Just returned from the Giardini, and here are a few of my first thoughts. First, Sigmar Polke's paintings were great. Just wonderful. They take up the main gallery in the center of the Italian pavillion and the light in the gallery is cool white. This really sets off the burnished nature of the golds and violets in these skrim paintings. The more typical POMO images are fine, but the pure process paintings really sing. I was very intrigued by the translucency - the play of surface and stretcher - a play that he's made many times - but here this trope is poignant. Really lovely. The falseness of the surface falls away and you see the structure behind the painting. It's kind of Penn & Teller like - explains the trick while doing the trick and still finding a way to surprise you.

Gerhard Richter has a room of his squeegee abstractions. Very much about physicality and presence, lens and paint. These were very workman-like, very professional. Ho hum. There was a room of Thomas Nozokowski and right next to Raoul De Keyser. Now I'm not quite sure what the point of this was, but somehow the works were so very close in feel, size, technique, and theory that I don't think it benefitted either of these artists. Ellsworth Kelly's work seemed forced and unhappy - a shaped canvas fitted on a square canvas ground. I couldn't go there. Elizabeth Murray's work was happy and fun, but nothing more. And in the American pavillion I enjoyed watching people pick up candy and roll posters - courtesy the legacy of Felix Gonzalez Torres - blissfully unaware of the metaphors to AIDS and to gay politics and culture. It was great to see how pure this artistic generosity was - folks seemed so happy to walk away with something from the show, carrying with them something of the artist - two young girls actually giggled as they grabbed a handful of licorice. Tracy Emin in the Brit Pavillion was an awful mess of student work and if you had a score card you could have checked off the influences. Way bad. The rest was everyday ordinary. Oh well...

Illy was again everywhere. Nothing like an espresso to keep you moving through the gardens - which was actually lovely. Tomorrow off to the Arsenale.