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This endeavor is dedicated to
Andree Putman Andree’s insight highlighted the uncommon greatness and humanity of Ilya Kabakov and his work. Andree’s foresight provided the impetus to build this collection.
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John L. Stewart with Emilia and Ilya Kabakov
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The making of this catalog benefited greatly from the diligence, enthusiasm and love of art that Brian Dulaney – artist and manager of the Collection – brings to all aspects of his life and work. Brian spent countless hours understanding and organizing the contents and then designing the first edition of this book. Great thanks must also be given, of course, to Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, both of whom have worked extensively and patiently with the Collection to insure that its installation in various venues is always true and proper, but also fresh and exciting to the viewer.
Robert Storr, Boris Groys and others – the depth and multiplicity of meanings in Ilya’s work that was so apparent to Andree Putman would have remained elusive to many of us. This same help has allowed us to navigate the often complex web of texts that form an integral part of this catalog and of any Kabakov installation.
This leads naturally to another critically important contribution to this catalog and the installation – the brilliance and skill of Cynthia Martin, Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Maryland, in bringing Ilya’s texts to life in English. Ilya Kabakov’s work is far from Emilia’s help over more than 20 years in building the purely visual; Kabakov is a true poet whose use of language is as significant as any of the great authors of Russian literaarchives that support the scholarly understanding of works in ture. Thus Cynthia’s subtle and skillful translations become and out of the collection has been invaluable. Without this – all the more important in allowing us English-speakers to and without beautiful and insightful essays by Amei Wallach, grasp the full literary import inherent in these works.
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Table of Contents Volume I: PAINTINGS
Early Seminal Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Ten Characters: the Albums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Ten Characters: the Installation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 White Paintings and One Monochromatic Painting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 The Holiday Paintings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Small Paintings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Volume II: WORKS ON PAPER
More Albums. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192 Drawings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Volume III APPENDIX
The Window: Introduction He Went Crazy, Undressed, Ran Away Naked: Installation Texts Photographic Supplement
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Paintings Early Seminal Work (1969 – 1971) The Russian Series (1969) Explanatory Board (1980)
White Paintings and One Monochromatic Painting The Glue Escapes (1980) Fragments
In the Corner (1969) They Lie Below (1969)
Over the Country, The Spring Wind is Blowing (1983)
Ivan Trofimovich Goes to Town to Collect Firewood (1969)
Old Courtyard (1983) Evening, 12th of June ... (1983)
Answers of an Experimental Group (1970 - 1971)
Repent and Due to All Deserving ... (1984)
Ten Characters: the Installation
He Went Crazy, Undressed, Ran Away Naked Commentaries by E. Gorunova (1989)
Nikolai Petrovich/ The Untalented Artist Displays His Work for All to See (1980)
Mural (1989) Plan of My Life (1983) Schedule of Behavior of Mokushansky Family (1983)
The Untalented Artist/ Hello the Morning of Our Motherland (1981)
List of People Having Rights (1982) Things I Have to do by March 16 ... (1989) List of Things I Was Supposed to Do Before March 1961 … (1989)
Greetings (1981) Morning/of Our (1981) Motherland! (1981)
The Holiday Paintings (1987)
The Communal Kitchen Eva Alexandrovna Kazaryants: “Whose Fly is This?” (1987) Ira Grigogyevna Goreva: “Whose Pot Is This?” (1991) Zoya Alexandrovna Lekh: “Whose Grater Is This?” (1991)
Holiday #1
Holiday #2
Holiday #3
Holiday #4
Holiday #5
Holiday #7
Holiday #8
Holiday #9
Holiday #10 Holiday #11
Holiday #12
Small Paintings Three Rings (1963)
Landscape with the Sea (1957)
Landscape at the Dacha (1958)
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Detail from The Joker Gorokhov
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Albums
Ten Characters: the Albums (1968 - 1974)
Drawings The Fruits (1968) Reconstruct the Full Picture from the Fragments (1970)
2. The Joker Gorokhov
A Piece of Meat (1971)
3. Generous Barmin
Volodja, Where Are You? (1972)
4. Agonizing Surikov
Numbers, page from the album Mathematical Gorsky (1973)
5. Anna Petrovna Has a Dream
Red Fishes (1986 - 87)
7. Mathematical Gorsky 8. The Decorator Malygin
Children’s Corner (11 drawings and text in a Ten Characters Installation (1980 - 88)
9. The Released Gavrilov
Incident in the Corridor Near the Kitchen (1989)
10. The Looking-out-of-the-Window Arkhipov
Whose Wings are These? (1991) Drawings from Unrealized Projects
