Day 16 Venice
Great breakfast again and this time felt better about myself by
sticking to fresh fruit and yoghurt. By 9.30 we were out and about, armed with
the map on the iPad. We crossed the Academia bridge to get to the other side of
the Grand Canal. I’d say there are at least a hundred little exhibitions in
Venice on any given day. Even before we got to the Guggenheim we stumbled upon
a huge exhibition of antique musical instruments. There is a huge hall and an
open door and in you go, no worries, no charge. There was a huge range with
some several hundreds of years old. There was a workshop where damaged
instruments were beibg dismantled and repaired.
I had no idea where we were going. I say I’d like to go
somewhere and Johnny navigates us there. The Guggenheim is an absolute MUST
see. Peggy bought a two story villa on the Grand Canal and late in life set
about making it a home where she could live in gallery surrounds with her
eccentric and enormous collection of often emerging artists. In year 12 Art I
had heard of these names, names, names but here was the actual work and I was
inches from it...Brancusi, Klee Calder, Picasso, Pollock, Modigliani....on and
on and on. I could just imagine her, climbing out of bed, wrapping herself in a
silk robe and having a morning coffee on the terrace facing the Grand Canal and
trying to remember which sycophantic reprobate was still sleeping in her bed upstairs. As we stood on her terrace a racing team of gondoliers came sweeping by. Maybe Italy is going to swap from soccer to gondolier racing now that they have been eliminated from the wold cup contest.We were lucky to catch a great talk in the garden, by an earnest American art
student on Peggy herself. She was a sad mad soul. Her ashes are scattered in
her Venice garden next to the burial place of her 14 terriers (her “babies”). Old Peggy had a good eye for
both art and property. This visit to the Gugg really was a holiday highlight.
As we wandered off we peeked into loads of little galleries that abound in this
area. One was woodcarving workshop where
the artist had sculpted the wood to look like all types of material (shoes,
underpants… you name it).
Who buys this stuff?
We planned to go to Santa Maria Della Salute to get a view of St
Marks and the Doge’s
Palace from the other side of the canal where the island tapers to a point. Again
the route was dotted with exhibitions but the day was too sunny and beautiful
to spend too much time indoors. We followed the sea wall and turned around at
the end to follow the path back into the throng. We found a nice square with
seating in a piazza that housed the Swiss consulate and lunched on focaccia and
filled pita. The biggest seagull in the world kept watch for ant crumbs that
fell but we were too hungry to leave anything. Next to the little canal that
ran alongside was a busker playing his accordion. We thought he well deserved
the euro we gave him.
After lunch we rediscovered our interest in culture and popped
into an alarming glass and human bone exhibition by Jan Fabri. Fabri had an
obsession with death and skeletons. Very wierd. Very disturbing. Through a maze
of streets we walked on to the market that we could see out of the windows of
the D’Oro gallery yesterday. By the time we arrived, both the fish and fruit
market had packed up but the market smells lingered as the staff began to hose
things down. Munching on a bag of pistachios we bought from a fruiterer just as
he was closing, we made our way back to the hotel for a rest before a final
turn around St Marks’s Square. On the way back to the hotel we found more
creative uses for vaporettos... builder’s skip...mobile fruit shop. portable pumping
station, etc.
