Beautiful Bottles

The only real international art show in the world (since Pittsburgh's Carnegie International went domestic) is the Biennial, held in Venice's Public Gardens. Seventeen countries (including the U.S., which made a belated entry this week) sent their best paintings and sculptures. Just one pavilion, the Russian, stood empty, its iron doors bolted.

The Biennial has been a going concern since 1895, though Mussolini cramped its style by barring such "decadents" as Picasso. Last week there was a whole section devoted just to Picasso. Even Mussolini had not been able to bar Picasso's influence; whatever the newest school of Italian painters, who call themselves the "Secessionists," may have seceded from, it was not from the pervasive School of Paris.

Another group highlighted the early work of Italy's only remaining first-rank painter: Giorgio de Chirico. The aging genius, who long ago ditched surrealism to imitate dead masters, was embarrassed, not pleased by the honor. He angrily sued the Biennial Committee for displaying his earlier indiscretions (which vastly outshine what he has done since). It was all part of a dirty plot to encourage the "commercial maneuvers" of the big art dealers, he said. He also wrote a letter to the press declaring that "It is simply ridiculous and injurious to call 'art' all these miscarriages of the human mind which are nothing but phenomena of decadence, impotence and incapacity."

First prizewinner was Giorgio Morandi, a mild modern who has become, at 58, Italy's favorite artist. Morandi's splendid reputation might be difficult for some exhibition visitors to grasp. It is built on his collection of used bottles, which he arranges in table-top still lifes and paints in a manner as surpassingly empty and dry as the bottles themselves.