On White Paper (1977 - 1980)
The Rabbit (A Story) (1994)
The Dog (A Story) (1994)
Music on the Water (5 sketches, 1995) 1. Frame for the Drawing 12. The Hare
“Furniture” from the albums (10 drawings, 1997) Children Coloring Book – Flowers (1993)
Prints
23 Great Days in April/ Or How Grisha Made an Exhibition from Waste
Children’s Coloring Book (Various, 1993)
Two Riders are Galloping through Pusan and Lin (screen, 1994)
How Can One Change Oneself ? (2000)
They are Looking Down (1995) An Encounter with an Angel (2000)
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Early Seminal Work 1969 – 1971
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The Russian Series
Three Russian Paintings & One Explanatory Board
Русская серия Три русские картины и одна Доска-объяснение 1969 Installation Four paintings, enamel on masonite, table, chairs, installation text, two barriers Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. I, #33, p. 238 - 243; #65, p. 426 - 429
Paintings Explanatory Board (1980) 125 x 197 cm, 49¾” x 77” Oil and enamel on masonite Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #54, p. 110 In the Corner (1969) 125 x 197 cm, 49¾” x 77” Enamel on masonite Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. 1 #31, p. 74 They Lie Below (1969) 110 x 172 cm, 43¾” x 67 ¾” Enamel on masonite Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. 1 #32, p. 75 Ivan Trofimovich Goes to Town to Collect Firewood (1969) 125 x 197 cm, 49¾” x 77” Enamel on masonite Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. 1 #30, p. 73
Инсталляции Четыре панели, эмаль, оргалит, стол, текст к инсталляции и два барьера Каталог Резоннэ, Том I, №33, стр. 238 - 243; #65, стр. 426 - 429
Paintings Доска–Объяснение (1980) 125 х 197 см, 49¾” x 77” Оргалит, масло, эмаль Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №54, стр. 110 В угл» (1969) 125 х 197 см, 48¾” x 77” Эмаль на оргалите Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №31, стр. 74 Лежат внизу (1969) 110 x 172 см, 43¾” x 67 ¾” Эмаль на оргалите Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №32, стр. 75 Иван Трифимович едет за дровами (1969) 125 х 197 см, 49¾” x 77” Эмаль на оргалите Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №30, стр.73
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Installation text from The Russian Series Three paintings in this series were completed in 1969 (“In the Cor-
Returning to our “topography”: in the given paintings one could
ner,” “Ivan Trofimovich Goes to Town to Collect Firewood,” “They Lie
notice the ratio of the indicated objects to the whole surface. Suppose in
Below").
Europe the ratio of towns, constructions, etc., to the surface forms 1:1,
Like many paintings of that time, the focus of attention in them
and compared with our country it is 1:1000 in the roughest approximation,
is held by their monochrome surface. This surface is pure white, as in the
of course. In my pictures I wanted to show namely these “topographical”
seven big “white” pictures, or is dark-brown as in this series. In both series,
ratios.
the surface is to be perceived in two different ways: as the surface itself, and as the infinite far space like in any ordinary picture.
When we turn to the effect of emptiness which comes from the very surface evenly covered with paint, the tiny objects – the circles, the
According to this double perception or vision, the disposition
nail, the belt and the squares of the condition – all signs – all are hardly
of the tiny elements in these paintings correspondingly changes. At one
seen on the background of this emptiness. They disappear, they sink in it,
moment they are on the surface, at another – in the infinite depth.
they are just about to fall down and crumble.
The words “infinitely” and “endless” crop up all the time. This
For many years I explained my ideas at length to the visitors of
series is named “Russian” because of the idea of our infinite, boundless,
my studio until a thought struck me: to write them separately on a large
vast surface, which is beyond our comprehension, is experienced by all of
board and to put it next to the exhibited paintings. It came out thrifty and
us. It is apparent here or, as apparent is expressed in our canine language,
somehow gayer. To my great surprise this explanation suddenly appeared
“is functioning” or “is working.”
as a picture of the series making the same impression as the paintings did
In the given series that endlessness is represented in two different
– preposterous and at the same time ridiculous and miserable.
ways: in a graphic, perhaps scientific one like a topography (a scheme of a boundless area) and in a quite visual one, as more emptiness, where next to nothing is to be found. As “topographical” or “science-geographical” objects, these paintings (two of them) are marked with conditional signs explaining what is meant on the scheme (see left-hand bottom corner). Here perhaps a small digression is needed. During my visit to
I’d like to say some words about the main character in this whole . peared to be a house paint in widespread use, the one we use for painting roofs, passages and floors (that’s why it is called floor paint). At one time it was sold in every hardware store.
