A BROKEN GAZE

Today was Sunday. I woke up at 7:30, put on the dress clothes that I brought from home for occasions like the opera or fancy parties (hopeful on the parties), then walked down to breakfast at 8. Little did I know, I was both late and early for two of my Sunday plans. Breakfast I was early for. Down in the cafeteria, or "mensa," the mensa lady shooed me back out the door: "The hour has changed!" she told me, "It is only 7 now." I disconcertedly retraced my steps up to my room, dazed and a little disappointed because I was hungry, and, with determination to prove the mensa lady wrong, I rechecked the time on my cell-phone, which had definitely woken me at 7:30. My Italian cell-phone/alarm clock had not picked up on any time change; it was clearly 8. The world felt a little weird as I stood there rereading the time, wondering what I had done wrong or if I had heard the mensa lady, or mensatista(?), incorrectly. Knowing I was not going to get breakfast until the mensa lady wanted to give it to me, I sat down and checked my computer in the dark (Caylen my roommate did not have plans this early in the morning). My computer said it; we had gained an hour and it was only 7 o'clock. Annoyed to discover that I could have slept longer, I waited half an hour for breakfast to open, then walked back down to la mensa and ate until it was finally time to catch the 8:20 vaporetto to Venice. Eerily, Maria, Lizzie, and Dane were not at the vaporetto stop. The quiet vaporetto ride over felt slightly strange. I began to wonder whether my group had decided not to go with me; more importantly, I hoped I would be able to find the morning mass alone. When I eventually walked into Saint Marc's basilica and found Maria, Lizzie, and Dane sitting in a row of folding chairs across the warped mosaic floor at the end of the 8 o'clock mass, I realized that they still thought 7 was 8. I was late, in a way, to my group mass, because I was the only one who had happened to run into the time change.

A time change. For some reason I had not imagined Europe as having time changes. If you think about the romantic "gaze," I suppose you could say that I had assumed a sort of romantic timelessness about Europe and that I had been unintentionally gazing at its plentiful historical markers as signs of its constancy or even vacancy of tempo. Foolish, I know. It isn't as if I was aware of myself gazing at things this way, but when I felt surprised to wake up with an extra hour, I was surprised not only because I ended up sitting through the 9 o'clock mass alone after Maria, Lizzie, and Dane had gone, but also because the effect of the change had finally upset my hidden appreciation for the undisturbed, persistent age of Europe that actually does not exist. It is obvious to me now that Europe's time has been "interrupted" by modernity, even so directly as the very rewinding or speeding up of time itself. Today was the day it hit me that the new is equal to the old here, and even in places where the old is buried beneath itself, such as in Venice, the new is still equally as deep. As tourists, I think we often forget this in our search for the gaze (for definition sake, the "gaze" is a term used by John Urry in one of my class readings; it is the act of a tourist looking at something and seeing what may not be there; Urry says: "It is... gaze which gives a particular heightening to other elements of (an) experience, particularly to the sensual"). Tourism is almost foolish in its use of this gaze effect to entertain. We hope to find a place that has qualities we find exceptionally different or desirable, but it is often in our heads. The everyday tourist's experience is largely the imagination running wild in the reality of scenery. For one thing, we look upon a place rather than touch it; we travel in safety, we gaze. As travelers we are moving through, not stopping to be affected, and our gazes are mostly set in our imaginations simply because we do not interact with these places. Needless to say, this gaze is present in Venice, just as it was when some of my gaze crumbled earlier today. The strange circumstance of the tourist's gaze in Venice is its dominance, though; more people in the city think the city old than new. In various ways, gazes such as mine own this city, controlling its economy by giving or withdrawing tourism, controlling its appearance by instructing Venice through economical pressures, and controlling the culture by overrunning its people spatially and commercially. Where does this put the Venetian resident? And, as gazes are broken, what or who is the Venice revealed?

After a long and beautiful service in Saint Marc's basilica, full of magnificent songs and all in Italian, I turned and walked out into Piazza San Marco like a "true" Venetian. I had not been inside the basilica just to adore its beauty, not to say I didn't do that while in there, but I had been there to worship, to use it for the purpose it was built to serve (which includes adoring its beauty, ironically). I had stood, I had sat down, I had understood some of the sermon because I know a little Italian and I know the general purpose of sermons, and I had even prayed, something I have not done in a while (at least not since sleeping in that haunted-I-swear guest room in my new house in Cleveland). In the midst of it, too, I had actively performed a "gaze" upon myself to try and put a "Venetian" where I really saw me attempting to understand an Italian, Catholic mass. I then realized that unlike the everyday tourist I had dropped my gaze. With the new respect for the present in Europe that the time change had invoked in me, I was engaged in the present, and when I walked out of the basilica afterwards, I walked out without a gaze. The Piazza seemed alive to me, even while stifled by tourists. I noticed the people who rely on the Piazza as a structural rather than ornamental feature in their lives: the souvenir vendors, the waiters at the cafes, the musicians, the tour guides, the artists, the sweepers, and any other Piazza regulars. Life is survival, and these people bring the closest form of that to this touristic territory.

