exhibit: Water People (Venice and Barcelona)

Water People
Venice and Barcelona could accept impurity and flux better than most 
places—and were all the richer for it.
....
The curator of the show, Stefano Carboni, emphasizes the 
“chameleon-like” pragmatism of the Venetians, who struggled to maintain 
their markets and connections through the horrific religious wars of the 
period. The Venetians were wily, of two minds—which, in today’s context, 
sounds wonderful. Even if they didn’t always say so, the Venetians 
tended to prefer interaction to war, conversation to silence, business 
to religion, and compromise to certainty. The art in this show is full 
of assimilations and seepings between cultures. It was in their 
interest, and also the world’s, to maintain this perspective. The show’s 
organizers highlight a marvelous print of an annual Venetian spectacle 
known as Il Volo del Turco, in which, according to the catalogue, a 
Turkish tightrope walker ascended from a floating dock offshore “to the 
belfry of San Marco’s bell tower on a rope; then he descended, turning 
somersaults, on a different rope into the second-floor gallery of the 
Palazzo Ducale, landing at the doge’s feet.” The spectacle, while 
steeped in Venetian ambivalence about the Turks, suggested that the 
tightrope between cultures (and to heaven above) could be brilliantly 
negotiated.

cont'd....
http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/29983/