Pinault in Venice

Felix Salmon submits:

Never mind the architecture, what was the art like at the Palazzo Grassi? Many of us were just as interested in the new space for the François Pinault collection as we were in the Biennale proper – this is, after all, arguably the highest-profile private collection of contemporary art in the world, and a huge amount of hype and money has gone into its new home on the Grand Canal.

The show at the palazzo, named in classic Art World Impenetrable "Sequence 1", is a weird choice for a show specifically timed to coincide with the Biennale and the influx of opinion-makers that accompanies it. It's weird because after some much more easily-digestible shows, including a stunning Olafur Eliasson installation (or at least one which looks stunning in the official photographs), Pinault has decided to get a little bit precious, and – well, let's let him, or his curators, explain:

Sequence One will feature a focused selection of 16 international artists whose work engages with supposedly "traditional" art practices - yet subject both painting and scultpture to constant conceptual revisions and ever-evolving techniques.

Got that? Me neither, although I suspect that the spurious scare-quotes are a good indicator that the writer has precious little idea what he or she is talking about. What I can tell you, having seen the show (and paid my €10 entry fee), is that there is nothing "focused" about it, and that it seems instead to be little more than a run-through of the kind of artists who people get really excited about at the Armory Show for a year or two and then move on from.

Of course, we're reminded that Pinault collects the Big Names too: here's Richard Prince, there's Marlene Dumas. But many of the artists are younger, and trendier – Roberto Cuoghi, Urs Fischer, Kristin Baker, Anselm Reyle, Tamuna Sirbiladze, and Laura Owens were all born in the 1970s.

The problem is that their works don't seem to have been collected, so much as bought. Even with (or perhaps because of) the helpful intervention of professional curatorship to winnow down the enormous Pinault collection, there's no evidence of a collector's eye here; instead, it looks suspiciously as though the chap is simply buying up artists for who they are – to get a name in his book.

While Urs Fischer, for instance, has some great work in Venice, at the second Swiss pavilion, here, his tree of laser prints, which opens the show, is weak and strained. On the other hand, it's very big, and, I'm sure, carried a price tag to match.

The overall feeling is that Pinault has been held captive by his curators and advisers. There's nothing exciting about this show, which carries much more in the way of street cred than it does in the way of verve. Pinault clearly doesn't seem interested in enthusing his paying visitors, and it's not at all obvious that he cares much about this art himself. There are no personal touches here, no sign that this art is loved by an individual as opposed to being exhibited by a curator. In a city full of art, Pinault has failed to set his palazzo apart.