Walking back to the S. Zaccaria vaporetto stop and ignoring a painfully tight right leather shoe, I realized that I had 30 minutes until the ride back to San Servolo and decided to follow the lagoon east to find out what was happening up and down and between the bridges lining the front of the city. Gaze-less, so the speak, I was simply interested in what people were doing at the moment, why there was a path blocked off and guarded all the way down the front of Venice. Following the ramps that traversed the bridges parallel to the lagoon, I finally came to a finish line where a scattered number of people sat in temporary, metal stands watching runners and bikers on a giant screen making their way from Stra, a town 25 km west of Venice. It was the finish line of the "Venice Marathon," an annual event in which athletes from around the world compete for a small cash prize and, I am sure, simply to end up in Venice. People were watching the race on the giant screen across from the stands because none of the competitors had made their way to Venice yet, but people were already waiting for their arrival. A man on a loud speaker was commentating on the progress of the race. The man's amplified voice was deafening yet as the only sign of true excitement around this early in the race it was a fitting tribute to the excitement to come and the current exertion of the runners. By this point in my walk, my right foot was killing me, so I waddled over to the stands and sat down to watch, grabbing a free Yakult sample on my way over. Yakult is yummy stuff. It's a sort of yogurt drink with a sharp strawberry flavor that you can drink on the go, almost like pleasant tasting Slim-Fast. Unfortunately, I had to catch the vaporetto before the runners arrived, although once on the boat I did get to see some recumbent cyclists, the ones that lay against the ground, roll in over the bridges. When I returned to the city after lunch, though, I saw hundreds of runners following a path over from the mainland, along the outside of Venice proper, and across the Grand Canal to the finish line. Police officers, or "polizie," stood along the route ushering regular pedestrians across the running path, and I crossed it, taking a brief look in both directions, feeling like I was really partaking in the commotion. As I watched person after person slowly jog along the pathway, cheered on and clapped for by people outside the ropes, I felt a lot of respect for the self discipline of the runners. A long time ago running long distances was sometimes a necessity, and was, as Foucault might agree, more of a "panoptic" activity in which endurance was practiced because society needed it and might or might not have rebuked failure, but today people usually run for their own reasons and enjoyment. It's astounding to realize how strong a human has to be to complete a marathon. I, for one, can hardly run around the tiny island of San Servolo without stopping to gasp desperately for air, and even walking 25 km without a break would probably kill me. You can read more about Venice's marathon here. Some of the runners managed to average about 5.5-6 mph throughout the race, and, let me tell you, that is amazing.

Despite the impressiveness of the marathon itself, the most influential aspect of the Venice Marathon for me was its identity as an example of Venice in the present. It isn't hard to find these examples, but this one is good because it was an unavoidable concentration on the now, one that even cut across the paths of tourists. Of course, the marathon itself is a certain revival of history, but even as a tradition and a remembrance of Pheidippides, it created a "present" in Venice that detracted from the usual focus upon Venice's old buildings and canals. The "real" Venetians made a sort of invasive appearance in their gaze-owned city. Out in the open, not even concealed in shops or in the mob of the crowds, the people that live here became spectators of and even participants in a public example of the "present" in Venice. Even in a city dependent on touristic gazes, such an event of the present rather than the past is important because the "real" or "present" side of Venice is a truly vital side of the city. Tourists rarely glimpse this side, or rather they do not realize that they see it, yet without the people who make Venice home, who rely on the city as a city rather than an amusement park and who see its present, the "gazers" would have nothing to gaze upon but ruins. This is not to say that the touristic side is not equally important. Do not forget that Venice is largely supported by tourism. Just like the past and the present are equal in this city, so are the groups of people divided between them. Without its “present” Venice would die, and without its "past" it would crumble. When you are here as a tourist for a long period of time, it is fascinating to note that you cross a line between these sides. Once you begin to see the truths of the present, such as the use of time changes, you begin to loose your touristic gaze (if you had one to begin with that is) and you change positions. After today, I feel I have moved to a more central location between the two sides of the city. I feel more connected to the place I am living now and I know that I am slightly less of a tourist because I am getting the chance to see things beyond my imagination. In celebration of this development, I purchased an Italia sweatshirt (that I absolutely love because it is awesome!) for 13 € on La Strada Nuova... Well, no, it was not actually a celebration, I just wanted it, because I'm a crazy awesome tourist. But, I have to say, I would not have wanted this sweatshirt if I hadn't come to associate myself with modern Italy in some way. "I have spent time in Italy," it says about me, and in the modernity of its fashion it elaborates "and I like what Italy has to offer in the present." I think it's super. A lot of Italians buy and wear sweatshirts like this, so, I have to add, "classic" tourists would probably say that it must be the "real" Italy. Yes, it certainly is; it is a mix between both sides of Italy, particularly Venice, especially when it is worn by a transforming "gazer" like me.


If you leave comments, don’t forget to say that I look awesome in this picture!

FORMAL ESSAY: THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

.
Oddly enough, the subject of The Adoration of the Magi, painted by Pieter Bruegel the younger in the early 1600’s, is warmth. What may make this surprising is that the first element your eyes may notice as you read the painting is the snow, white and quietly ominous on the rooftops and behind the crowd of peasants moving through the square. Furthermore, by the presence of the snow, you may be quick to recognize the harsh winter at work upon the town. People hunch against the nippy air, wrapped in blankets, hats, and coats, and the village fights the world for its very survival by continuing to perform the necessities of life, even when life is difficult. Yet, although the winter is a strong focus in Bruegel’s scene, warmth is the painting’s main subject. As Dante Alighiere asserts in “Critical Theory Since Plato”: “writings can be understood and ought to be expounded chiefly in four senses… literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogic(al).” In such an array of senses paintings can also be understood if observed critically, and by digging this way into The Adoration of the Magi I see many meanings that can be categorized under the word warmth. From the warmth of the painting's colors to comments on the warmth of simple religious worship, warmth in the face of winter is keenly examined in this wood panel landscape.

