Abstract

On the Venice Biennale 2013 in the Russian pavilion the public was impressed by Vadim Zacharov’s monumental installation Danaë. This official Russian contribution to the Venice art event is analysed in two steps. First, I will look at the different contexts and infrastructures Zacharov’s art project is imbedded: the neoliberal finance economy, the Russian oligarch’s engagement in the global trading of art and luxury, and the identity and cultural politics of Moscow’s presidential administration. In a second step, I examine the poetics and pragmatics of Zacharov’s Danaë: the narrative about art and power told by the motif of money, the verdict against art as critical or renitent statement, the depoliticisation of art, and the immanent aesthetics of the “ornamental”.