Is it significant that this tour of major periodic exhibitions, which for some has become a regular trip, is named the \u201cGrand Tour\u201d? What does this phenomenon born in the Enlightenment have in common with today\u2019s tours in the era of cultural globalization? Elitist snobbery and the exclusionary boys\u2019 club mentality of the \u201cinitiatory journey for gentlemen\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200aare these the most appropriate or desirable foundations for a periodic journey that allows us to stay abreast of what is happening on the global arts scene?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond the perilous exercise of anachronistic historical comparison, referencing this antiquated tradition allows us to pose fundamental ethical and aesthetic questions concerning the legitimacy of the kind of tourism that such biennial trips represent. Currently being considered in the art world are the ecological implications\u200a\u2014\u200athe difficulty of justifying the resources and pollution involved in an art experience enjoyed by the \u201chappy few.\u201d Other concerns include the problematic relations and inequities between North and South, East and West; between the economic elite and art workers; and the infinite and fundamental issue of privilege\u200a\u2014\u200athe privilege of both seeing and being seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In terms of their commonalities, there is no doubt around the question of elitism: the number of people regularly visiting only the most important of these exhibitions\u200a\u2014\u200athe Venice Biennale and documenta\u200a\u2014\u200amust be just as negligible, relative to the European population, as the number of grand tourists<\/em> in the eighteenth century (forgetting those in the rest of the world, who had little to no access to the Grand Tour, except for a few colonizers). Although mass tourism has to some degree democratized travel for many, despite numerous persisting exclusions and inequalities, the possibility of travelling with relative ease has little to do with the type of travel addressed in this essay. It is for reasons of capital\u200a\u2014\u200acultural as much financial\u200a\u2014\u200athat systematically visiting the Biennale and documenta (rather than coming across them \u201cby chance\u201d) remains the privilege of a tiny minority, undoubtedly much better educated, wealthier, and freer in their movements than the average citizen on the planet. A little like the tourists of old for whom such a trip was an opportunity to discover and validate the scholarly insights acquired during their studies,2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Chessex, \u201cGrand Tour.\u201d<\/span> one can assume that today\u2019s biennial enthusiasts are relatively well informed about art history and able to make meaningful connections between their prior knowledge and what they see onsite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, each of these contemporary art fairs has aspects that redeem it somewhat from the habitual accusation of elitism. Venice is not a destination for the elite: it is a centre for mass tourism\u200a\u2014\u200abeing able to go there is certainly still a privilege, but the city welcomes an extremely varied public. And although tourists rarely visit it solely for the Biennale, they might discover it by chance or at least come across contemporary art stemming from the exhibition, which has expanded beyond the confines of its traditional sites (at which payment is required). Kassel, for its part, is rarely visited outside of documenta (despite an impressive collection of ancient art), but it is not only cultivated and wealthy tourists who flock there every five years: the event attracts quite an eclectic public, including school groups and students from art schools from across Germany. In this sense, documenta has taken up the torch of the Grand Tour by educating youth through art\u200a\u2014\u200ain the eighteenth century they would have said \u201cthrough beauty\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200abut without its educational potential necessarily being limited to a tiny social class, especially given Kassel\u2019s mixed population, which includes large numbers of immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The more-than-problematic relationship between the original Grand Tour and the countries visited at first appears to have been reproduced and compounded in its current iteration. Without diminishing much worse atrocities committed by Europe on other continents, it\u2019s important to recognize that many Northern Europeans also had a truly colonialist rapport with their Mediterranean destinations, especially Italy\u200a\u2014\u200acultural contempt wasn\u2019t entirely absent. In the twenty-first century, it is less Italy and Germany that are considered countries to be conquered, useful, or even backward in some way, but more the countries\u200a\u2014\u200athe global South and its diasporas\u200a\u2014\u200awhere many more of the exhibiting artists now (fortunately) come from. Although today\u2019s grand tourists<\/em> are certainly less uniformly masculine, the majority are still white and living in Europe or North America. Hence, it\u2019s no coincidence that these two leading art exhibitions take place on the \u201cold continent,\u201d and that the spectacle they represent is primarily destined for Europeans. Even though major biennials now exist throughout the global South\u200a\u2014\u200ain Istanbul, S\u00e3o Paulo, and Dakar\u200a\u2014\u200aVenice and Kassel are still the best known, the most widely advertised, and the \u201cdefault\u201d not-to-be-missed destinations of choice among the arts milieu of the North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, if we shift our gaze to those who now have visibility, even though they may not be able to see on a larger scale, the changes seen in recent years are significant. The 2022 editions of documenta and the Venice Biennale were noticeably more inclusive of artists from regions that have until now been invisible, and the upcoming iteration of Venice in the