As with many things, the opposite natures of warmth and winter make their individual qualities more apparent in the company of the other. In The Adoration of the Magi, Bruegel uses this technique of contrast to set a stage for his study of warmth in a village of the 15th century. To begin with, the colors stand out. Whites and blues interspersed with the warm hues of red brick and the dark browns of trees and of the villagers' clothing play on the eye through contrast to make the viewer feel both of the extreme undercurrents of the scene almost without studying the contents of the painting. With a closer look, warmth in contrast with and due in part to the snow can be felt in the community of villagers struggling together through their frigid environment, which Dante might consider the "literal" sense of the painting. Behind the crumbling stone wall to the left center of the scene, people huddle around a fire to keep warm, and in the streets they walk in twos and threes leading horses or hurrying from place to place in busy earnest. So much collective action is felt in the toil of the people carrying loads, fetching water from the river, or bustling through the square that the warmth of winter is exposed as both a necessity to combat hardship and a gift that brings the people together. The only person truly alone in the scene is the child sledding on the ice-covered river; in the child’s careless play, though, the warmth of community is obvious, for without it he would be less likely to find enjoyment in the cold. In contrast with human warmth, two vacant birds sitting in a tree above the spectacle of the village demonstrate the possession of camaraderie and liveliness in the face of hardship as predominantly human traits, especially in the presence of the most important point about warmth made by the painting: the Church, or “the bread not fit for beasts” as Gregory Dowling has expounded (“Wonders of Venice” walking tour).

Bruegel strives to make a more thorough investigation into the warmth of the village by including a statement about the religious aspect of life. Two obvious references to the Church appear in this painting. First, in a wasting, old barn, or manger, Christ’s nativity is partially hidden behind a crumbling wall in the bottom left-hand corner of the painting. Not surprisingly, aside from the surprise of finding the nativity in this European village, winter falls second to the adoration of the Christ child by the peasants, who only by the title of the painting or a careful eye are identifiable as the magi. To me, this nativity is not literally a nativity but a sort of metaphor for this village’s place of worship or even of the type of worship the villagers practice, in which they can worship in a very personal way, almost as directly as the magi did. The second reference is the haunting ruins of a cathedral on the right-hand side of the scene that visually connect to the nativity by way of the diagonal crowd across the square. These ruins are Gothic and are representative of an abandoned or faltering psychology. Erwin Panofsky, in “Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art,” says that “the Gothic statue, however emancipated, is expected to consist of the same material as its surroundings and never gives the impression of being detachable (a quality which) was pleasing to antiquity and the Renaissance.” The Gothic ruins and the nativity in this painting demonstrate this abandonment of the flat, simplified world of Gothic worship, in which the church reined, to the Renaissance world, in which the church is portrayed as humble. These two markers of the church not only touch on the importance of the church to the survival of the village community, but they also allegorically, as Dante might say, signify the changes of Christianity present in the 15th century.

Bruegel’s use of a vanishing point through the village buildings also comments on Renaissance realism verses Gothic flatness as well as on warmth. In Dante's "anagogical" sense, meaning that this emphasis exists but is hardly noticeable, the prospective depth in the painting creates a warm feeling of plenty that seems only to belong with the warmth of the nativity, where the Holy family seems strangely warm with only a shack to protect them from the cold. Warmth is further created in the depth of the illusion of the crowd’s movement away from the cold ruins of the Gothic cathedral towards the warm nativity scene. The people seem to be drawn towards the nativity, towards the non-Gothic interpretation of worship, even though they are really going about their business, headed in many different directions. This may fulfill Dante's "moral" sense, in a way, for it indirectly shows the observer the "way to go." With this last statement The Adoration of the Magi completes its discussion of warmth in a village plagued by winter, and Bruegel successfully paints winter as a defining backdrop for the presence of warmth in a devout community.

MY BIENNALE ADVENTURE

I visited the Biennale last Friday, and it was awesome. VIU coordinates tours to various sights around Venezia each week, normally on Fridays, and a few of these tours are mandatory for our "Wonders of Venice" course. The Biennale was a surprise; to begin with, I had no clue what it was. Getting up to catch an 8:45 a.m. vaporetto to the main islands, and then over to the "Gardini: Biennale" boat stop, I had been indifferent to the excursion, not even sure where in Venice we were headed. Once I found out that La Biennale was a modern art museum, begun in the 1800's as a national arts fair that now holds biannual modern art displays created by artists not only from Italy but from around the world, I was excited.I like modern art, mostly because it is such a large and surprising category of creativity, one that defies definition like art has never done before. Really, I just like its weirdness, or its ability to "make things strange" to me (to use Professor Emily Allen's words). Even as a fan, though, I always find myself questioning its worth, and I'm sure many people who have seen modern art can relate to what I'm talking about. Before this trip to the Biennale, I had never really figured out what I think of the often effortless-looking constructions it encompasses: a tin can sitting in an empty room, to be cliche. It had been a while since I had seen any "modern art," so on Friday, once I learned that the Biennale was a modern exhibition, I decided to both enjoy and find meaning in every piece I saw that I might figure what I really think of it.

We walked off the vaporetto stop and through the entrance gardens to pick up our tickets before entering the museum grounds. Pebbles crunched under our feet as our guide led us to a lawn where we could listen to his account of La Biennale's history and plan our tour. VIU is full of international students, so our by-nation-pavilion part of the tour was influenced by what nationalities were in the group. The pavilions are literally 29 buildings built and decorated by different countries, some sharing space but most independent. There are also pavilions in the city, not on the main Biennale grounds, that accommodate for more countries (and they're free too, so when I see them now I go in to experience strange things, it's great).

