Every two years, Venice holds up a mirror to the West, and every two years the reflection grows fainter. The Venice Biennale has pulled off an almost Dadaist trick of turning the radical-chic aesthetics of past editions into a new orthodoxy. Gramsci developed this theory while imprisoned under fascism, arguing that political power ultimately depends on cultural leadership as much as coercion. What Venice shows is the same logic but operating in reverse—an orthodoxy that asks the West to perform a continuous rite of self-correction as the price of admission to its own institutions. More from the Venice Biennale