Art Or Sound - Fondazione Prada - Venice

This historical survey charts the relationship between art and sound from early allusions to the audible in the pictorial through the fascination with sounding automata and impossible instruments to contemporary works by artists emphatically engaging sound as both subject and material. The scope proposed by curator Germano Celant's selection is broad and erudite as it must be to begin to tackle this subject with any authority. Artists from Giovanni Battista Cassarini, to Luigi Russolo, Marcel Duchamp, John Cage through to contemporary champions of sound Christian Marclay and Janet Cardiff populate the complex set of relationships proposed here. Despite the neglect evident in art historical accounts and in the ordering and display of countless museum collections (even now), a fascination with sound, its beguiling immateriality and undeniable power of engagement has clearly been present in the work of numerous artists for centuries. This is an opportunity to realign our hearing of the past with a more sonically articulate present. That we can do this in the splendid environs of this palazzo is no hardship. Until November the 3rd.