Czechoslovakia all I saw impressed me greatly: houses together with neatly laid pavement, flowering gardens, clean roads and cultivated land that meets the horizon. With us it’s different: right behind the house starts the endless, vast ocean of nothing, an emptiness familiar with neither man’s labor nor with man himself. It is ready at any moment to overflow his miserable being and to submerge him and his creations into its eyeless and shameless abyss.
This color seems to have its own “ontological” (deep) meaning. The color of our country, like the whole of our humdrum existence, is fancied to be gray by me. The color of our state power is red. If we mix the first with the second, we’ll get the very color with which I overlaid my pictures.
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18 Explanatory Board (1980)
Доска–Объяснение (1980)
125 x 197 cm, 49¾” x 77”
125 х 197 см, 49¾” x 77”
Oil and enamel on masonite
Оргалит, масло, эмаль
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #54, p. 110
Каталог Резоннэ, Том I, №54, стр. 110
Explanatory Board to the Stands 1., 2., 3. 1. “Ivan Trofimovich Goes to Town to Collect Firewood” The board is overlaid with the paint of sandy color, that of soil. Ivan Trofunovich is represented by a small black truck on the stand. The town, where the firewood is to be found, is situated to the right and higher than he. The name of the town is unknown, as well as the names of me towns and the lake on both sides of Ivan Trofunovich’s path.
2. “In the Corner” The board is overlaid with the paint of sandy color, that of soil. If you watch the empty center, something “light-blue” starts to twinkle in the corner. By shifting the gaze to the corner, small houses that are lit by the sun are seen, bur the gaze reverts to the center of the stand as it is hard to look into the corner for a long time.
3. “They Lie Below” The table in the left-hand bottom corner indicates what had been depicted here: the collective-farm “Successors” (kolkhoz “Smena”), the borders of the crops, the collective-farm’s chief, etc. Those are gone now. A belt, a nail, a samovar and a vase have fallen and remained lying at the bottom edge. The board is overlaid with paint of sandy color, that of soil.
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Иван Трифимович едет за дровами (1969)
125 x 197 cm, 49¾” x 77”
125 х 197 см, 49¾” x 77”
Enamel on masonite
Эмаль на оргалите
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. 1 #30, p. 73
Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №30, стр.73
Detail of “Ivan Trofimovich Goes to Town to Collect Firewood”
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Petrovsky Region Key: Firewood Ivan Trofim. 1968
Detail of “Ivan Trofimovich Goes to Town to Collect Firewood”
24 In the Corner (1969)
В углу (1969)
125 x 197 cm, 49¾” x 77”
125 х 197 см, 48¾” x 77”
Enamel on masonite
Эмаль на оргалите
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. 1 #31, p. 74
Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №31, стр. 74
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26 They Lie Below (1969)
Лежат внизу (1969)
110 x 172 cm, 43¾” x 67¾”
110 x 172 см, 43¾” x 67¾”
Enamel on masonite
Эмаль на оргалите
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. 1 #32, p. 75
Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №32, стр. 75
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Detail of “They Lie Below”
Pavlovsky Region Key:
Kolkhoz [collective farm] “Change” [abbreviation for “Boundary”] of crops 1963 [abbreviation for “Boundary”] of crops 1965
Chairman of the kolkhoz
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2.
