Paco Barragan – “From Roman Feria to Global Art Fair From Olympia Festival to Neo-Liberal Biennial On the ‘Biennialization’ of Art Fairs and the ‘Fairization’ of Biennials” – Artpulse Editions

Review of “From Roman Feria to Global Art Fair From Olympia Festival to Neo-Liberal Biennial On the ‘Biennialization’ of Art Fairs and the ‘Fairization’ of Biennials” by Paco Barragan, recently published by ARTPULSE Editions

Articles and other publication that draw a parallel between art fairs and biennials are plenty, and more often than not the mounted critique falls short of fully grasping the complexity of biennials in activating and also shaping synergies in a specific region and internationally. The publication which we are presenting this week as part of our Reading Suggenstion although situated within this tradition goes a step further and delineates a long historical arch to stir up an otherwise rather crystalized field of critics and supporters of this reading.

Paco Barragan’s “From Roman Feria to Global Art Fair From Olympia Festival to Neo-Liberal Biennial On the ‘Biennialization’ of Art Fairs and the ‘Fairization’ of Biennials” recently published by Artpulse edition, is one of those publications we suspect could spark a longer and potentially more fruitful debate than others before. The book is structured in two parts, the first analyses in depth and with plenty of examples the world of art fairs, their origins, models, motivations while the second builds a parallel to that of biennials.

The Madrid based curator and art critic, whose PhD research forms the basis for this publication, brings us back to classic antiquity to observe the logic of large-scale events, certainly fascinating and useful in justifying certain rationales (sponsorship/patronage, soft power and so on) but in other instances possibly a little bit too general to explain some forms of current motivation for the model of biennials. Three references are here used to build a case: the Olympian festivals of ancient Greece, the Roman Old Master’s “blockbuster” exhibitions of the 1600s and the 17^th and 18^th century phenomenon of the Grand Tour. In all three cases if what we are interested in is situating biennials within a wider tradition the arguments are certainly present, even if sometimes especially in the case of the Gran Tour, the overwhelming aspect of looting and profound creation of geographical stereotypes at the base of a to-this-day persistent xenophobia appear a little stretched.

Certainly more convincing is the possibly core chapter of the second part in which Barragan attempts to build a typological system of biennials, dividing them into Experience, Trauma, Resistance and Neo-Liberal biennials. While we have often been very outspoken against the attempt of codifying and thus limiting the reading of each biennial, something that the author itself acknowledges by specifying that these are theoretical models in which each biennial fits only to a certain extent, the arguments used certainly offer a tool to analyze the model in a comprehensive way.

We want to point to one last aspect which struck us and makes of “From Roman Feria to Global Art Fair From Olympia Festival to Neo-Liberal Biennial On the ‘Biennialization’ of Art Fairs and the ‘Fairization’ of Biennials” an important addition to the current, rather scarce, panorama of monographs about biennials, is a particular attention to biennials outside the European/Western context. Particularly welcome is a focus on the Latin context which has so far been largely overlooked.

We can only recommend the reading in full of this publication which is available in hard copy or digital format on various online platforms (notably AbeBooks and Amazon) and thank the author for having had the possibility of reading the full version for this review.