The Venice Biennale Part II

"I recognize that I must be alone with my soul.  I come with empty hands to you, my soul." C. G.  Jung

A dear friend, Jane, brought me a gift in a pink box about half the size of a shoebox.   I opened it and turned back some limegreen tissue paper to reveal to my astonishment, an owl, a perfect specimen of a Western Screech Owl.  But specimen is not the right word, no, it is not an example or a model or a specimen- that sounds too scientific or Darwinian and not godly enough for this exquisite creature of the night.   It seemed to be sleeping in peace covered in a cloak of feathers, unbearably inviting to touch.  It had no obvious wounds, no blood or anything, simply forever surrendered to sleep.

I kept it near me in it's little coffin for several days on the desk in my studio, (one friend said this was creepy) I confess to a twisted love of nature labs and biology departments with taxidermic animals for study.  I read that owl is feminine medicine, associated with clairvoyance, astral projection, death and magic. For the next few days, it called to me; I picked it up, touched it, held it in awe. I gently pulled out its wing span and examined its miraculous flight feathers. And on the fourth day during a rare snowfall, I bundled up, carried it to a spot in the bosque along the river and buried it face down.  Just after I covered it over with soil and wood chips, I had the thought that maybe it should be buried face- up instead.  I dug back down into the ground until I reached the place that I thought the owl would be, but to my surprise, not there. I dug a little further to one side, down a bit, not there.  Could it be further down in the earth? I suppose, but I choose to fill in the hole again believing that maybe the feathered one had preternaturally disappeared.  I like to fantasize that I am part bird sometimes, that I too can fly silently on velvety wings. Thinking about the owl now reminds me of Venice, my recent night flight there to visit an art exhibition, the Venice Biennale.

The Encyclopedic Palace, curated by the NY's New Museum curator, Massimiliano Gioni, was brilliantly conceived, installed and organized. If that sounds overly gushy, so be it. I could not have put together a list of any works of 20th -21st century art I would have preferred to see more than what he chose. As one enters the central pavilion at the far end of Venice in the place where the Giardini Pubblici (the public gardens) meet the Adriatic Sea, the first piece of art one sees, after moving through the entrance, is Carl Jung's Red Book. The Red Book or Liber Novus was displayed in the center of the room, in a thick round glass case echoing the mandalas that are contained within it.  Under the safety of no doubt, bullet- proof glass, this magnificent object rested upon an angled steel armature so that one could view both the tooled red leather cover from the back and two illustrated pages, opened in the front.  In a circle around the ensconced book, mounted on stands, forty images were reproduced from the book giving the viewer a glimpse of what lies inside the 205 parchment paged manuscript.  Jung's Liber Novus was created during the time just after he split with Freud, when he went deep into his own psyche after the 1916 publication of his paper "The structure of the unconscious." Herein lie the stories of anima and animus, it's chapters are filled with incantations; the openings of eggs; magicians; experiences in the desert. God scrutinies.  What a profound entryway into this exhibition where Gioni asks us to consider the realms of knowledge.

Since the Jung heirs decided to publish a facsimile of the book five years ago, many have been able to see reproductions of his dream paintings and read the descriptions of his dream experiences.  But to stand before the original which is usually locked away in a Swiss bank vault was extraordinary.  How the curator was able to convince the Jung heirs to show the book publicly is a wonder in an of itself.  I thought for a moment that perhaps I should turn and go at that point, my trip complete at the sight of the Red Book, but I went on to be transported further by thirty-six lecture drawings of Rudolf Steiner, four large paintings by the mystic painter, Hilma af Klint, many small anonymous Tantric paintings from India and more that I will share at another time.  Though there is still much to process, (the scale of the exhibit was monumental)  I continue to be in wonder at how it all came together in this dreamlike place that is Venice.   What the experience of the biennale is thus far for me, mirrors the mystery of my owl friend: magical.  To float down the Grand Canal to a place of mystical images and investigations of consciousness parallels the symbolism of "owl" and produced a sort of death for me, a death in Venice for the one I was before.  As it has been said of owl wisdom, the gatekeeper to otherworldly realms, I traveled into another domain, deep into the waters of art history and into the port of the soul. 

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