Davide Caniatti

Anselm Kiefer was born in Germany at the end of the Second World War. Growing up among the ruins he developed his entire poetics from them, combining painting and sculpture in a decidedly unique way. Venice, at the same time, is the city of ruins par excellence: all it has to offer is its great past. It is therefore singular that for the 1600 years of the city Palazzo Ducale chose the German artist to talk about Venice.

When I speak of Damien Hirst to someone who does not know him, the first approximation I can formulate is “that one with the shark in formalin”. Reducing the career of one of the greatest living British artists to that is probably ungenerous, but the approximation often works. The shark immobilized inside the chemical bath has become an iconic image of contemporary art. I have always found the image in question to be extremely powerful.

In art history manuals it is often written how great artists have almost a sixth sense in interpreting and understanding the era in which they live better than all the others around them. There is a German term -Zeitgeist- which precisely means “spirit of the time” and knowing how to grasp it would be a supreme sign of the artist’s skill. If we were to find the spirit of our time, the things that best represent it, we could easily list the pandemic, the distance, the metaverse, the network, and the crisis.

“The Tabernacle” is one of those exhibitions that you meet a little by chance. Venice is probably the most beautiful city on the planet and has an almost endless list of things to see. There is here plenty of choice for art lovers, and running out of things to see is impossible. And if you are among the lucky ones who have been to see every single Bellini painting in the city, you should give me a good reason not to start over.

This blog is about photography, but not only. Photography is a passion that often does not talk about itself, but dialogues with the subject. It is, for example, our pursuit of interesting and new subjects that pushes us to travel. After observing some images on the web, I decided to visit Damien Hirst’s <a href=“https://galleriaborghese.beniculturali.it/en/exhibition/damien-hirst/"http://google.com")" target="_blank” rel=“noopener noreferrer”>“Archaeology Now”exhibition at the Borghese Gallery in Rome. Needless to say, I liked it a lot, and I would like to take this opportunity to tell my two readers why.