There is always a strange madness hanging in the air on the press days of the International Art Exhibition in Venice.
Quite often you meet more gallerists, curators, collectors, millionaires who carelessly park their yachts outside the Arsenale/Giardini area and poseurs who manage to get in for one reason or another, than real journalists and, well, artists.
For example, some of the people in the audience at Prada's Resort show headed to Venice for the press preview days, among them also Courtney Love.
One thing that is striking, though, is that usually the people revered, admired and idolised in one field or discipline become unknown passers-by here.
So it happened that Michele Lamy, wife, muse, artist and creative mind behind fashion designer Rick Owens, who in her life has been a restaurateur (LA's Les Deux Cafes), designer, filmmaker, and protegee to the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, was spotted hanging around the Arsenale during the press days waiting to get in like all the others (was she buying or selling art? Or was she maybe on the lookout for inspirations for Rick Owens' fashion collections? No, she was actually at the Biennale for the risible Bargenale, a self-centred movable feast organised by Lamy during art events and usually revolving around her doing a cool photo diary series, in this case the event revolved around the theme "very boxe versus very chic" and was located in Calle Lunga dell'Accademia dei Nobili on the Giudecca).
Wrapped up in maroon, brown and dark green Rick Owens designs (or maybe they were just random pieces of fabrics…) accessorised with an oversized ostrich leather bag, elongated wedge mules (of the kind fancied by Venetian plague doctors or favoured by Pantalone in the Comedy of Manners…), and floppy fatigue hat and with her fingers covered in her trademark jewellery, Lamy looked as if she was channelling the detestable poverty chic trend and looking half bag lady, half shaman-meets-witch.
If Lamy had been at a fashion event there would have been street photographers around her, but here in Venice her presence was practically ignored (mind you, the designs she was wearing didn't help attracting the attention in a favourable way as she looked more shabby than luxuriously and shambolically avant-garde), proving that the fashion industry can be a small club, and not owning its membership card is actually not such a great disadvantage.
Anyway, Lamy seemed to go well with the crumbling walls of the Arsenale and her bag was big enough to contain all the catalogues and press materials from the various pavilions. Stay tuned for some real art reports; they will follow, at some point…
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