The biennale seems to have brought death to Venice this summer. There’s a corpse floating face down in a swimming pool in the Giardini. Outside the Arsenale a dead postman sprawls. A pile of putrifying body parts lie heaped outside the Italian pavilion and an upper room of the old customs house has been converted into a morgue. So don’t be surprised if you find that a pall has been cast over proceedings. This year’s biennale feels decidedly subdued.

This does not mean that the era of the world’s most important arts gathering is over. Indeed, as the Bienniale embarks on its 53rd edition, it appears, if anything, to have increased its pull. Seventy-seven countries have turned up, including a number of newcomers, most prominent among them (if only because it has set up two outposts) the United Arab Emirates. And there is an eclectic assortment of new minority groups to boot, ranging from Catalonia through the Principality of Monaco to Peckham in South London, which stands proudly apart from the rest of the British capital, setting up its own mini-empire in an empty shop.

Participants indulged in a few of their traditional preview-week rites presenting everything from a high-spirited Maori haka in the Piazza San Marco to an English grand-tour tea party. A flotilla of pirate boats set sail for the Grand Canal. A painted submarine pulled up outside the Guggenheim. And yet the biennale seems, broadly speaking, to have lost its exuberant buzz. For all such potentially promising quirks as the Ukrainian pavilion being curated by a former heavyweight boxing champion, the carnivalesque atmosphere was definitely lacking; unless of course you count that sideshow of human traffic that could always be watched passing back and forth across the security cordon that surrounded Roman Abramovich’s yacht.

Daniel Birnbaum, a Swedish-born, Frankfurt-based, 45-year-old teacher and curator, is the director of the biennale this year. He was a late appointment. It was the Dean of Yale University School of Art, Robert Storr, who had initially been scheduled for the second time in succession to curate the biennale, but after a fracas over finances Birnbaum was appointed. He is the youngest director yet, and he had barely 14 months to put the whole beano together. Perhaps the lack of preparation has proved an advantage. His biennale certainly feels responsive to current global moods.

This year, the shadow of economic recession looms large. “Making Worlds” is the biennale’s theme, and to make a new world, it would seem, you must first break the old one up. Wherever you look you find images of things being dismantled. Art is stripped down, pared back, scattered, strewn and smashed. A dark, sometimes almost funereal, mood prevails. France turns its pavilion into a prison with a starkly striking installation by Claude Lévêque. An Australian video artist turns a piece of roadkill into a contemporary pietà. Gosha Ostretsov, from Russia, invites you to step into a sort of chainsaw massacre meets high culture scenario. And although his offering is quite frankly a bit boring, Steve McQueen, representing Britain, reflects the general mood with a film that explores a shadowy flipside of the gardens that lie at the heart of the biennale.

Spectators are invited to go back to beginnings and start again. There is a pronounced sense of retrenchment in the newly expanded Italian pavilion in the Arsenale. The artists showing in this space pay contemporary homage to the innovations of Futurism — this year marks the centenary of the first publication of its manifesto. The pavilion is well worth a visit. It feels eloquently elegiac, even lyrical.

The Americans present a grand tripartite celebration of the godfather of conceptualism, Bruce Nauman. If you aren’t familiar with his work, with his nagging voices, his wrestling hands, his perplexing neons and taxidermist’s models, then this biennale offers you a fantastic and often wonderfully atmospheric chance to catch up. It is Nauman who has been awarded the biennale’s prestigious Golden Lion.

Meanwhile, in the ramifying spaces of the Arsenale, more normally the arena of the aggressively radical, past names are given a fresh opportunity to make their presence felt. There is an evocative installation by the former Arte Povera artist Michelangelo Pistoletto, for instance. Spectators are invited to view themselves in a series of vast mirrors, to take stock of what they see, before they turn and find that it has all been violently smashed up.

This year the “you must go to see” gossip feels decidedly muted. The Nordic pavilion was much talked about but that was mainly because it was funny and people were delighted with this bit of light relief in the form of a mock estate agent’s tour of a house gone horribly wrong. And if the first sculpture in the Arsenale — a delicate construction of strings that sent shafts of golden light pouring through the darkness — was appreciated, that was mostly because it felt like a welcome ray of hope.

There are a couple of things that appear repeatedly on the agenda. The first is a pronounced Middle Eastern presence, though this was more marked for its novelty than anything that was produced. The United Arab Emirates launched itself with an unabashedly propagandist and irredeemably arrogant exhibition called It’s Not You, It’s Me. The Palestinians, occupying (perhaps with knowing irony) a space in the old Jewish quarter, stuck to undigested politics. But an exhibition of art from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan had a couple of more interesting pieces, if only because they slipped free of stereotypes.

The reclaiming of the Dogana, long-abandoned customs house in Venice, is another major talking point. François Pinault, the tycoon art collector and owner of the auction house Christie’s, has spent some €20 million to turn this decaying vestige of Venice’s great maritime history into a contemporary museum in which to display his collection. The end result is, in one sense, a masterpiece and definitely worth a visit. The collection inside — and if nothing else go to see Sigmar Polke’s lurid canvases, their surfaces gleaming like an oil slick — is sometimes fabulous, but it is also quintessentially fashionable. It speaks of financial investment rather than a heartfelt passion and so it loses its soul. It shows another sort of death.

But art lovers need not go into mourning. Death is about more than just burial. It offers a moment to look back and take stock. This is the sort of assessment that this year’s biennale is about.

Unmissable - shows you must see

Nathalie Djurberg in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni — a powerful new talent flourishes in a terrifying Garden of Eden.

Miquel Barceló in the Spanish Pavilion — Spain’s superlative master of painting understands the alchemic processes that lie at the heart of his art.

Peter Greenaway on the Isola S. Giorgio Maggiore — an entrancingly atmospheric installation that brings Veronese’s Wedding Feast at Cana to vivid imaginative life.

Elisa Sighicelli in the Italian pavilion — a simple but beautifully eloquent video piece, The Party is Over, captures the mood of the times with elegiac lyricism.

Maurizio Cattelan at the Punta della Dogana — shrouded bodies carved out of white marble are laid out in a row.

Cildo Meireles in the Arsenale — stroll through the rainbow in a startling prismatic installation by this most striking Brazilian installation artist.

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