Soviet and American
artist, leading representative of conceptualism, researcher of Soviet everyday life
artist, leading representative of conceptualism, researcher of Soviet everyday life
By the 1950s, art seemed like a huge frozen monolith. And suddenly this monolith underwent a thaw and began to disintegrate.
1954-1962
However, freedom ended abruptly — in December 1962, when Nikita Khrushchev went to the Manege for the exhibition for the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists.
1962
In addition to the socialist realists, he saw the new Soviet modernism and was furious. He told the artists that their paintings were "shit" and "smears". After that, he began to tighten the screws on all artistic fronts.
However, freedom ended abruptly - in December 1962, when Nikita Khrushchev went to the Manege for the exhibition for the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists.
In addition to the socialist realists, he saw the new Soviet modernism and was furious. He told the artists that their paintings were "shit" and "smears" and that they were "goddamn faggots". After that, he began to tighten the screws on all artistic fronts.
In addition to the socialist realists, he saw the new Soviet modernism and was furious. He told the artists that their paintings were "shit" and "smears" and that they were "goddamn faggots". After that, he began to tighten the screws on all artistic fronts.
The illusion that art could be both independent and public in the Soviet Union died.
Many artists refused to compromise with the authorities and went underground to remain free. Among them was Ilya Kabakov.
Многие художники отказались идти на компромиссы с властью и ушли в подполье, чтобы остаться свободными. Среди них был и Илья Кабаков.
Clandestinity and a communal apartment
Forced clandestinity
and a communal apartment
and a communal apartment
The kommunalka is the quintessence of the world of the Soviet man. A space that paradoxically combines the most collective and the most intimate.
The kommunalka is a good metaphor for Soviet life, because you can't live in it, but you can't live otherwise either, because it's almost impossible to leave the kommunalka.
"
He arranges installations of notes and phrases addressed to each other by the inhabitants of communal flats.
Kabakov nails simple objects of Soviet everyday life — a grater, a mug — to shabby painted shields. He draws bunnies and carrots, combining them with obscene inscriptions made with exemplary neat letters from his school drawing class.
Kabakov conceptualizes the world of the communal apartment, examining the traces left behind by its occupants: personal belongings, household objects, drawings, paintings, texts.
Kabakov creates a total collage of the endless manias and habits of Soviet communalism.
Kabakov nails simple objects of Soviet everyday life - a grater, a mug - to shabby painted shields. He draws bunnies and carrots, combining them with obscene inscriptions made with exemplary neat letters from his school drawing class.
He arranges installations of notes and phrases addressed to each other by the inhabitants of communal flats.
He arranges installations of notes and phrases addressed to each other by the inhabitants of communal flats.
Catalog of Soviet everyday life
The small room is completely devoted by its inhabitant to a rich collection of "trash" things. They are arranged in cabinets and showcases, suspended from strings stretched under the ceiling, attached to special stands.
All items are neatly labeled, with scraps of phrases from their previous owners, and numbered.
The hero of this work explicitly says that the world is garbage. Garbage emerges above all as a metaphor for an average, gray, constant, eventless existence.
The hero of this work explicitly says that the world is garbage. Garbage emerges above all as a metaphor for an average, gray, constant, eventless existence.
The description of everyday Soviet life reaches its apogee in Garbage Man. Garbage becomes a metaphor for life.
I didn't know what to say, what to do. Let me think I'll do...
something...
6 rubles for groceries, 2 rubles
for water, a ruble for the post office — a total of 9 rubles.
Whose mug is this?
I don't know.
All items are neatly labeled, with scraps of phrases from their previous owners, and numbered.
The hero of this work explicitly says that the world is garbage. Garbage emerges above all as a metaphor for an average, gray, constant existence, above all an eventless existence.
The hero of this work explicitly says that the world is garbage. Garbage emerges above all as a metaphor for an average, gray, constant existence, above all an eventless existence.
I didn't know what to say, what to do. Let me think I'll do...
something...
6 rubles for groceries, 2 rubles
for water, a ruble for the post office — a total of 9 rubles.
Whose mug is this?
I don't know.