Inside the main building, the one that says "La Biennale" in the picture at the top, we saw a load of weird, amazing pieces from paintings, like "The Revenge of the Old House" and "The Attack of the Old Houses" above, to entire little worlds, like the slightly gruesome flower forest below that filled a room with giant flowers, music, scary videos, and a really gross frog.
Here I am in the bungee-cord replica of a spider's web (below). Until the guide explained it, I had no clue what it was supposed to be; the way it looked, different sized balls of cord that seemed to float in the air, I thought they were planets, cells, or exploding suns. It was neat to realize how one very direct interpretation of something so specific as a spiderweb can make such a statement about our existence, lots of spheres.
Here was a room all about dreams, I believe, at least that's what it reminded me of. The objects on the left turned in front of lights creating moving shadows on the wall, something like when you begin to fall to sleep and shapes and images begin to blend in your mind. I felt like I was sharing that fleeting moment of falling to sleep with everyone in the room, seeing something of an ultimately personal experience in a physical, public reality.
As we left the main building, we walked through a cafeteria where you could "eat on art." This struck me funny because it seems to me we always eat on art, we even eat art, so the novel idea was not that novel... but then maybe that was the point, I did not read the artist's statement. Still, this was a great room, like a fancy restaurant in New York City.
Outside we began the pavilion tours. We saw the American pavilion, which was interesting, but not really the winner it was pronounced to be; some heads were hanging from the ceiling with water shooting out of holes in their sides and many neat pairs of hands that looked difficult to sculpt were enacting hand signals. I liked the Danish and Nordic Pavilions better. One was the house of man who lived alone but publicly alone, Mr. B, and the other was the house of his neighbors', A Family, a private yet troubled little gorup. This is Mr. B's house.
He didn't live there anymore.
But we could go inside his house and look around.
I would love to have this bathroom, to shower in the forest.
He had some nice pieces of art also, although the collections of explicit photography and drawings weren't for me. I didn't take a lot of photos in the neighbors' house, but they were definitely disturbed, in many ways, and there was a large "for sale" sign in their font yard.
Once the tour was over, we left without having seen most of the pavilions, but, because I was really enjoying it, I had to go back. I spent an extra two hours visiting many of the other exhibits. Here is a picture of France's pavilion. Inside, I walked into a large cage in the shape of a Greek cross that had a black flag blowing in wind at the end of each arm. I didn't like it; it felt empty and foreboding.
I also walked through the Russian pavilion, in which I saw this mechanical guy...
... drawing ovals,
... some glass balls hanging from the ceiling with famous peoples' pictures on them, and lots of other weird things, including visions of the distant future in a blacklit room with dance music and the Winged Victory gushing with red water, that made me think about... I don't know... I wish I had had time to read what everything meant.
The Venetian pavilion was pretty legit... Well, I shouldn't say that; I thought most of them were well done, but I liked this one because I could easily put meaning to it, Venetian glass. Plus, it was pretty.
And, Egypt's big, palm leaf Egyptians, including lots of large, mummy-like cats inside the building, was nice.All of the Biennale's exhibits were exciting, and some were a little frightening, especially when I had no clue what was being said. I have visited at least twenty of the pavilions so far, both on and off the main grounds; I enjoyed them all, even if I did not like what I saw. Of course, without a guide to explain most of the pieces, I had trouble grasping the concepts presented; I would have read their explanations had I had time to. Unlike most classical art forms, "modern" art is not restricted to a single medium and its meaning can be very unclear without interpretive input from the artists. I think people often consider art something that speaks without words, aside from performance arts, and this is an assumption that can get in the way of popularizing the "modern" form. Some of the art in the Biennale was almost worthless in my opinion without its description or back story, but once I learned a little more about the art than I could see, the art began to say more than could its explanation alone. A few works did speak for themselves, or perhaps those artists and I just happen to think alike, yet, even though I liked finding out that I had "gotten it right," I found many of the elusive pieces to be just as interesting as the obvious ones. Sometimes they said things to me that the artists had not intended; sometimes I learned to see things from new angles entirely.

Overall, what I liked about contemplating the Biennale's modern art was how it used relationships and various distances to convey distinct ideas about broad and abstract concepts. In classical art, for example, the subject is normally a physical thing or a widely known action or movement that can be contained within a frame or the stone for the purpose of viewing as a person here looking there. In "modern" art, the subject is most often abstract, especially when the viewer does not understand where the artist is coming from, which can add to the art. Objects, colors, or other mediums are used in modern art to make us see our own thoughts, to make us feel strange, to put us into new situations looking out, not in as with the classical portrait. Audio, visuals, touch, taste, smell, thought, nature, everything is used to question everything. It is a communication of thoughts through physical mediums and gestures. The strangeness seems to asks you to enter your mind and test out ideas or to find ideas to explain what the artist has presented to you. It is as if the art speaks to your unconscious and you come away knowing more than what was said; you continue to ponder and you learn. Ideas are made visually memorable. Art is very clearly used as a spoken language of thought. I told you, it's hard to describe, and I'm failing at it in this blog.

To sum things up as a student of Venice, though, the presence of modern art in Venice is fitting, despite Venice's fame as a city stuck in a now useless past. Since its beginning, Venice has been a place of change and challenge where cultures have clashed and expression in many forms has been important. Art of all kinds seems to have flourished in or, at least, have notably passed through Venice. Today, in modern Venice, I would be disappointed to find that Venice was not keeping up with its history as an artistically inspirational city. With the presence of modern art, Venice is not just a living city, but it is a city of the future, a place where people come to use the past to see and design the future by sharing thought through various mediums.



(the use of image and emotional impression to express logic has persisted to become more abstract.)


stone wings



turn in

to personal dynamics -speak
modern art

it's not easy


Song by Sufjan Stevens (all for the effect, as was the strange ending to this blog that I threw in as a bonus!)

