‘Taking Venice’ Review: A Tasty Doc About Robert Rauschenberg Winning the 1964 Venice Biennale. But Was It a U.S. ‘Conspiracy’? Uh, No
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic If you want to know how the definition of “scandal” has changed with the decades, you couldn’t do much better than to see “Taking Venice,” Amei Wallach’s highly enjoyable and revealing documentary about a legendary uproar in the art world.
The film chronicles what happened at the 1964 Venice Biennale — the exhibition of contemporary art, held every two years, that culminates in the awarding of an esteemed grand prize.
At the time, the Biennale was considered to be a kind of art-world equivalent of the Olympic Games. Not just artists but the nations they represented were jockeying for cultural supremacy.
In the ’50s and early ’60s, the grand prize often went to the French (Matisse, Max Ernst, Georges Braque), but in 1964 the U.S.
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