Communal text
Any communal text is in one form or another — on an automatic, unconscious level — imbued with concepts and terms that penetrate from the larger world, above all, in a huge number of impersonal pronouns. These are "they," "it," "we," and impersonal forms in general: they come, it's accepted.
In short, the larger world appears
in the form of indefinite texts. The text is the only manifestation of the outside world in communal life.
in the form of indefinite texts. The text is the only manifestation of the outside world in communal life.
Otherwise, communality is total. There is no big world or other system of values for communalism — it forms a completely closed world.
An important element of both the communal world and Ilya Kabakov's works is text.
The faucet is finally fixed!
The trash was not thrown away again.
And why the battery doesn't work, I saw how coal was unloaded in the yard.
Today they didn't deliver bread again, so I stood in line for nothing.
The corridor and the kitchen are the central spaces of a communal apartment. Through the corridor, everyone knows what goes on in the neighborhood. And the kitchen is not only a place for cooking, but also a kind of agora, where quarrels, fights, or repentances take place.
These are places where everything is so electrified that anything can happen. Communal hell exists here in its most condensed form...
"
"An incident in the hallway near the kitchen"
In The Incident in the Kitchen Corridor, numerous pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils seem to hang in the air, evoking the feeling that at any moment they might fall to the floor with a crash.
The installation reveals with particular poignancy the tension that arises in an overcrowded residential space,
where dormitory living is not a voluntary choice, but a forced necessity.
where dormitory living is not a voluntary choice, but a forced necessity.
The only way to avoid destroying one's identity in domestic conflicts with communal neighbors was to escape into one's own world. Only a catapult could physically help one escape from the communal apartment.
In The Incident in the Kitchen Corridor, numerous pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils seem to hang in the air, evoking the feeling that at any moment they might fall to the floor with a crash.
The installation reveals with particular poignancy the tension that arises in an overcrowded residential space,
where dormitory living is not a voluntary choice, but a forced necessity.
The installation reveals with particular poignancy the tension that arises in an overcrowded residential space,
where dormitory living is not a voluntary choice, but a forced necessity.
The hero sets himself the task of finding a technical solution for escaping from a communal apartment, and not just anywhere, but straight to heaven. It is impossible to live in such conditions, but it is possible to invent a mechanism by which salvation will be possible.
According to the artist, the installation describes the situation of an escape to paradise, but an escape planned by a Soviet man, brought up on dialectical materialism and the belief in the infinite possibilities of reason.
The viewer is shown a boarded-up room in a communal apartment, whose inhabitant, using a home-made device, has escaped from Soviet reality by hiding in the sky.
"The man who flew into space from his room"
This is very similar to how the founders of Russian cosmism, Nikolai Fyodorov and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, treated their goals.
Fyodorov argued that death is a technical problem, and that the conquest of space, which is a necessary consequence of the need to settle the resurrected generations, is only a matter of time.
Tsiolkovsky went even further, arguing that the death of man is always accompanied by the release of atoms with the possibility of reconnecting them into more advanced systems, and it is easy to overcome the Earth's gravity, though you need a jet engine.
Tsiolkovsky went even further, arguing that the death of man is always accompanied by the release of atoms with the possibility of reconnecting them into more advanced systems, and it is easy to overcome the Earth's gravity, though you need a jet engine.
Fyodorov argued that death is a technical problem, and that the conquest of space, which is a necessary consequence of the need to settle the resurrected generations, is only a matter of time.
Tsiolkovsky went even further, arguing that the death of man is always accompanied by the release of atoms with the possibility of reconnecting them into more advanced systems, and it is easy to overcome the Earth's gravity, though you need a jet engine.
Such a romantic plot and title refer to an enduring theme in the duo's work - the aspiration of the little man to escape beyond his predictable, dull world.
The work is a staircase of several structures that takes a small, modestly dressed man up into the sky. His hands are turned toward the sky, he is — most likely in vain — waiting to meet an angel. There is, however, a chance of an encounter.
"How to Meet an Angel"
Shortly after creating this installation, Ilya Kabakov himself made his escape from the communal world.