FORMAL ESSAY: THE LOGIC OF GOTHIC FORM

Stonework like carved mountains in which demons and saints combat, peasants live out their immoralities, and the critical stories of the bible can be seen firsthand, Gothic architecture is a beautiful tombstone of the dead, hierarchical societies of an illiterate age. Massive arches, intricate and non-symmetrical designs, and unbelievable height are the characteristic features of Gothic structures. The use of a style being its maker, Gothic, as may be guessed from my description, was authored by power, but what may be less obvious is that it was published, so to speak, by illiteracy. By way of its constriction of communication, the illiteracy of the medieval ages caused the Gothic form to become a dominant style for the purposes of communicating and imposing the power of the church and sovereignty upon the lower classes. Clergy and nobility alike utilized architectural style to demonstrate and communicate power through cathedrals, castles, palaces, and homes, a practice that relied on the architecture itself to speak to those under the subjugation of the authority. The features of Gothic architecture were born from a need to socially organize uneducated subjects, meaning that Gothic form acted as an important tool in controlling the masses by giving them physical ideas, or even proof, about how the world or, more realistically, society according to the authority worked. Without illiteracy, the dramatic aesthetic power of Gothic form may not have become as popular throughout Europe. In an interview conducted by Paul Rainbow, Michel Foucault described the relationship of architectural power with human behavior as non-fundamental. Architecture alone, he says, cannot make people behave in certain ways; thus, the condition of the medieval populace as illiterate was probably necessary for Gothic form to have the effect it had upon its subjects and society.

The most important aspect of this architectural control, underlying the basic need to be convincing, was simple and direct communication from the power, God or king, to the subject through emotional and logical appeal. As Foucault discusses in “Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics,” power and subject relationships only exist when the subject holds some form of power to resist his or her constraint. In the case of medieval power relationships in Europe, few reigned over many, which actually gave the power of majority to the subjects. At that time, the best tools that nobility or the church possessed for controlling the physical power of the lower masses were their historical domination of the land, and therefore money, as well as their access to knowledge, especially through literature (www.medievality.com). Truly, it is not the fact that the nobility possessed the power of book knowledge but rather that the masses did not possess it that shaped Gothic form; this is to say that the authorities of the time were forced to use images and the effect of our environment upon us to cause the masses to see themselves as subjects in a perfect world where everyone had a place and everything had clear-cut meaning under a natural system of authority.

The need for lucid communication with and direction of the lower classes due to the large imbalance between the number of subjects and the number of authority figures in play was critical. Gothic architecture achieved such communication by becoming book-like, literally readable through detailed images carved or painted on the walls and in the sense of stretching to the heavens imparted by Gothic’s characteristic arches. In becoming readable in this sense, Gothic form also became non-symmetrical, due to the need to use any decorative space to impart different narratives and meanings throughout, and, moreover, it became intrinsically awe-inspiring in its complexity and grandeur. Respect was demanded, therefore, not merely by the logic and grave emotions presented in the style, but also by the vast amounts of time, money, and artistry put into its fabrication. A great supporter of Gothic form, John Ruskin advocated the use of Gothic architecture for this very purpose. As he explains in his essay "The Nature Of Gothic," Ruskin looked upon the "savageness" and “changefulness” of Gothic form as a technique to indicate the subject’s place and instill respect for a perfect society in which subjects were able to partake freely within boundaries.

Venice experienced the Gothic period just as most of Europe experienced it. Churches, palaces, and houses alike were built Gothic with the intention of educating the masses in the ways of societal structure. Walking into the grand Gothic basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, for example, one is drawn to look up to heaven by the lines of the gigantic arches ribbing the cavern and the glow of the imposingly large rose windows at each end of the cross shaped cathedral. Both this lofty atmosphere, that indicated some higher, purer position in respect to the observer, and the visual narratives throughout the basilica, that demonstrated ideal behavior and brought the exalted stories of God to the people, put tools of management by emotional and logical non-lingual communication into the hands of the clergy at the basilica. Although ecclesiastical meanings were far less prominent in the buildings of the state, the Doge’s Palace also utilized Gothic form, as did Ca’ D’Oro, previously home to a wealthy Venetian family. A certain lack of symmetry, even in non-narrative features, and freedom of style that characterize Gothic form’s grotesqueness quickly catches one’s eye amongst the lofty arches of these buildings.

Today Gothic form holds less relevance to the mindsets of the masses, yet it still wields power over us. Gothic buildings seem like shells of the past whose power has not yet worn away. Upon stepping into a beautiful cathedral or Gothic style home I feel awe-struck by the majesty of the height and mass of the spaces in contrast with their weightlessness and delicacy, a feeling that leads me to question myself importance and reflect on the existence of higher orders. Although history shows that art and architecture change with societal evolution, as can even be seen in the various styles of tombs within the Gothic basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, we can step back to read the tombstones of the Gothic period in order to see how medieval societies found order and power in Gothic architecture.