“Painting-objects” were the first large-format works and were made from various materials – plywood, gypsum, canvas, boards painted with enamel. Many kinds of protruding smaller elements were inserted or “impressed” into the works, causing them to resemble reliefs. – Ilya Kabakov
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Answers of an Experimental Group Ответы экспериментальной группы 1970 – 71 Painting 147 x 305 x 12 cm, 59” x 122” x 4 ¾” Oil, enamel, mixed media on board Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #39, p. 86
Картина 147 x 305 x 12 см, 59” x 122” x 4 ¾” Масло, эмаль, смешанная техника на доске Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, № 39, стр. 86
My need to escape beyond the borders of the “artistic object” is so strong that I want to simulate for myself this “outside, external” view, a view from the vagueness of life itself … And I don’t want ot admit that this is self-deception. – Ilya Kabakov
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My need to escape beyond the borders of the “artistic object” is so strong that I want to simulate for myself this “outside, external” view, a view from the vagueness of life itself … And I don’t want to admit that this is self-deception. – Ilya Kabakov
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Ten Characters: the Albums 1968 - 1974
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The outside world did not know who they were, but the musicians, poets. writers, artists of the new avant-garde recognized one another and gathered at every possible opportunity. In this “infinitely happy and joyful period of stormy, insane gatherings in my studio.” Kabakov began work on the series of 62 albums that are at the heart of his work. He started, between 1969 and 1974, with the central cycle of ten albums, Ten Characters, which was on view in please-touch facsimile in a room off the entrance to the exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies. The Ten Characters albums are works of conceptualism that come clearly out of Russian traditions: the iconostases in Russian Orthodox churches, documenting the lives of saints; the novels of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Aleksandr Pushkin, and particularly the tragicomic Nikolay Gogol. In each album, through words and pictures, Kabakov tells the story of a doomed dreamer, an artist. In each, he surveys artistic strategies of the old and new Russian avant-
garde, in each, he employs text to deconstruct his story through the language of science, religion and everyman (actually, in this case, a character named Lunina, who is everywoman at her best). The albums are the Rosetta stone to Kabakov’s work. For this reason he gave them a room of their own in the exhibition, and a table, chair, and lamp for each album so that one could prepare oneself for everything that followed. – Amei Wallach, from “Ilya Kabakov,” Catalog of the Exhibition, Museum of the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies
By the spring of 1974, Kabakov had completed the Ten Characters cycle of albums. Bulatov remembers that there was a first album, which Kabakov later reworked, in which the whole series of characters was included as in a plan; he found the completed cycle “really something fabulous. … Of course some of the elements were stronger, some were weaker. But what is important is that it is a big and
strong and very ambitious work, like the story of human life, or something, having many aspects of human nature.” In a sense the albums were the consummate response to the situation of unofficial art in the Soviet Union, where it was impossible for artists to show. The albums were small, they were personal, they could be carried and perused. – Amei Wallach, from “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away”
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THE PERSON WHO DESCRIBES
HIS LIFE THROUGH CHARACTERS Once while writing his biography, he suddenly ran into a situation, which for some reason he could not attribute to the biography of one person, although it was only talking about “him,” but could easily attribute to the biography of a multitude of people. He was terribly surprised and was even frightened by such a circumstance. After all, he perfectly understood that it referred to him only. Nevertheless these different personages had so unexpectedly and distinctly appeared before him, and so clear and comprehensible were their personalities that he even heard voices uttered by each one.
In order to extricate himself from this strange delusion he began to make unique albums, a special mixture of conditions, drawings, and explanations, each of which personified a certain personage, a special part of him. This is how large groups from the ten and more “Personages” appeared.
– Ilya Kabakov
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The Person Who Describes His Life Through Characters
Once while writing his biography, he suddenly ran into a situation, which for some reason he could not attribute to the biography of one person, although it was only talking about “him,” but could easily attribute to the biography of a multitude of people. He was terribly surprised and was even frightened by such a circumstance. After all, he perfectly understood that it referred to him only. Nevertheless these different personages had so unexpectedly and distinctly appeared before him, and so clear and comprehensible were their personalities that he even heard voices uttered by each one. In order to extricate himself from this strange delusion he began to make unique albums, a special mixture of conditions, drawings, and explanations, each of which personified a certain personage, a special part of him. This is how large groups from the ten and more Characters appeared.
He undertook once to describe his life, mostly so that he could find out from this description who he himself was, now that he had lived more than half his life. Once he described everything calmly and circumstantially, he expected to elucidate and layout before his memory everything which had happened during his years and thereby disclose all the events which transpired during them. But it turned out that the number of events for all these long years were not that many, in all two or three, and his whole life up to this day amounted only to all sorts of impressions connected with one or another person, thing, object. … Recording them all consecutively without any kind of selection, he suddenly discovered that even these variegated fragments and shards belonged not to his single consciousness, his memory alone, but, as it were, to the most diverse and even separate minds not connected with each other, rather strongly different from one another. … He reflected on this circumstance. What to do? On the one hand, he was one, so to speak; if he looked in the mirror and saw himself, but on the other hand, thinking about something, he saw in himself not one, but many.