Emigration to the United States
Getting started with Emilia Lekah
1988
1988
Wedding with Emilia
From that point on, all of their work was collaborative, in varying proportions depending on the specific project.
From that point on, all of their work was collaborative, in varying proportions depending on the specific project.
1992
Вскоре после создания данной инсталляции Илья Кабаков и сам совершил побег из коммунального мира.
Since the early 2000s, artists have increasingly turned to spaces beyond the real world.
Paintings from the last fifteen years tend to be combined in large series, the first of which was Under the Snow (2004).
"White" plays an important role in the art of Ilya Kabakov as a symbolic space beyond the real world, the all-pervading light — "white nothing" and "white everything". The snow in the artist's paintings bursts with holes, glades through which fragments of fragmented memories peer.
Paintings from the last fifteen years tend to be combined in large series, the first of which was Under the Snow (2004).
"White" plays an important role in the art of Ilya Kabakov as a symbolic space beyond the real world, the all-pervading light - "white nothing" and "white everything. The snow in the artist's paintings bursts with holes, glades through which fragments of fragmented memories peer.
"White" plays an important role in the art of Ilya Kabakov as a symbolic space beyond the real world, the all-pervading light - "white nothing" and "white everything. The snow in the artist's paintings bursts with holes, glades through which fragments of fragmented memories peer.
In two "collage" series of paintings, the theme of memory fragmentation is revealed through the combination of several figurative layers.
Memories
"Two Times" (2016) collides scenes from Soviet everyday life with compositions borrowed from art history, in which pastoral landscapes by Nicolas Poussin, religious paintings by Rubens and Caravaggio can be guessed.
In two "collage" series of paintings, the theme of memory fragmentation is revealed through the combination of several figurative layers.
"Two Times" (2016) collides scenes from Soviet everyday life with compositions borrowed from art history, in which pastoral landscapes by Nicolas Poussin, religious paintings by Rubens and Caravaggio can be guessed.
"Two Times" (2016) collides scenes from Soviet everyday life with compositions borrowed from art history, in which pastoral landscapes by Nicolas Poussin, religious paintings by Rubens and Caravaggio can be guessed.
«Решать, кто попадет в будущее, будут «суровые люди» — вожди. Все, не попавшие в «уходящий поезд», обречены на забвение.
«
It will be up to the "hard men" — the leaders — to decide who gets into the future. All who do not get on the "departing train" are doomed to oblivion.
In 1983, Ilya Kabakov published a poetic parable in the journal of unofficial art, A-Ya.
"Not everyone will be taken into the future"
The installation represents the railroad tracks with the departing train. On the end wall of the last car is a constantly running inscription: "Not everyone will be taken into the future". Rejected paintings are scattered all over the platform. They belong to the author of the installation: the artist does not put himself in the position of critic or judge, addressing all questions to himself, to the viewer, to the future.
The same problem applies to each artist personally — does he care about how his work fits into today, or would he like it to live on tomorrow, and what is that difference?
The installation deals with a problem relevant to the situation in the contemporary art world: what happens to artists and their work when they find themselves in the near, or even distant future?
In the end, Ilya Kabakov offered the world an anecdote, packing all this pain, Soviet anthropology into the form of an anecdote-tale.
As Emilia Kabakova notes: "Ilya's work is quite different, like predicting the future. The children's ships ended up being warships that were cursed.
As Emilia Kabakova notes: "Ilya's work is quite different, like predicting the future. The children's ships ended up being warships that were cursed. When we did the Red Pavilion, we thought the USSR would return, but we really hoped it wouldn't. Thirty years later it's here again. It was a fantasy, but also a fear of the return of the USSR, of the totalitarian regime".
Kabakov himself admits that he lives in the past, but not in the present and especially not in the future. But sometimes living in the past also means seeing the future.
And at the same time showed a man who makes his way through everyday life to the high art, space, another world.
When we did the Red Pavilion, we thought the USSR would return, but we really hoped it wouldn't. Thirty years later it's here again. It was a fantasy, but also a fear of the return of the USSR, of the totalitarian regime."
Valeria Dilion
The project was created for non-commercial purposes as part of the education. All materials are taken from open sources and belong to to their owners.
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