Stories

Against the flotsam of the flow of goods

Just like fashion, which can be admired all year round across the globe, art too can be celebrated 365 days a year. This week in Venice, the 60th Biennale opened — the world’s oldest and most glamorous art spectacle. Bellinis foam on rooftop terraces while fleets of motoscafos — the sleek, caramel-brown taxi boats with polished cabins — carry elegant crowds along the Grand Canal: collectors and gallerists flown in from every corner of the world to admire contemporary art in a historic setting.

By Dagmar von Taube

Count Giberto Arrivabene Valenti Gonzaga, known to friends as “Gibi,” has watched the colorful spectacle for years with amused composure and a certain refined distance. The count is a glass artist in Venice, where glassmaking has been a tradition for centuries; he designs vases, decanters, and drinking glasses based on classical forms, yet with a modern touch. The life of the aristocrat, who comes from a family of prominent bankers and wealthy merchants, is deeply rooted in Venice. He grew up in the magnificent Palazzo Papadopoli, one of the city’s oldest and most splendid palaces, where today, father of five, lives with his wife Bianca in the approximately one-thousand-square-meter top floor. The lower levels are now home to the luxury hotel Aman Venice.

“I have always loved the view from our windows over the Grand Canal with its lively bridges,” Arrivabene says. “But the colors used to be different, and so was the mood. They were more radiant, deeply romantic, almost hypnotic.” In earlier times, eccentrics and immensely wealthy escapists came to Venice to intoxicate themselves with the city’s magic. They inhabited the palaces as if opening ancient chests and brought brilliance to the city. Today, as everyone knows, one walks through the narrow streets and must take care — even in the most remote quarters where once not a soul was to be found — not to be overwhelmed by armies of tourists: suddenly a procession of rolling suitcases clatters over the old paving stones. “The noise is dreadful. And trinkets everywhere,” Arrivabene complains, like many in his city, whose population has fallen below 60,000. Meanwhile nearly 30 million visitors arrive each year — “without truly realizing where they are or what cultural space they are entering.”

But Gibi has a plan. The proud Venetian wants to reclaim his old Venice — even if only symbolically. To that end he has now taken up a strategic position on the famous Rialto Bridge, where, between budget souvenir stands, T-shirt shops, and baseball cap vendors, he has opened his first, elegantly designed boutique, “Giberto Venezia,” to refocus attention on the craftsmanship of his homeland and to give his glass art a home, as he puts it. “It may be a small shop, but it is a beginning.” With this gesture, Arrivabene hopes others will follow and stand up to the tide of cheap goods.

The address could hardly be better chosen. The Rialto Bridge — with San Marco on one side and San Polo on the other — was long the only pedestrian crossing over the Grand Canal, covered like Florence’s Ponte Vecchio. The shops on this historic passage cannot simply be rented or purchased; they can only be passed down from one owner to another. Their history dates back to the 16th century, when the former wooden bridge was rebuilt in stone.

“It’s a wonderful corner of the city,” says Arrivabene, who lives in his palace diagonally opposite and took over his shop from a jeweler. At some point, he says, the area became overrun with cheap goods. Now quality is meant to return. He is delighted — and courageous enough — to oppose the souvenir trade with glass, something enduring. Quality, of course, comes at a price. His shop also represents a counterpoint to a new temple of shopping. At the foot of the bridge stands the famous Fondaco dei Tedeschi, once the trading house of German merchants, where even Albrecht Durer sold his prints. The fashion company Benetton purchased the building for a reported 53 million euros and had it transformed by Rem Koolhaas into a department store with arcades and a Ferrari-red escalator, now operated by a Hong Kong duty-free group.

“Whether mask shops or luxury temples — what difference does it make?” Arrivabene asks. All of it is flotsam of the current of goods that clings to people in the frenzy of consumption — and very soon one senses that it leaves nothing behind. “Glass,” says Giberto, “refracts light, and light is life. And glass does not age — it endures forever, if it is protected.”