations of his pieces were brilliant, despite complaints that the “official” Giardini pavilion had only older work. While one must take an artist’s dealer’s comments with a grain of salt, it was tough not to be right there with Angela Westwater of Sperone Westwater Gallery when, speaking about seeing the exhibitions for the first time, she admitted, “I cried! I don’t cry easily.”

Day Tripping
So, Days/Giorni. Having the days of the week incanted out of order was particularly poignant during the Biennale’s opening days when, by a certain point, something uniquely Venicey takes hold. The hypnotically lapping waves? The incantatory manner in which the vaporetto drivers announce “San Marco, Lido”? The labyrinths of alleyways? All those glasses of prosecco? Suddenly, you’re no longer sure what day of the week it is, what order they’re even supposed to be in, or whether any of that matters.

All Art Aspires to the Condition of François Pinault
It was a passel of press at Pinault’s new Punta della Dogana digs — camera crews, multilingual translators, the spectacle of Pinault lui-même, making his way through the crowd, flanked by bodyguards, to a press conference where the mayor of Venice speechified to the effect that the collector is an honorary citizen of the city. It’s questionable whether one has to add to the gallons of ink already spilled in high praise of the new Punta della Dogana. Succinctly, it’s stupendous, and that’s one part architect Tadao Ando; one part the collection itself, which goes from strength to strength to strength; and one part clever curating by Alison Gingeras and Francesco Bonami. Check out smart pairings of Robert Gober and Lee Lozano, and Paul McCarthy and Piotr Uklanski; the placement of one of Jeff Koons’s Cicciolina-era busts in front of a stupendous view of the Grand Canal; and the — and it’s not a stretch to say it — magisterial first room, where a monumental Richard Prince joke painting is positioned directly across from Maurizio Cattelan’s decidedly jokey taxidermic horse plunged neck-deep in the wall. But perhaps the greatest praise for Pinault came from a giant banner suspended from a palazzo across the canal, which read, in tall red letters, “PLEASE, FRANÇOIS PINAULT, BUY MY WORK.”