He made a decision: unite all these “many and diverse” into a kind of artistic whole, but allow them to enter into arguments, outdo one another, but let all express themselves in turn. Let each of them have his right to vote completely and fully, in complete eternal silence, say everything that he knows, and tell his story and ideas to full expression. With that it would be possible to relax.With this decision he suddenly felt the cacophony, which had agitated him uninterruptedly inside since the time he resolved to describe his life, grow quiet. It was not surprising, for this was the noise of many voices, each of which tried to outshout its neighbors, so that only it could be heard. Now all was quiet, as if each of the internal voices concentrated and calmly prepared to wait its turn. With whom to begin? Who had the right to self-expression first? The “Master” had the cloudiest notions concerning this. He decided to let each talk one after the other, stand before him with his account of the world, and then it would be possible to compare, choose, and determine who is more important, more significant. … He began to work.
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It ended up taking the shape of ten albums with the corresponding title Ten Characters. Here is how he describes this genre of “albums” which had suddenly appeared before him. “Albums” are comprised of dense white or gray sheets of cardboard, always of the same dimension (72½, x 35 cm), on which are pasted drawings, clippings, documents, texts, and different sorts of things drawn by the author or already printed. These sheets (the quantity of sheets varies from 35 to 100) are housed in books, measuring 75 x 38 x 15 cm, which are placed on music stands in a vertical position. Viewers sit before an open book on the stand (one of them turns the pages one by one, from left to right), looks at the drawings, and reads the text.
As a genre, the “albums” are somewhere between several types of art and take from each of them: From literature (primarily Russian) – narration, subject, heroes, but mainly, the direct inclusion of large amounts of texts, either found or written by the author. From fine arts – the possibility of a separate sheet of an album to exist as an independent entity and, accordingly to draw attention to itself, be an object of contemplation, and possess a corresponding compositional structure. Therefore the text which is contained on a sheet of an “album” must be handwritten, thereby maintaining its status as fine art. From cinematography – the uninterrupted flow of drawings” stills,” of uniform size within the confines of an album, before the immobile, seated viewer.
Most of all, though, the “albums” are like a type of “domestic theater,” not contemporary theater where the action takes place in darkness in order to bind and hold more strongly the viewer’s attention and swallow him up with what is happening on stage, but more like old theater conducted on a town square in broad daylight where the viewer is unconstricted from the examination and simultaneously the evaluation of the action. The main feature of the” albums” is that the viewer himself may turn the pages. Besides the physical contact with the page and the possibility to dispose of one’s time as one pleases while looking, there is a special effect one gets from turning the pages which makes the” albums” like temporal types of art. A special experience of time occurs from the expectation of things to come like plot, denouement, finale, repetition, rhythm, etc. This genre, from the moment of its origin, reveals all its new possibilities and peculiarities.
Who, though, did these “personages” turn out to be, when one after another they appeared in the world and were able to express themselves fully? Whom do they personify? From the very beginning it’s not difficult to guess. They personify the most diverse ideas. Each idea develops to its limit, to its complete manifestation within this personage, then becomes extinguished. Here they are, the names of the ten albums describing the Ten Characters. Sitting-in-the-Closet Primakov The Joker Gorokhov Generous Barmin Agonizing Surikov Anna Petrovna Has a Dream The Flying Komarov Mathematical Gorsky The Decorator Maligin Released Gavrilov The Looking-out-the-Window Arkhipov
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Ten Characters Albums
Десять персонажей Альбомы 1968 - 1974 Eight original albums from the ten first albums referred to as the “Ten Characters” albums
Восемь оригинальных альбомов из десяти так называемых «Десять Персонажей»
The albums not owned by the JLS Collection are in the Pompidou collections.
Два альбома не принадлежащих JLS Collection находятся в коллекции Помпиду.
75 x 38 x 15 cm, 29½” x 15” x 2½”
75 x 38 x 15 cm, 29½” x 15” x 2½”
374 original drawings in eight boxed, loose-leaf albums
374 оригинальных рисунков в восьми непереплетенных книгах или альбомах в коробках
Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. I, #6, p. 76 - 81
Catalogue Raisonné, Установки Том I, № 6, стр. 76 - 81
Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. II, #78, p. 28 - 33
Catalogue Raisonné, Установки Том II, № 78, стр. 28- 33
Visually the albums present two basic techniques: drawings and texts. Intellectually these correspond to different thought processes: on one side the narrative or descriptive mode, on the other the symbolic, the allegoric, the ambiguous. Here lies the novelty of the formula because without succumbing to the cult of formal rigor, Kabakov is able to sustain, not without humor, the pleasure of the casual and the anecdotic couched in traditional language. The drawings showing scenes of daily typical Russian landscapes are followed by pictures of symbolic character whose concise and spare vocabulary describes an object reduced to its simplest expression and often wiped out altogether, leaving a great central void. Full or empty? Stepping stone to infinity or indication of a buried reality? Similarly, the texts containing narrative fragments reminiscent of the tradition of the Russian novel give
way to bewildering commentaries that are often contradictory and sometimes border on the absurd. They are given by fictional observers who reappear in each album. Their variety, their contradictory character, their compelling presence in the works themselves is fundamental to Kabakov’s art. The fact that always more than one comment is given implies others that could be formulated as well.
