Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/44746
Venice has always been a cultural crossroads and a place of trade. Now instead of silks, spices and sailors, at least for the duration of the Biennale, Venice is known for the mixture of artists, dealers, collectors, journalists, celebrities, royals and socialites who flock there to see art and to be seen. The Biennale is not a staid international art event anymore. It has become an arena in which many of the world's wealthy come together for a week to conspicuously display their powers of acquisition. The current show of collected works by Francois Pinault, on display in the exhibition "The World Belongs to You" at the Palazzo Grazzi, is a tour de force of financial prowess. The world may belong to you, but the art definitely belongs to Pinault! Roman Abramovich infuriated the mayor of Venice this year by mooring the largest of his three yachts directly opposite the gates of the Giardini, where most of the art is shown in the national Pavilions. This is definitely not legal—and it's also not legal to co-opt and barricade a large area onshore for one's own KGB-esque security patrol. Yet Abramovich prevailed, while the mayor fumed in vain. But, he did win the battle with Herb Allen, who once moored his mega- yacht off the Salute in a yacht so large it ruined the view from San Maggiore to Guidecca and blocked out enough of the sky to change the light of Venice! The mayor successfully banished Allen's mega-yacht to the industrial hinterlands. Still, the yacht has several speedboats, a helicopter and a personal submarine, so Allen can't have been too inconvenienced. The eclectic mixture of people in Venice makes for very colorful and decadent parties in the elegantly disintegrating Palazzos. Venice, traditionally, is not a very late town—until this year, however. Famed nightclub entrepreneur Amy Sacco has opened a brand new outpost of her legendary Bungalow 8. This is the hot place to head after the scene at the Bauer Hotel bar has peaked around midnight. At Sacco's club, Princess Charlotte of Monaco, Dasha Zhukova, Leonardo di Caprio, Naomi Campbell, Terence Koh, Miuccia Prada, Maurizio Cattelan, Larry Gagosian, Shala Monroque, Peter Brant Jr., Francesco Vezzoli and Courtney Love, just to name a few regulars, can be seen cavorting til the wee hours, drinking espresso martinis, nibbling on delicious ham and cheese toasts (and each other) and dancing with abandon as if there is no tomorrow. This is an easy illusion to maintain in a city so tied to the past, and so decadently beautiful.—Jessica Craig Martin 104 BAL HARBOUR super