Death in Venice

The New Criterion's James Panero reports on the Venice Biennale--the avant-garde art show held in their old Arsenal, an assemblyline shipworks that in its heyday (don't remember when) could turn out a warship a day; as Venice grew more decadent and less martial it--the Arsenale, and Venice in general--fell into disrepair. It's now given over every two years to the worst sort of feculent crap-for-crap's sake Eurotrash art posers to pee on the beautiful marble headstone of the world's longest-lived republic.

Here's some hearty sneering, ("nice pants!"), but here's the scary part: repulsive and incoherent anti-Semitism, floating to the top of the pervasive anti-Americanism like--no, I've used too many bodily function metaphors in this post already.

More to come on this by Panero in the Wall Street Journal this week. In short: if you go to Venice--and you should, it's the most beautiful city in the world and it's sinking--don't go during the Biennale.

UPDATE: Okie on the Lam reminds us that the director of this particular anti-American and anti-Semitic exhibit, Robert Storrs, is an American. In fact, he's the new dean of Yale's Art School.

Yale is where western artist and By-God Great American Frederic Remington learned his trade. Now, after embarrassingly welcoming the Taliban's deputy foreign minister into the student body last year, it looks like Yale has another anti-American, anti-semitic scandal brewing.

Yale University: you've come a long way, baby!