aperta” perfectly, but in contrast to painting devoid of social significance, they are closely related to plunges into the tragicomic reality of Muscovite daily life.
There is in this oeuvre a constant fluctuation between empty and full, between economy and accumulation. This becomes evident in the opposition between eleborate complex drawings and others whose surface is almost monochrome. It is, on the other hand, suggested by the commentaries which, as indicated, have multiplying and thought-provoking effect in the mind of the reader.
Deeply immersed in the reality of Russian life of which he is a part, Kabakov captures its essence in minute descriptions. But it is the confrontation of these petty annoyances with fundamental and global physical phenomena that reveals the general validity of the absurd, the intrinsic significance of man’s relation to death and infinity. And it is here that Kabakov’s work gains the capacity to reach far beyond the cultural framework whence it has issued.
All these thoughts and observations thus acquire equal validity. The albums play their role of “opera
The transition from the particular to the general – the mark of all great art – has been beautifully mastered in these albums with their subtle and clever combination of drawings and text.
– Jean-Hubert Martin, forward to “The Window”
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Ten Characters Albums
Десять персонажей Альбомы 1968 - 1974 2. The Joker Gorokhov 40 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 3. Generous Barmin 50 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 4. Agonizing Surikov 50 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 5. Anna Petrovna Has a Dream 32 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 7. Mathematical Gorsky 37 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 8. The Decorator Malygin 72 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 9. The Released Gavrilov 43 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text 10. The Looking-out-of-the-Window Arkhipov 50 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text
№ 2 Шутник Горохов 40 страниц, каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 3 Щедрый Бармин 50 страниц, каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 4 Мучительный Суриков 50 страниц, каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 5 Анна Петровна видит сон 32 страниц, каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 7 Математический Горский 37 страниц, каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 8 Украшатель Малыгин 72 страниц каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 9 Отпущенный Гаврилов 43 страниц каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст № 10 В окноглядящий Архипов 50 страниц, каждая 72½ х 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
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– Ilya Kabakov
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Album 2. The Joker Gorokhov Ten Characters Albums Альбом № 2. Шутник Горохов Десять персонажей Альбомы This personage has collected all kinds of jokes and anecdotes throughout his life. He is from a family of clowns, so that a large part of his collection is comprised of the repertoire of his relatives over many years. These clowns’ jokes, by the way, were rather unique, possessing one specific quality. You could say that they were entirely ambiguous. On the one hand, they were infinitely stupid, elementary, and
2. The Joker Gorokhov
even to a great extent not funny, so that the viewer or listener might not even understand the point. But this was the whole point. Behind the obvious stupidity and the flat joke opened up an entirely different space of meaning, the content of which was not at all inherent in the joke, but which was revealed, strange as it may seem, precisely because of its stupidity. – Ilya Kabakov
№ 2 Шутник Горохов
40 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
40 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
Original drawings, mixed media and text
подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
He says: My parents and grandparents were clowns and jokers even before the revolution. My aunt worked as a clown in Taganrog, my uncle in Tiflis, and my father was a clown in Kiev. We inherited from them a lot of strange stories and jokes which I carefully collect and preserve. Some of them are funny to me even now.
LEVGLEBOVICH’S “JOKES” Album page 20
THE INCIDENT IN THE HERMITAGE Note: On Thursday, Apr.18 right before the museum closed, eight people suddenly rose in the air and formed an eight-pointed star.
50 2. The Joker Gorokhov
№ 2 Шутник Горохов
40 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
40 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾”
Original drawings, mixed media and text
подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
In this album, at 47 pages one of the longest and most elaborate. Kabakov states out the territory of irony, particularly as a response to the global pretensions of Socialist Realism, but also in upposition to any position which attempts to excavate layers of his lory and meaning. Gorokhov announces himself in the first text page as the descendant of clowns and jokers “before the revolution.” On the next page he recounts a Soviet version of an altogether unfunny joke. THAT’S FUNNY – … Why don’t you think it’s funny? – Because I’m from another organization. Joke. Then, in this collection of albums-within-albums, Gorokhov’s first album is introduced with a quote from Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court.”
