Venetian Books

To mark the opening of the Venice Art Biennale this week, I choose three artist’s books that deal with the city's artistic and cultural legacy. The Blind Merchant (1989-1991) by Roee Rosen focuses on the famous Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice (1596-1598), and opens it up to new angles that reflect on the times of its reading. Goethe in Venice, by the late Meir Agassi, is a cardboard concertina holding a collage of magazine photos, pen drawings, and texts. The hand-made piece refers apparently to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's two-year visit to the city, during which he wrote his famous ‘Venetian Epigrams׳. VENICE by Merav Shin Ben-Alon is a hybrid of an art catalog and a graphic novel, which tells the story of a young woman, an art student who is sexually assaulted while visiting the 1986 Venice Art Biennale.

17.04.2024