Taking Venice

7/18/2024

Ever watch a movie that isn’t what it should have been? Such is the case with writer-director Amei Wallach’s third feature documentary, which is supposed to be an account of the US government-backed campaign to capture the grand prize for painting at the 1964 Venice Biennale, the world’s most influential art exhibition. The thinking behind this effort was to showcase the supposedly superior nature of the nation’s art and culture, one in a series of comparable American propaganda initiatives aimed at winning over the hearts and minds of the citizens of the world at the height of the Cold War. The plan here was to secure top honors for the works of artist Robert Rauschenbach (1925-2008), one of the most influential innovators of the emerging pop art movement, who was best known at the time f