Advertising the present. Overshadowing the past. Concealing the future.

Having been in Venice for one week now, I’ve had some time to soak in the general aura of the city. What has surprised me greatly, beginning with my initial stroll off the vaporetti into the city of Venice, was the massive advertisements that adorn the construction sites throughout the city. The large Guess advertisement, draping proudly in the Piazza San Marco, immediately caught my eye as I emerged from the boat. As I mentioned in my earlier blogs, I incorrectly assumed Venice to be a quiet, simple city as opposed to the bustling of tourists and dramatic grandeur that compose the city. I remain amazed at the modernity that overruns this historical city, which truly does feel like slice of the past with a “Disneyworld-like” atmosphere slapped on top of it. As I continue to view more of these advertisements, I consider the implications of these reminders of modernity in the ancient city of Venice.

The first thing I notice while I look at these advertisements is that they lure the eye from the beauty of the historical buildings that surround it to the ideal forms of beauty of the modern age that take form through the striking models on the ad’s. Beautiful models decorate beautiful buildings in this city- a harsh juxtaposition of the past and present. As we discussed today in lecture, the old and new come together in this city in a jarring and shocking way, like each entity is refusing to adapt to the presence of the other. The advertisements combine with the surrounding scenery, including ancient cathedrals and decaying pieces of the past, to reflect the differences of the past and present and the perception of beauty in each time. In my critical reflection, I considered that the beauty of the past, especially in cities such as Venice, focused mainly on art and architecture, while the beauty of our modern society, as so many magazines and our celebrity culture have demonstrated, is projected through the beauty of the individual. The advertisements depict beautiful models and nothing more- the models are truly selling the product. In a way, the models are like the art of our modern culture.

Another interesting aspect of the implementation of advertisements to cover construction projects in Venice is that, in a way, it seems that the city is ashamed of their progress, allowing advertisers to “cover up” the construction with our contemporary images of beauty. Is Venice, a city that is known to be a truly historical city, a slice of antiquity, ashamed of their progress being that it is supposed to be a place stuck in the past? Does our culture accept these contemporary relics to mask reality and allow us to remain ignorant that even an antique city must advance with the modernity of today? I find myself critiquing our modern culture, in that we expect the impossible out of Venice. Without progress, without keeping up with the times and developing, the city would cease to be. However, we enjoy being naïve and ignorant to this fact, and we accept the advertisements, gaze upon the attractive models, and enjoy the images before our eyes that truly are a foreign form of art for this timeless city.