HERE AND NOT

Yesterday morning I took a photo of the Campanile di San Marco and its older brother the Campanile San Giorgio Maggiore from the 20 vaporetto on my way to San Zaccaria. The bell towers can be seen seemingly far in the distance on the left side of the photo, a trick of angle and the presence of lines exaggerating their remoteness to the boat, but they are relatively close to me considering I normally live thousands of miles around the world from Venice. The whole "Wonders of Venice" class was on its way to the main "island" to take a tour of il Palazzo Ducale, which means "the Doge's Palace" in Italian if you need a translation, when I caught a glimpse of i campanili out my window. The number 20, our favorite little vaporetto line, stops more than hourly at San Servolo's main dock to drop off and pick up scant numbers of passengers, twenty at most of the one hundred or so people associated with the island per week. Churning the water as its motors rumble to push the boat against the dock, the vaporetto causes the landing to rise and fall in waves and the people waiting on the boat and on the landing lose their balance when the boat hits the dock with a bang. Swiftly, the man at the ropes (ours usually wears a cool pair of black shades) tosses a loop of thick rope around the rusted, iron docking post, ties a loose knot to form a line, then slides the vaporetto gate open. While people move across a momentarily narrow boundary between stationary and mobile space, the sturdy rope around the docking post moans as it holds the vaporetto in place beside the landing. "Ciao. Ciao. Ciao. Attenzione," is normally the rope-thrower's greeting as we board and immediately head for standing places outside where the view is amazing or turn right or left to go down into the boat where we can sit shielded from the weather behind windows of plastic or in a cove of metal. Yesterday, we all sat inside (as Sara, Maria, and Elyse demonstrate on the right), except the few who wandered to the boat's back porch to feel the crisp air on their faces and to see the world without having to see it through a window. Though I normally step out, I was content to sit in with my camera; I snapped the photo of i campanili as the vaporetto turned towards Venice proper, and I now title it, "It has been a week, by Audrey Jenkins."

Technically, it has been a week and a half since my initial landing on la isola di San Servolo, which is the event I am reflecting in the title of this photo; yet, I feel that "It has been a week, by Audrey Jenkins" accurately illustrates that well-known, symbolic period of the first seven days, in this case, my seven day experience of life from San Servolo. Thus, for the sake of this spectacular piece of art (not actually), I am taking an artistic liberty. Venice in the distance of my everyday experiences is something to be noticed and reflected on. Here is it, as I see it most often, Venice, forming the backdrop of my classes and decorating my vaporetto trips to and from the city and to and from Italian class like a large photograph hanging over my academic activities. Venice up close, as my class has discussed, is a complicated space which demands time in order to absorb it or even to see it accurately. The dramatized distance in "It has been a week" reflects the span of time during which I have developed a relationship with myself as a temporary resident of the Venetian waters. I am temporary, I am an observer, I am on a brief vacation from my normal scholastic environment; perhaps I will only ever get this close to dissecting Venice, solely because of what I am. When we walk into the city, hurried because we have only three months, we glimpse images of a unique jumble of objects and actions that lodge themselves in the "Venice" files of our memories, waiting for use. We collect scraps of the city on each journey in, to the Doge's Palace, to the Jewish Ghetto, to a library, to the Billa, and it requires us to sew back together with long threads each piece of the unknown place. We figure out the maze in ways that it seems to us we understand it, but the surprise of new discoveries can easily lose us. Those islands of images and thought, made certain to us because they are connected by threads of ideas with which we pull them together, can easily float free due to a lack of tending to their fabric, or, in other words, due to a lack of time spent gathering solid ground on which to build.

This is all we have collected so far, ideas and brief images, and perhaps this is all we will get, a crude collection; distance stands between ourselves and knowing. I see it directly outside my window where the water stretches out in all directions, washing the steps of Venice and the side of Building 14, my residence, with reaching arms. I see it every time I wait for the vaporetto, then wait for the vaporetto to drop me off on Venice's sagging stone shore. I see distance when I rush from historical point to historical point without stopping to meet the city in the present, because speed, and lack of time, in a slow-paced city is a barrier equal to distance. Finally, I see distance in numbers. In the past week [and a half] a herd of students just like me, and in which I am included, have been crowding each other out of seeing Venice for what it is as itself. We are a permanent type of character in Venice, matter of fact we are tourists very much like those our Italian teacher compares to zanzare, the Italian word for "mosquitos;" yet to understand the concept of a city overrun by tourists, we do not need to constantly add to that chaos by always including our prominent figures in our own and each other's experiences. To truly see and study things, we need to be close enough to see them as a detached participant, or, even better, as mock participants in the most permanent of Venetian scenes. We need to cover the distances between us and Venice, including our very identities, in order to see it. Such a multitude of large distances to cross in three months time, though, means students may end up running. If I run to reach the Venice I came to see, who will I end up as, I have been wondering. A new character in Venice? A unique explorer who only sees their own type of Venice? Once I put Venice together in my head and call it complete at the end of these weeks, what will I know of it? Will I only know the famous facades I study and their purposes? Or will I know Venice's function and its inhabitants? Will I know its present and its future? I think these questions are in some ways necessary for coming to grips with what I want out of my semester here. After a week in Venice, during which I have been very busy, I have thought through my current state and have decided that, for my purposes, I am not yet in Venice. To be in Venice I need to immerse myself in a large variety of its aspects, and most importantly, I need to do it well, which means I need to spend a great deal of time in the city not as a student from San Servolo, but as its inhabitant. (First image above: a corner of Saint Mark's basilica; Second: Casanova's house from the canal on our night-time gondola ride; Third: a Holocaust memorial in the Jewish ghetto)

On our trip to the Doge's Palace, we traversed the same waterfront as always and ran into the same tourists (metaphorically of course). Walking off the vaporetto stop, which is something of an extension to our little San Servolo homeland, we saw the Doge's Palace to the left, souvenir kiosks lined along the water, and pigeons. We know this location pretty well because we are always here. I was excitedly anticipating getting to see the inside of the Palace, which I have held in high regard for unknown reasons, if not only for its grandeur and slight mystery. I wanted to know who or what Venetians used to look to as their leader and form of power, and possibly I wanted to revisit the "Bridge of Sighs" to see whether it seems as haunting as it sounds. We stood beside the vaporetto stop, ghosts of the aqua alta silently foreshadowing our eventual, unavoidable experience with the famous Venetian flooding, and we waited for the tour to begin.


