Since the phenomenon’s establishment in 1895, the biennial format has provided a platform for artistic innovation, cultural dialogue, and critical discourse. It wasn’t until the 1990s, however, that the concept gained traction and hundreds more emerged all over the globe. Growing both in scale and influence, biennials have now become a point of reference for galleries, collectors, and auction houses in search of trending contemporary tastes and behaviours worthy of investment.
Biennials can promote new talent on an international stage
As the original “great mother” of the biennials, the Venice edition is the trailblazer for fellow biennials worldwide. For example, in 2015 the exhibition “included 136 artists from 53 countries, of whom 89 were exhibited for the first time”. Silencing popular criticism about lingering power structures in the art world, instead the figures here champion and showcase how biennials can promote new talent on an international stage and inject instant value into artworks as a result.
Although the show’s on-site sales office closed following passionate student protests in 1968, year after year murmurs of unofficial sales in the Italian archipelago have spread, the most notable in recent years being made by French billionaire François Pinault. Displayed at the 2015 Venice biennial exhibition All the Worlds Futures, Pinault purchased eight paintings by Georg Baselitz; altogether worth a staggering value of $8.9 million. In 2022, the Venice biennial’s head of communications also told ArtNews of the biennial’s decision to “remove art dealers’ names from the exhibition labels since [its] 2019 edition”. Indeed, this has the potential to prompt a positive domino effect across other major biennials, but ultimately the measure falls short of enduring change. Its superficiality serves to publicly dispel connections with the art market, even though the names of wealthy galleries who help fund the show are still given honourable mentions online.
Biennials continue to shine a spotlight onto artists who have yet to enter mainstream Eurocentric commercial markets
In the face of these concerns, biennials continue to shine a spotlight onto artists who have yet to enter mainstream Eurocentric commercial markets, or have otherwise remained unacknowledged due to their South American, African, Asian or Middle Eastern backgrounds. The biennial format may serve as a counterpoint to the art market, but it also feeds into it, making their relationship more dialectical than strictly oppositional.
So long as artists are getting paid and artistic innovation remains at the forefront of the exhibitions instead of market forces, is it really necessary to fuss over the inevitable crossover between the two industries?