“‘Sun, cover yourself!’ he said in a thunderous voice. Everyone looked up. The brightly shining disk began to shrink slowly.”
– an axe, a ring, a fly, an apple – in settings in which the very real impact of the objects is explained away by Soviet rhetoric.
Kabakov is blotting out the sun of revolution that the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky had celebrated on the steps of the St. Petersburg stock exchange at the birth of the Soviet regime, “The sun – our sun!” The illustrations are double en tendres, each is overlaid with a drawing on transparent paper which seems to promise one scene that is contradicted when the page is turned. The depicted incidents concern historical and contemporary anecdotes of levitation, except, that is, pages 13 and 14.
The final album of images plays a different visual children’s game. Each page has a tiny hole cut into it, which peaks into the next turned page. The illustrations begin in 1973, with Svetlana Krymova going to work, and then, like Alice through the looking glass, going through the hole backward in time, to an 1843 garden scene, and beyond that to a Renaissance library scene, to Greece, to Egypt, and to the primal white of “ancient unknown times.” In a similar manner, Socialist Realism claimed for itself a position as inheritor of every “worthwhile” tradition in Western culture – most blatantly in Pavel Korin’s cycle for the ceiling of Moscow metro, in which, in successive cameos, contemporary Soviet heroes are knighted with the authority of scenes out of history, down to Russia’s legendary medieval past.
Page 13 shows “Grandfather Gleb Romanovich’s Watch,” perhaps a pun on the end of the watch of the Romanovs. Page 14, however, is a scene set in June 1934 – c1ose to the onset of Socialist Realism – of a haystack (reminiscent of Picasso’s realistic sleeping peasants in the hay) descending from above on dumbfounded peasants. The text begins to suggest that perhaps Gorokhov is a figment of the imagination. The following illustrations, always in pairs, depict out-of-scale objects
– Amei Wallach, from “The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away”
ARKADY LVOVICH’S “GAME” Flaccus Antiparius after the victory over the Pegolians at Pollyon*
Note: The year 181.
Album page 39
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Album 3. Generous Barmin Ten Characters Albums
I presume: Volodya Korolkov: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a cucumber
Альбом № 3. Щедрый Бармин Десять персонажей Альбомы
Anna Gavrilovna Manevich: . . . . . . . . . . a wheel Lazar Isakovich Berest: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a zinc bucket Stepanida Serebryannaya: . . . . . . . . . . . . scissors Evgeny Kashkin: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a sunflower Kraevsky: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a gray horse
3. Generous Barmin 50 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
Fedor Karpovich Lekh: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a cow
Original drawings, mixed media and text
Frida Lvovna Rosenblum: . . . . . . . . . . . . a bedspread № 3 Щедрый Бармин Mikhail Lvovich Kroev: . . . . . . . . . . . . . a chair
50 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
Nikolai Silych Kaftan: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a splinter Fedor Ionovich Markov: . . . . . . . . . . . . . a cuff-link Anatoly Ivanovich Basov: . . . . . . . . . . . . a window in a shed
This is Kabakov’s album of bar charts, of naming, of substituting words for objects, as Soviet society substituted categories for people and concepts for objects. Barmin is a compiler of lists as to “employability and subsidies” in GOZDRAVOTDEL, the city health department. But he cannot resist making up characters, parents, and stories for the people whose names he so assiduously compiles, just as Kabakov’s lively imagination wanted
always to add character to the characterless illustrations he churned out as a book illustrator. Like Kabakov, Barmin has to stick to empty and acceptable symbols. Lunina’s commentary at the end of Barmin’s first album, in this album-withinalbums, is: “He was touched strangely and painfully by a premonition of unity in the world.” – Amei Wallach
Lidia Evgrafovna: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a curtain Marfa Mikhailovna Zimina: . . . . . . . . . . a bench Anna Sergeevna Kuritsina: . . . . . . . . . . . a white tablecloth
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Album page 17
54 Surikov cannot comprehend the world, except as a torn hole in the curtain, “like an impenetrable shroud,” that hides from him the deeper truths he seeks. Sometimes, staring through the hole, he has “visual hallucinations.” The images constitute a virtuoso mockery of Abstract Expressionism as it was understood in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. On successive pages, a neat medallion, on which a fairy-tale house and landscape are depicted, is torn and decorated in a shifting field of color. Then, from a spurious “Book of Housewives” comes the
