ABOVE: the Ka’abah, the spiritual centre of Islam. German Artist Gregor Schneider’s plan to install a strikingly similar structure in St. Mark’s Square for the Venice Biennale were kiboshed by nervous organizers, fearing violent responses.

We finally read the first satisfactory explanation of the flap at this year’s Venice Biennale over Gregor Schneider’s sculpture, which was rejected by organizers at the last minute with sketchy explanation. Schneider said at the time that it was a political decision to cancel the display, and lo, he was right. The Art Newspaper published recently a look at the controversy over Schneider’s work Cube Venice 2005, which would have been a 50-foot cube draped with black fabric in St. Mark’s Square. In this sense, it would have resembled the Ka’abah, the physical centre of Islam in Mecca.

Fears of a terrorist strike in response to the work—Artforum wouldn’t have hated it that much, would they?—prompted the Biennale organizers to strike the work from their dance card. The part that makes it all so ridiculous, however, is that Schneider apparently did all his homework first, actually sending a colleague to Saudi Arabia to consult imams about the theological dos and don’ts regarding the Ka’abah. And they were totally cool with it, told him that nothing in the Quran forbids reconstructing an imitation Ka’abah in Venice or anywhere else. If only the terrorists could be so accommodating; a U.S. curator, who curiously refused to give a name, said that fundamentalists with bombs would probably not be interested in the finer points of Quranic interpretation, and so Cube Venice 2005 was shelved. It’s a reason. A bit of a cop-out, but it’s a reason.

LINK: The Art Newspaper > Art in the age of global terrorism