The Venice Biennale may officially start on the 10th, but everyone knows that it's the pre-festival happenings that are the real reason the world's top art stars flock to the city. "It's impossible to describe the glamour," says fine art photographer Todd Eberle, who called us from a water taxi en route to a dinner being hosted by Larry Gagosian. Eberle is shooting the private parties, dinners, and goings-on exclusively for Style.com. Here, the first of many indescribably glamorous installments to come over the next few days.

Tuesday night: Dinner at the Grand Canal in honor of Matthew Barney and the late Joseph Beuys and the new exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, All in the Present Must be Transformed.

Later that evening, it was off to Angela Missoni's yacht for a fête for Tracey Emin that was co-hosted by Rachel Lehmann and David Maupin of New York's Lehmann Maupin gallery.