The Other Pavilions

Felix Salmon submits:

One of the treasures of the Venice Biennale is walking through the city and stumbling upon national pavilions for which there is no space in the Giardini. Often these shows are much more enjoyable than their slightly more official counterparts, if only because one isn't in the middle of an hours-long art trudge when viewing them.

The non-Giardini pavilions also feel somehow less constrained than their Giardini counterparts. I didn't necessarily love the art in either the Irish or the Icelandic pavilions, but I liked their installations all the same, which were full of national character: dauntingly intellectual in the case of the Irish artist, Gerard Byrne; mischievous and elvish in the case of the Icelandic artist, Steingrimur Eyfjörd.

Even in Iceland, however, Andy Warhol gets the obligatory name-check – just as he does in half a dozen other countries and installations in Venice. Truly, Warhol is the godfather of today's contemporary art. Which is surely one part of the reason for his auction prices.