New Moscow Monuments, or, States of Innocence

Abstract

In the 1990s, the Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli triggered a furor over the millions of tax dollars the Moscow city government paid him for his monumental art installations around the Russian capital. Critics have assailed such gross expenditure in a period of economic privation, questioned the propriety of Tsereteli's ties to power, and ridiculed his often cartoon‐like aesthetics. In the embattled new Russian state, this infantilization of public space through government‐sponsored art reprises a familiar discourse of timeless innocence in the service of state power. [Russia, Moscow, monuments, state power, time, art]