"Expanding." "Tragic." "Well-behaved." "Serious." "Undistinctive." Those of some of the adjectives that stand out in the first round of press reviews of the Venice Biennale. Corriere della Serra's Sebastiano Grasso notes the great expansion of the event, which is making the central exhibition "unrecognizable" due to the invasion of collateral shows at alternative sites: "Exhibitions in homes and offices, in former churches, palace courts, private galleries," writes Grasso. "Artistic scenes are multiplying and the whole city is for rent, including the islands."

Le Monde's Harry Bellet and Philippe Dagen see reflections not of expanding sites but of the darkness of our current era. "It's impossible to be mistaken here," write Bellet and Dagen. "The entire 52nd Venice Biennale—the national pavilions in the Giardini, the Arsenale, and the various exhibitions in the palazzi—breathes the air of the times, sometimes tragic, sometimes funerary. It is generalized, whatever the continent, the generation or the artists. . . . It gives the Biennale, which is so often confused, tonality and coherence. The work of artistic director Robert Storr is a success; his Biennale [is] one of most interesting of the past decade."