Venice

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After spending hours lost in in the shadows of grand but crumbly buildings, in mazes of narrow streets always dead-ending at (uncrossable) canals of still, dark green water, and being surrounded by pidgeons and the suffocating smiles or ceramic carneval masks, I decided: Venice is creepy. Or possibly romantic, judging by the numbers of American honeymooners/vacationing couples - but i thought it was one of the creepiest places I've ever been. My photos don't do justice to the creepiness because I only took pictures when the sun was out - but with overcast weather, people stalking around in coats, gonolas creeping around silently through the water, old men yelling at eachother in italian, Venice was very different then what I imagined. I felt like it was the perfect city for crime followed by a dramatic chase scene. (I'm not the only one to find this city wierd - check out Edgar Allen Poe's story The Visionary at http://www.pambytes.com/poe/stories/assignation.html)
But despite the wierdness, it is pretty cool to go places on boats, and rather picturesque. St. Mark's cathedral was breathtaking. It is also interesting to see the logistics of a city built on water. Like, repairs work requires machinery taken in on boats (difficult) and when the water levels rise they have wooden boardwalks that the set up over the flooded streets so people can still walk around.
I want to remark puickly on Peggy Guggenheim. We went to the museum (formerly her palazzo) that houses her collection, and it was pretty awesome, not just for the art but more for the bizarre stories associated with them. Peggy was quite a hoot. She ran away to Europe at 20 (bad relationships with everyone in her family, including the uncle Solomon with whom she would later compete to collect works of art), married, divorced, married Max Ernst, plucked Pollock from obscurity, and slept with any number of these artists. The headboard of her bed was a beautiful solid silver work by Alexander Calder. Peggy is buried by the house with about 14 dogs, some of whom had scandalously short lifespans (her 'beloved babies' - ha, never mind that she had real children! An estranged son named Sinbad, and her daughter, Pegene, whom she raised. She had Pegene trained in the fashionable 'primitive art,' and the girl was 'so close to making it' in the art world but sadly took her own life). There are pictures of her throughout the gallery, in every one with some radically different hairstyle and cradling an anklebiter of a dog. It was an interesting look at a kooky american ex-pat that I can only imagine rocked both the art world and Venice.

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Photos

lost again
i just take pictures while Lindsay examines the map

Comments

[Phillipa palmer]

Thankyou