I am always interested in the human quality of art. When the evidence of an authentic human presence is there, my interior bells go off. I often say that I suffer from Stendahl Syndrome--you know, the 19th century disease that causes one to faint when undergoing intense aesthetic experience. Those who know me know I am not faint of heart, yet my reaction to works of art is often powerfully physical as well as intellectual. I have had this experience a few times this summer, but it has also failed to happen in some places where, arguably, it should have. 

For example, rather than swooning at Document XII, I merely felt insulted. The exhibition seems to have been curated on the condescending premise that the audience is hopelessly dull and won’t be able to make connections among works unless the curators spell them out by placing related works next to one another. The result was so poorly presented as to appear amateurish. 

The Venice Biennale was far more satisfying, though it prompted some reservations. While I acknowledge the greatness and importance of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, the artist chosen for the American Pavilion, I do think it is preferable for the country to be represented by a living artist. On the other hand, in this time of political unhappiness towards Americans and all things Bush, it was a brilliant idea to present an artist who died 10 years ago of AIDS and whose work is about the fragility of life. (I overheard some young Italian curators say they wanted to take all the candy that makes up Gonzalez-Torres's work out of the American pavilion to make new works of art with it around the Giardini--a delightful idea.) 

Another work at the Biennale produced a bit of that Stendahl reaction in me. The posthumous tribute to the Venetian artist Emilio Vedova (1919-2006) consisted of a single major work of his at the center of the Venetian Pavilion. This circular, painted sculpture marries painting and the third dimension with a powerful physical thrust into the space. Surrounded by this work, and in conversation with it, were monumental black ink drawings by Vedova’s longtime friend German artist George Baselitz. This was a touching tribute to an artist whose work as truly undervalued in his lifetime made all the more powerful by the assertion of Baselitz’s personal and artistic relationship to the artist. 

The work at Skulptur Projekte 07 in Münster that made the deepest imprint on me was Susan Philipsz’s sound installation under twin bridges across the Aasee, an artificial lake in one of the city’s parks. She sang “Barcarolle” from Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, her double-tracked, recorded voice going back and forth between the shores of the river. She sings the story of Giulietta, whose spell men cannot resist but makes them unable to see their own reflections. No one can recognize the men, and they cannot see themselves: a very human predicament indeed.