The screening program in the black box of Palazzo Diedo continues with the documentary “Taking Venice” by Amei Wallach from 2023. In the mid-1960s, while in his revolutionary art, Robert Rauschenberg assembles street garbage and images from the mass market to reflect on what is real and what is overlooked in the world around him, the U.S. State Department in Washington chooses him as their unwitting secret weapon. The mission: to bring home the Grand Prize at the 1964 Venice Biennale. The United States, in perpetual competition with the Soviet Union, wants to show its muscles as a leader of the free world and has identified the artist who will help them in their plans in Rauschenberg, who is completely unaware of the tricks the American team is setting up to ensure his victory. Directed by the documentary filmmaker, art critic, and journalist Amei Wallach, this film is a surreal (but real) story of aggression, ignorance, and, above all, great art.
