Worldschooling

Benvenuto and welcome to this blog post all about Venice and my favorite spots.

VENICE

I’ve been wanting to go to Venice for a while now and hearing about it from friends who had been there before only increased my eagerness. Now that I’ve been there I know. I love Venice because of its beautiful architecture and scenery, and incredible canals that weave throughout the whole city. I always thought Venice was beautiful based on all the paintings I saw, and now I know that it is. Its the perfect place for an artist to visit; there are are dozens of postcard worthy landscapes and old Venetian buildings that add a romantic touch to the city.

CROSSING THE CANAL

Venice is very different from everywhere else in the world because instead of having buses, cars, or trains to get to places, they have ferries and ferry stations. When we arrived at the airport in Venice, we got on a water bus to be transported to the location where we were staying.

Because Venice is built on the water, there are only two ways of transportation. By boat, or by foot. For the few days we had in Venice, we walked almost everywhere. But twice, instead of walking a little ways to cross the bridge when we were in a hurry to get somewhere (because there are bridges everywhere), we ended up paying 4 euro to cross the canal by gondola. The trip across only took about a minute, as it was just like crossing the street except you had to hop in a boat in order to do so. By going on a gondola to cross the canal, we saved 20 minutes that we would have used walking.

Gondolas are what Venetians call the long canoes where the people rowing, which in Venice are called gondoliers, stand up on the back of the boat with a long oar in hand. Many gondoliers decorate their gondolas with fancy tasseled couches and chairs colors gold and red which the passengers sit on. A lot of them also wear similar clothing if they are part of the same business. For example, we saw many of them wearing red and white striped t-shirts. Some tourists pay high prices to go on gondola rides through the canals, but we never thought of doing that because of the expense and it was just too touristy.

THE RIALTO BRIDGE

There is a famous bridge in Venice that is always crowded with tourists trying to catch a view of the Grand Canal. From the Rialto bridge you can see all the beautifully colored Venetian buildings with their intricate arches and windows. You can see all the hotels with names such as Hotel Marconi, and restaurants covered by red colored tents to keep dry from the rain and block the sun. The view from the Rialto bridge is very well known and there have been many paintings made of it. Speaking of which, currently I am making a drawing of the Grand Canal. See a sneak peak at what it looks like so far down below*.

THE BIENNALE

Venice has been known, (for the past 123 years) for its famous arts festival, The Biennale, where artists from all over the world enter world changing (and probably mind changing) art pieces. The Biennale is held at two main locations: The Arsenal, and the Giardini.

The Biennale arts festival in nothing like you’ve ever seen before. The art exhibits and pieces can take up a large quantity of space, and consist of many different forms of art. Many exhibits include installations and movies made to show some type of theory or form of thinking.

When we visited the Biennale, we went to the Arsenal and the Giardini. Every year, there is a theme that all of the artists incorporate in their art. The theme of this years Biennale was, “May you live in Interesting times”. In my opinion, the theme should have been May you live in Disturbing times, because most of the exhibits had a very ominous or unsettling feeling which really set the mood for the whole festival. A lot of them consisted of angry zombie-like animated people that were produced on projectors, and robots, photographs, movies, or models of mannequins that looked or seemed somewhat human-like. At first look, the mannequins in some of the photographs looked scarily human-like, but when you looked more closely, you could see that they were just models of humans. Many of the movies were based all about global warming which was definitely a reoccurring theme displayed in the artists work.

Not every art piece was like that though. One series of rooms displayed many geometric and organic sculptures and some of them even moved. In another room, there was a large sculpture of a human in a rocking chair made out of clothes. There was also a really cool animated movie of a sandwich making itself.

One of my most favorite exhibits was the giant robot programmed to clean up paint.The robot in that exhibit looked sort of like a giant shovel that was attempting to wipe up all the puddles of paint while doing programmed dance moves, but failing to succeed because all the paint kept on expanding into larger puddles. It was supposed to represent how people do endless hard work and the work never stops.

Another one of my favorite exhibits was the Italian Pavilion. We waited in a long line for about an hour because they only let in less than 10 people at a time to enter the exhibit. We were asked to remove our shoes and then we walked on a plastic casing that had water underneath (sort of like a waterbed). I think that the artist was trying to show how the sea levels are rising, which will eventually flood Venice.

Link to the Biennale web site: https://www.labiennale.org/en

THE PEGGY GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM IN VENICE

Peggy Guggenheim was an art collector of modern art who grew up in New York City during the early 1900s. In 1912 when Peggy was only 14, her father died as a passenger on the Titanic. Peggy inherited a fair amount of money and supported the careers of many modern artists. After World War II, Peggy bought a mansion in Venice facing the water to display her art collection and lived there until she died in 1979 at the age of 81. The Peggy Guggenheim museum is held at Peggy’s former home. My mom recommends Peggy’s memoir, Confessions of an Art Addict.

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• Lily🍦