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New Moscow Monuments, or, States of Innocence
Author(s) -
Grant Bruce
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2001.28.2.332
Subject(s) - innocence , state (computer science) , georgian , power (physics) , capital (architecture) , government (linguistics) , law , period (music) , political science , history , art , ancient history , aesthetics , philosophy , linguistics , physics , algorithm , quantum mechanics , computer science
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]