Venice Biennale: Giardini – The 53rd Golden Lion Awards. “The Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement are honoring two artists whose ground-breaking activities have opened new poetic, conceptual and social possibilities for artists around the globe working in all media,” commented Director, Daniel Birnbaum also stressing that the two artists “Yoko Ono and John Baldessari have shaped our understanding of art and its relationship to the world in which we live. Their work has revolutionized the language of art and will remain a source of inspiration for generations to come”
Lifetime Achievement Award: Yoko Ono surrounded by bodyguards and fans leaves the Biennale with her Golden Lion. A pioneer in performance and conceptual art, she is one of the most influential artists of our time. Long before becoming an icon in popular culture and in peace activism, she developed artistic strategies that have left a lasting mark both I her native Japan as in the West.
Seen in La Biennale Pavilion. One of Yoko Ono’s Poems entitled, Sun Piece, winter, 1962.
Seen at the Golden Lions Award ceremony. Kemp Muhl and Sean Lennon.
Lifetime Achievement Award: John Baldessari talks to fans outside the American pavilion. He is one of today’s most important visual artists. Often named the most important art teacher of our times, he has above all developed a visual language entirely his own. Since the 1960s, he has worked in many disciplines and produced an outstanding body o work that has inspired several generations of artists.
La Biennale Pavilion. The external façade of the new La Biennale Pavilion was conceived by John Baldessari to represent the sky and sea of his native California.
Seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Dinner. The Philadelphia Museum of Art had a dinner honoring Bruce Nauman whose work in the American Pavilion won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. Seen here with his wife, artist, Susan Rothenberg and his New York dealer, Angela Westwater of Sperone Westwater.
Golden Lion for the Best Artist of the exhibition Making Worlds. Golden Lion for the Best Artist went to Tobias Rehberger for his cafeteria in La Biennale Pavilion.
Photograph courtesy La Biennale
The New restaurant – Bar. Tobias Rehberger who won a Golden Lion for the site-specific intervention in the restaurant-bar (mixed media, 2009) inside the La Biennale Pavilion.
Seen at the Golden Lions Awards ceremony. Homi K. Bhabha was one of the members of the illustrious jury; he is Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University.