summer of 2024 promises to follow suit. Whereas the Grand Tour of old promised a homogeneous, \u201cwhitewashed\u201d vision of art, defined by exclusions and the constant celebration of the Same\u200a\u2014\u200aessentially, \u201cclassical\u201d heritage and its perpetual reincarnations\u200a\u2014\u200atoday\u2019s tours at least aspire to be more open toward the Other, to the diverse, the different, the unknown, regardless of who undertakes them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The spectacle remains relatively unidirectional: as in past Grand Tours and in related scholarly disciplines such as anthropology, the same historical dynamics seem to prevail: the North still looks at the South more than the inverse, and it is still the North that holds the reins of knowledge production and mediation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, concerns about ecology, which lurk behind many a debate on tourism and biennial mania, seem new. The impact of the Grand Tour of the Enlightenment on the countries visited and the planet as a whole was negligible, whereas today, the devastation caused by tourism is palpable and real. Yet its benefits, especially in certain categories of tourism, are undeniable. Do we really want to live in a world where no one ventures beyond their immediate surroundings? In the grand scheme of things, biennial tourism might be among the types of travel whose advantages could be seen to outweigh the damages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, it involves a genuine encounter: with artists from all around the world through their art, not to mention the potential for meeting (or not meeting) real people, visitors, or locals. Second, from a purely quantitative perspective, by visiting one or two cities, it\u2019s possible to see works from the entire world, which could otherwise be seen only through multiple trips, involving significantly more pollution. This is explicitly the case at Venice, where the Giardini della Biennale (and to a lesser degree the other major venue, the Arsenal) with their national pavilions take on the guise of a Mini World\u200a-\u200astyle amusement park, but without the essentializing and caricatural aspects (with a few sad exceptions). Yet wherever international biennials take place, visitors have access to a taste of what is happening elsewhere in a condensed and easy-to-explore space. Visitors such as cultural workers, for example, can discover new works, discuss them back home, or invite artists to exhibit in new spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, time, like space, is also constricted at biennials. Having almost infinite amounts of it, time was not a great concern for eighteenth-century tourists: trips could last several years, and each destination could be explored at leisure (albeit often only once in their lifetimes). A visit to Venice or Kassel today, on the other hand, happens at a fast pace, which may seriously limit the \u201cgenuine encounter\u201d aspect mentioned above. A thirty-minute video? Forget it: there are hundreds of other works to be seen every day. A moment of deep contemplation observing a painting? Not enough time, and the frenzied atmosphere hardly inspires it. We accumulate experiences instead of living them. It\u2019s only later, helped by a catalogue, that we can perhaps digest the immense sum of things seen, heard, and read, or understand the direction of contemporary art and decide, for ourselves, who its principal protagonists may be. All this, following an itinerary already digested and regurgitated beforehand by curators, without any regard for what our avid yet weary gaze had seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond what these trips offer to people who undertake them, the Grand Tour and the biennials have something else in common: the fact that they\u2019re not simply an opportunity to see art (to \u201cconsume\u201d it, so to speak); both cultural constellations are also formidable drivers of artistic creation. Biennials often commission new works; Venice\u2019s national pavilions, for instance, are site-specific and publicly funded. The Grand Tour also gave impetus to creativity and leaves an important legacy: it was tourist demand for souvenirs, for example, that sparked the creation of vedute<\/em>, the views of Italian cities and landscapes (around Venice, especially) that constituted a new way of presenting urban or rural space and an innovative mode of cultural transfer. The best excuse for all great tours of the world could begin with the following idea: that art benefits just as much as the faithful enthusiasts who support it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A professor in the art history department at Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al since 2012, Itay Sapir is interested in the cultural and intellectual context of European visual arts going back to early modernity, particularly the relationships among aesthetic, philosophical, and scientific thought.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/111_DO_Sapir_d14_Marta_Minujin_The_Parthenon_of_Books_Friedrichsplatz_Roman_Maerz_CMYK-P.jpg\")
Marta Minuj\u00edn<\/strong>
The Parthenon of Books<\/em>, documenta 14, Friedrichsplatz, Kassel, 2017.
Photo: Roman M\u00e4rz, courtesy of the artist & Henrique Faria, New York & Buenos Aires<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"BGL\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/111_DO_Sapir_BGL_9883.jpg\")
Canadissimo,<\/em> installation views, Canada’s pavillon, 56st<\/sup> Venice Biennale, 2015.
Photos: Paolo Pellion di Persano, courtesy of the artists, Parisian Laundry, Montr\u00e9al & Diaz Contemporary, Toronto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"BGL\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/111_DO_Sapir_BGL_9861.jpg\")
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En exercice \u00e0 Venise<\/em>, performance views, 55st<\/sup> Venice Biennale, 2013.
Photos: Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Lavoie, courtesy of the artist & Galerie de l\u2019UQAM, Montr\u00e9al<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n