Beneath the waves

摘要

Artists have long been inspired by the great issues of their day. Eugene Delacroix's topless amazon, Liberty, celebrated the revolution that toppled the French king in 1830. Picasso's "Guernica" mourned the horror of the Spanish civil war. Earlier this month a panel backed by the UN warned that 1m species were under threat because of human interference. So it is fitting that the Venice Biennale, which opened as those findings were released, should at last have discovered the theme of climate change. Alas, much of the resulting art is polemical rather than arresting.