..........


..........


..........



Here are some photos (above and below) of our customary entrance to the city: the vaporetto pulling in, the stop as it looks from the land, and some stacked aqua alta sidewalks in front of the Doge's Palace. Below on the right is a photo of the Doge's Palace that I took when Momma was here. At 6 a.m. the Saturday before last, Momma and I took a walk through a silent Venice in which shop owners on their way to work flowed through the streets like the water through the canals. Upon reaching Piazza San Marco, we admired Venice on the brink of dawn, and created amazing memorabilia. That was an unforgettable morning.



..........


..........


..........



When my class goes to Venice, we see these familiar sights and have enough time to take them in. We are always on the move when we are here though, and when I think about Venice I think about walking and rushing. Yesterday, rushing was not bad at all, I wanted to see the Doge's Palace; I was not disappointed. Our ever amazing VIU (Venice International University) event coordinator, Francesca, introduced us to our Palace guide out in the Piazza, then we headed in to see the courtyard within, a beautiful white space sided by the grand Scala dei Giganti, the stairscase where the Doges were crowned. Here you can see the backs of the statues, Mars and Neptune, overlooking the stairs. These giants were meant to remind the Doge and the whole of Venice that no Doge is all-powerful. I loved how this theme was represented throughout the palace, although I have no photographs to show it. Looking up, above the stairs, you can see San Marc's basilica from the back. The domes are gigantic and fantastic. When we take a tour like this one, we notice the architecture and we notice how it speaks to the people of the past. Who were the Venetians of the past? What does this mean to the Venetians of today (a.k.a. the tourists)? I love these concepts, and I love being able to see them in action with my own eyes. We walked up a stairwell, leafed in Egyptian gold, to reach the elaborate rooms of law where Doges presided over court sessions, voting, and war arrangements. Sculptures and paintings everywhere talked of the Venetian political system and symbolism. For instance, our guide taught us about the book under the famous Venetian winged lion's paw: open for peace and closed for war. In other paintings we saw symbols of political system in which the winged lion receives a crown from angles while the Doge is merely a spectator or Venice is shown in expansion from a view on the mainland. Looking back on the past we see that Venice was a capitalist city not ruled by religion or monarchy as much as by the wealth of the republic.
..........


..........


..........


..........



In the famous Venetian dungeons, that were built at the top of a building rather than below it, we saw the usual stones and bars of power. Notably remembered through Byron's poetic depiction of the bridge connecting the Doge's Palace to the prison as the "Bridge of Sighs," the dungeons were interesting in their history, especially with the idea of prisoners being held for execution in mind. Our guide told us that executions took place between the well known pillars by the lagoon and that less prisoners crossed the Bridge of Sighs for execution than we probably imagine. Here is picture I took in crossing the bridge.
Billboards cover the buildings on either side of the canal outside, the stone is being cleaned, but you can still see the water that prisoners looked out to. On the right, Caylen and I stand in front of the stairs at the Doge's Palace.

Right now, I am so close to the history in Venice. I slow down to see it in the walls (as I did in my last post), in the readings when I am on San Servolo studying for class, and even when I am walking beneath the gigantic billboards and modern installments in the city. Seeing amazing sights like the Doge's Palace is definitely worth spending time on; I am learning about Venice through the past and the past is what I am using to sew up what I glimpse when I am there. But, like I said, I am not here, I am there, in the past, trying to read the minds of Venetians (and the tourists). Once we finish with a tour like the one of the Palace, we must hurry back to our real home on San Servolo in order catch lunch in the mensa or to read and study. Our identity is more associated with this, I think, than with Venice; we are slightly stuck in the past, just like good Venetian tourists should be. In the coming weeks, I want to spend more time being a modern Venetian, even if it is temporary. I want to plan my days away from San Servolo and dive into the city without my student identity. I want to wake up and look across the water to see a city I know rather than one I still see shrouded in mystery and intrigue and most of all in history.

This is where I am.

ON THE WALLS

In a way, you could say that life is about architecture. Because the question about life's meaning is a personal one, I am pretty certain I can make this self-hypothetical argument. I am simply saying that life is about what we give ourselves, which is, in a way, architecture. An art, a necessity, a reading into ourselves, architecture embodies much of the human experience and equally extends our survival not only daily but also far into the future. Venice, for instance, has been an active city for nearly one-thousand years. Structures have protected its citizens since its beginning; I admit that they have also created dangers in the same ways when fires destroy difficult to reach buildings and injuries go unattended because one hundred linear feet to a hospital may equal a Venetian mile by foot during ambulance-halting low tides. Still, on both a day to day period and throughout the centuries, Venice as a living place has survived because of its designs. Long ago, structure made the city useful as a protective environment and as it became useful it grew in size and in variety of architectural features. Given to us by the ages and the visions of our predecessors, the architecture of Venice, or any city, is an accumulation of links to the past that mirror our history and even our nature as a species. Both basic structures but, more usually, aesthetic features like these invoke interest in a place that can preserve it's existence through the evocation of memory. As we discussed Foucault's "heterotopias" in class, I believe each architectural embellishment on the walls of this city are heterotopias, or objects representing paradisiacal ideas about Venice. These embellishments, that each contribute to a collection of architecture that creates the solid, stationary Venice, are gifts from the past that have helped Venice to survive to the present day. Venice is a beautiful location of human history whose importance in what is written on its walls has made it strong enough to survive; we have given ourselves the lasting pleasure of the Venetian walls. They are more solid and lasting than life, and, when written like a book, they are not only useful as protective enclosures but also as signs. If life is what we give ourselves, and if architecture can lead us back or forward into an utopia, then surly we can say that the gift of good architecture is worthy of the meaning of life at some macroscopic point.

