19 April, Venice

The fayre opens

19 — Wander past the Arsenale where there’s a big queue and a flurry of people handing out books. Make no move to join it, look away even, embarrassed — queuing for art — and am accosted by a man with book, brochure etc. I feel a little grumpy, I’m not sure why exactly. Standing on a bridge (do all the little bridges have names?) I take a picture of the back of some church, its statues held up with iron bars and hear my name. Gv. stands carrying her bag, another Georgian beside her. I’d like to lie and pretend not to have known she was in the city, but I did, and had planned to see her that evening. Gv. is an artist and a curator. I had met her in Tblisi before the pandemic, where she’d hosted a meal/artwork of mine in one of her galleries, Patara, beneath an underpass near Vacki Park. I ran to her like a puppy.

“We are trying to find our flat,” frustrated. When we find it the key won’t work, so I try and it does, and I am triumphant. We go to Do Spade where we have smalls drinks, realising we’d just missed each other in Barcelona, where she was to interview an artist. “The Georgian arts TV closed down, so I realised I had to make do something to replace it.” Gv. gives me so much hope, but daunts me too — I know no one else with so much energy, who so quickly throws herself into a project. She’s very matter of fact — if Georgia doesn’t have it, she’ll make it.

Walking home I buy wild aparagus and baccala — the asparagus I blanche then toss in butter. It’s uncomfortable to eat, a touch spiky.

*

No queue now, Lo and I wander into the Arsenale, a touch tipsy from lunch wine. We show our ticket and, then an ID, then our ticket again to be scanned. Here is survelience. Inside security guards with holstered pistols walk in the bored way security guards do, occasionally looking at a the art, mostly with well-placed scepticism, occasionally wryly, sometimes moved. I like to watch security guards in galleries, how they look at the art which is both charge and the reason for pretty alienating labour.

A few years ago I’d pick up shifts at London museums while working for an agency. The worst places to work were the galleries where they didn’t rotate you, where you had to stand, where you couldn’t look at a book let-alone your phone. Even with art I liked there was no great learning nor appreciation, simply a sort-of hateful blurring, a dislocation, everything becoming muddy. What shocked me most was that I became a jobsworth, telling people off for taking photos or standing too close, simply to have something to do or to be acknowledged. To be loathed was better than to be ignored. When I was alone I would often touch the paintings, though.

The Arsenale part of the Milk of Dreams — the other bit’s in the Giardini — is in a long building, room after room in the same direction, which gives the feeling of walking through a large exhibit in an amusement park, of artificialness. Yes there was some art I liked: Simone Leigh’s paintings and sculptures; the big comfy tail in Mariana Simmet’s viewing room; Delcy Morelos Earthly Paradise, an earthen maze enriched with cinnamon, cloves, cocoa, cassava, tobacco, copaiba, bicarb and charcoal. We stood there smelling over and over, it was like being inside a tea caddy. And I liked P.’s piece — the peace of it, its familiarity, entirely of itself and alive, the home-smell of damp sheep. But mostly I felt bored, my head aching a little. Overewhelmed. Like an alien.

Meet P. and C. outside — eating salad. “Would have been great if this café was open for install.” We congratulate them, nuzzle the puppy, Lo’ says she’d just like to stay with her sculptures and butterflies. Say goodbye when P. is taken off to an interview. I watch a man on the phone near-shouting “it’s a conflict between Europe and barbarians! All Russia wants is to dominate. What they are doing in Ukraine…”

*

At the Giardini the Russian Pavilion is empty. A lone guard stands outside. No one seems to look at it.

I feel the same — overwhelmed, mind dulled. I feel a soft peace in the Hungarian pavilion, which has lovely ceramic sculptures and like/hate the alien centaur murder in the Danish pavilion. I remember nothing else aside from the beauty of the canal cutting the garden in two, making it much more of an amusement park, which then makes the canal seem fake. Which is funny because, being a canal, its unnatural so artificial, yes, but maybe not a fake in the way a folly is? Am very moved by Simone Leigh’s overhaul of the American pavilion — wooden pillars and a straw roof over a colonial building.

*

Everyone is running late for dinner, which matters when reservations are worth so much. Tonight’s was given to S. and I. by a friend, is for eight people. Lo’ and I trot as I look at my phone. When we get there S. and I. are sitting at opposite ends of the table, looking as if they are pointedly showing dislike for one another. Gv. comes next, with Elena. Conversation turns to The War — everyone calls Russia’s invasion The War. Gv. says that westerners cannot understand it, the feeling of unsteadiness when they have no experience of past war. So much has been dredged up from her childhood, from Russia’s machinations in Georgia. We listen, impotent, unable to understand. The conversation turns to art.

The waiter goes through the whole menu in soft English, describing every dish. They do not have menus in English, but do — charmingly — have a little translation booklet. Eat a reasonable duck ragu, though the restaurant’s greatest merit is that they cook vegetables with something approaching respect.

*

Outside Bar Comé I ask a woman sitting alone beside two tables if we could sit at one. “Sorry babe, no” she says. I assume her friends are coming. All evening she sits by her tables, and yes, people place their drinks on them but don’t sit. I loathe her. Then again, when the queue to the bar gets very long I simply walk to the front. We drink grappa and I. says she’s tipsy, I tell her I’ve hollow legs. “What?!” It is nice to be clutching drinks in a Venitian square, funny to be surrounded by Londoners. I talk to a woman whose just begun at the Caurtauld, studying under my old friend T.. Make a note to look him up back in London.