Taking Venice tells one slice of that story: a long-rumored conspiracy between the State Department and art dealers to ensure that the young painter Robert Rauschenberg would win the grand prize at the event sometimes called the Olympics of art.
Instead, it's a tale of Americans crashing what had been a European party in a moment when American optimism was at its height. Artists like Rauschenberg, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, John Chamberlain and Jasper Johns were making work that exploded ideas about what a painting should be and do.
In a 1963 speech a month before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy declared, I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
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