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What the Venice Biennale Reveals About the West’s Cultural Confidence

“In Minor Keys" tells us less about the state of contemporary art than it does about those who can shape culture and influence in an increasingly multipolar world.

Every two years, Venice holds up a mirror to the West, and every two years the reflection grows fainter. The 61st Biennale, which opened in May under the title “In Minor Keys,” performs the diagnosis with candor. It highlights present tensions while returning them in an accessible form. Fragility has become a house style and collapses curatorial themes; even anger is calibrated to the logistics of the international circuit. A piece tends to survive in proportion to how readily it converts into narrative, panel and content. However, the power of the curator has now displaced that of the artist, and the wall text has displaced the execution, concept, techniques, craft and form that flow from a creative imagination.

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There is also a structural observation here. The Venice Biennale has pulled off an almost Dadaist trick of turning the radical-chic aesthetics of past editions into a new orthodoxy. Antonio Gramsci’s belief was that durable power is rarely exercised through force. Instead, it facilitates the slow capture of cultural institutions and the conversion of a partisan worldview into common........

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