Word: art
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...domains. The persuasive immediacy of the prose is such that it becomes all too easy to see Venice through Atman's self-consciously hip sunglasses. Pleasure dissipated from my first vaporetto ride the moment I opened the book. "You came to Venice," muses Atman, "you saw a ton of art, you went to parties, you drank up a storm, you talked bollocks for hours on end and went back to London with a cumulative hangover, liver damage, a notebook almost devoid of notes and the first tingle of a cold sore." (See pictures of London...
...seems, are the characters consumed by the city's seething Dionysian urges. Nearly a century later, British author Geoff Dyer, in his latest pair of novellas, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, has returned to Venice an updated version of Mann's aging dilettante. Jeff Atman is an art critic sent from London to cover the 2003 Venice Biennale. His four-day stay - a condensed version of Mann's summer - is a heady dose of drink, sex and drugs daubed with pithy observations about the world of modern art at its most commercial...
...peach juice and sparkling wine invented at Harry's Bar, tel: (39-41) 528 5777. There was none to be seen at this year's parties, but prosecco flowed freely. One of the best selections of Venice's native drink - prosecco grapes are mainly grown in Veneto - minus the art-world pretension or tourist-trap prices, can be found at Timon, tel: (39-41) 524 6066, a decidedly laid-back bar where patrons can dangle their feet over the canal out front...
...garlic with a discarded clam shell. Solace can also be found in the convivial embrace of Enoteca Ai Artisti, tel: (39-41) 523 8499. There, a selection of four dozen or more local wines by the glass provides the perfect oenological tour of the region and the proprietor soothes art-related insecurities with his tales of Biennales past...
Inspiration came from unexpected sources. Some sculptors in Sri Lanka and China simply shaped the Buddha in their own likenesses. A 4th century stucco bust unearthed in Afghanistan features the full lips associated with Indian Gupta art, but also fulsome curls that reflect the Greco-Roman artists brought to the region by Alexander the Great...