To better understand such significant signs in Venice, I chose a campo, or square (literally "field"), to look at in detail. The pictures above are from Campo San Bartolomeo just south-east of the Rialto Bridge. I was going to study this campo originally, because, without a cathedral to help me with finding various architectural features, it would have been interesting to demonstrate how even when lavish detail is not present in an area Venice still offers great variety, but I discovered another wonderful campo, Campo San Maurizio, that I liked better. There were plenty of architectural features in Campo San Bartolomeo, even including crenellations and a blind arcade, but I thought pictures of both the outside and inside of a campo (meaning a church is included) would be more interesting to the reader. But before I talk about my campo, I have to add that even though it may look like it, the statue in Campo San Bartolomeo above is not a patriot, or Benjamin Franklin; Carlo Goldoni was a notable, 18th century, comedic Venetian playwright who dressed like everyone seems to have in those days. Just to clear that up.

Campo San Maurizio, a campo west of the Piazza San Marco near Ponte Accademia, was a somewhat quiet campo. Rain was drizzling when Maria and I wandered into San Maurizio on our way to the Venezia Santa Lucia train station yesterday, but, as simply a through-way from the Piazza to Accademia, only one section of the campo receives traffic, so the rain was not the only reason for San Maurizio's slightly barren atmosphere. Already focused on architecture due to the approach of this assignment and the reminders from Professor Felluga to notice it, I immediately recognized the rich diversity of styles present in Campo San Maurizio and decided to forget Campo San Bartolomeo and the memorable statue of Carlo Goldoni. As we walked in from the calle (above on right), the first thing Maria and I saw was the four-light window consisting of ogee, or pointed, arches decorated in cusps and supported by Corinthian capitals (above on left). As you can see in the photo, whoever lives here had draped their window shades over the balustrade and had covered the corbels bearing the overhang with boxed flowers. As with nearly any campo in Venice, lancets, ogee arch windows, are not the only style of window in Campo San Maurizio; the building beside this one, for example, shows rounded windows with Ionic capitals, including volutes of course, and rounded arches (right). With a little research online, I discovered that this building is the Palazzo Bellavite, built in the 16th century, which has been home to various Venetian poets. The Palazzo Bellavite has two Venetian windows, or serliane, that were either never completed or have been filled in as you can see in the photo.

Walking across the campo and turning around we saw more ogee arches, this time in groups of five (below left). Looking at the windows and doors on the ground and first floor, lintels, or sheets of stone over the tops, are visible against the brick. In the top right-hand corner of the photo on the left is a set of biforate windows, special only in that they form a pair. In the photo above on the right, you can see what seems to be dog-tooth moulding along the top of this building. With distinct differences in style, filled windows, and age, the entire building side looks eclectic. Even the ogee arches seem added, especially with presence of both Composite and Doric pilasters between them. Below and in the corner of the campo, a doorway seems to lead into an atrium (right).



Turning left from that building, we see a large Renaissance style church facing in from the north with a leaning campanile in the background, a well (which itself is decorated in relief) in front, and a bay of arches visible in the top right corner of the photo. This is St. Maurice. On the top there is a large pediment bordered with dentilled molding and decorated with the relief of a battle scene (above right). Below that, the entrance to the church is a great example of an aedicule, with Ionic pilasters and a wide frieze along the entablature at the top whose cornice supports another pediment (above left). The church is symmetrical, a characteristic of the Renaissance style. The big thermal window directly between the pediment of the door and the grand pediment above displays this symmetry (below left), as do the two matching front windows adorned with segmental pediments on either side. Inside the church, Maria and I found an exhibit on old instruments rather than pews and alters, and there was a sign asking us not to take photos. We walked around for a while, carrying our umbrellas because we were not sure where the umbrella street sellers found umbrellas cheap enough to sell for 2 euros; then I snuck a few pictures... At the back of the church, which did not seem to have a nave, there was an apse whose semi-dome is shown in the picture below on the left. To both sides of the church were transepts in which I found pendentives, cupolas, and Corinthian style columns (below right). In the center was a larger cupola with a lantern (second photo below left).



The campanile behind the church is leaning, as I said, although it may not appear to be in my photo (right). A machicolation around the top, three open windows on each side, were probably used as a perch for archers during attacks on the city. Above that a decorative blind arcade, or a row of closed arches, circle the tower, and below two blind arches stretch the length of the campanile on each side.

A complex system of architectural history, Campo San Maurizio is just a tiny portion of Venice. Eclectic and imperfect, its features cannot hide the randomness of their placement, which reveals the presence of a hidden narrative. Although the story of how these features came to be a part of Campo San Maurizio is not written on the walls, we can pretend to understand it by seeing reflections of the wider world here. In a way this works, especially considering the campo as a heterotopia. Perhaps the best part of the architectural gifts are their mystery that allow us to enter our own utopias, and in this case leading us towards utopias of the past that help us to remember and to appreciate history. Of course, they cannot teach us truth, but they can remind us of it. I love this side of Venice because it is beautiful, it speaks, and at the same time is silent. Walking into Campo San Maurizio, for instance, I read the walls and read almost what I wanted to read in what I could find there, even with the remnants of reality in my way. It is like a dance in which the walls lead and I choose to follow what reminds me of image of Venice, and I easily skim over what does not. Without words or sound the pleasure of what is on the walls of Venice can entertain the tourist, work for the Venetian, and support a medium between the then and the now of the city.