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June 11
VENICE BIENNEALE Arrive around noon at Marco Polo Airport after a predictably unpleasant trip. There's a shuttle to the dock. The vaporetto is crammed with sweaty people, the heat unreal, and I feel tired and ill-tempered, so I opt for a water taxi, even though it costs 80 euros, which given the exchange rate, is easily more than a C note-livin' large. This is a sensible way to squander money: sitting alone at the back of a boat that could easily accommodate ten people, I feel rather glamorous, like Monica Vitti. Maybe this will be fun after all. The driver leaves me off at the Rialto: "You see that street between the bridge and the palazzo? Your hotel is that way." What I see looks like an extremely narrow and dark alley, and I'm amazed that I find the hotel, located on yet another impossibly narrow and gloomy street, Calle de la Balote. Its rooms are modern and air conditioned. Feeling sanguine about Venice.
After a long nap, I meet my vivacious young Artforum colleague Scott Rothkopf in the lobby-we're staying in the same hotel-and we go to a party that Monika Spruth, Matthew Marks, and Eva Presenhuber are throwing at the Palazzo Nani, on the Dorsoduro, the first of many. Crowded, stiflingly hot even on the terraces. Bad food and not much of it. Helios, handshakes, kisses, good-byes. Afterward, pass by the Scottish party-more like a rave (Jim Lambie DJ's). A huge line of twentysomethings decides me against. Maybe Scott should go.
June 12
BREAKFAST ON THE TERRACE OF THE GRITTI HOTEL with Scott, art historian James Meyer, and our editor, Jack Bankowsky. A well-heeled dealer sidles up to me at the buffet as I pour a glass of peach juice and hisses, "Enjoying your witches' breakfast?" In fact it was rather genteel. There's no discounting the view of Santa Maria della Salute and San Giorgio Maggiore; perhaps go see them on Saturday. James points out the reputedly cursed, Byzantinesque Ca' Dario across the Grand Canal. Several of its occupants died unnatural deaths or went mad; at least one notorious homosexual murder case is associated with it, very Talented Mr. Ripley. Rich Americans in clashing pastels clamber into water taxis. "It's a...