Word: bonito
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Biennale is the world's oldest modern art festival, dating back to 1895. Every two years a commissioner is appointed to oversee its structure and content. This year the task fell to a Neapolitan art critic named Achille Bonito Oliva. Bonito Oliva is a mini-celebrity in Italy, an imbonitore, or bustling promoter, of groups and movements, who gave the '80s its silliest piece of art jargon, "la transavanguardia," the "trans-avant-garde." He wanted to create a Biennale that would transcend national differences and illustrate "cultural nomadism." To put it charitably, his talents are not up to the task...
...Bonito Oliva's curatorial "method" has been to jumble works together in the Italian pavilion under the title "The Cardinal Points of Art." The result is a shambles, featuring the usual notables from Joseph Beuys to Georg Baselitz, interfused with less famous figures and a large photography section. Many of the individual works are worth seeing -- or reseeing, since not a few have been round the international circuit already -- but since this is one of the worst-hung shows in recent memory, it is quite hard to do even that...