prosaic suggestion: “Take the scissors and cut along the bottom edge of the material,” permitting Kabakov to experiment with myriad visual ways in which scenes from mundane real life can peek through Malevich’s “curtain of blue sky” theory. Surikov’s third album arranges mundane reality into lined paper squares of geometric design; out of one square a face stares, in another a stool floats, still others contain rows of empty text blocks or passages of ruled white. Each page has been assigned a specific date and place, such as “Dnepropetrovsk “on
the evening of May 12, 1956.” It is, of course, impossible to exhaust the possibilities of these endless graph-paper permutations and combinations, because Kabakov is finding his language of contradictions and shuttling glances. The last page does not quite end in white; something orderly is still faintly going on at the edges; Surikov has not succeeded in arriving at the absolute truth of radiant white – only at a “yes-but” inconclusiveness. – Amei Wallach
Album 4. Agonizing Surikov Ten Characters Albums
Альбом № 4. Мучительный Суриков Десять персонажей Альбомы
4. Agonizing Surikov 50 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text
№ 4 Мучительный Суриков 50 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
This personage always, since childhood, possessed one strange, even excruciating quality having to do with his vision: no matter how he tried. he never could see the whole picture of the world in front of him. but rather he would see only a small hole, similar to a crack, and around this little hole everything was covered over with a thick film. Therefore he always lived with a kind of exhausting and depressing feeling – it always seemed to him that all that was most interesting and important was located right on the other side of that curtain,
and that he would see the clear and shining world in all its fullness, if only he could manage to remove that film, or at least move it aside for a while. A few times in his life, with intense internal efforts to chase away the film, he had strange hallucinations. The last time this happened to him, with a sharp pain in his eyes, he saw a blinding and yet soft and caressing light, without any such fog or film. He didn’t know what to think of this. After a short while he went to see a doctor. – Ilya Kabakov
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Album page 12
He says: Whenever I tried to examine everything that surrounded me in life, the result was a small scrap, like a keyhole, and everything else was hidden from me by an impenetrable shroud which never disappeared, no matter how carefully
Album page 15
I tried to look through this hole. A few times, because of this agonizing effort. I had visual hallucinations which scared me a lot. I went to the best eye specialist, Dr. Godlevsky ‌
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This was Khost on the morning of April, 9, 1981.
Album page 50
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Album page 35
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Album 5. Anna Petrovna Has a Dream Ten Characters Albums
Альбом № 5. Мучительный Суриков Десять персонажей Альбомы This personage is a woman. Her very best friend, with whom she had been close for many years, died recently. The deceased was named Olga Markovna. Anna Petrovna falls asleep and has a terrible dream. She sees Olga in this dream, but not the actual figure of Olga in clothes and shoes, but rather as the image of a small shining, golden sphere. This sphere, surrounded by other spheres, remains on the surface of
5. Anna Petrovna Has a Dream
the Earth (depicted in the drawing as a large teapot) for a short while, but then it breaks away from it and begins to travel, first in blue space and then in white where there is nothing. As Olga – a light yellow sphere – moves farther away from the “Earth teapot,” she encounters first her sister, then her mother, then her deceased brother. … They are all depicted in the form of small yellow spheres, all of the same size and
32 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾”
Original drawings, mixed media and text
подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
In 1990, Kabakov would invent a character named Ilya Kabakov, who was capable of flying off into emptiness, “the most powerful force of all those
– Ilya Kabakov
№ 5 Анна Петровна видит сон
32 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
This is Kabakov’s most blatantly conceptual album, consisting, as it does, of outlines and diagrams – maps of objects and events rather than depictions of objects and events. The story concerns the death of Anna Petrovna’s best friend, Olga Markovna, and the flight of her soul into abstraction, dissolution, and whiteness.
color. After the “Olga-sphere” passes by a large pink ring, near which lingers a multitude of other “spherepersonages” crowding around it, she is incapable of moving on, and ends up completely alone. After a while, she is suddenly encircled by little golden spheres, and soon after that they evaporate entirely into the surrounding bright space.
that rule the world.” This fellow Kabakov mentions meeting a woman, who is obviously Olga Markovna. THERE. She was also able to fly, but her flight lasted for split fractions of a second and did not go beyond the bounds of her kitchen table. These enormous asteroids, which seemed to her to be either the seashore or the wall of a building, were in actuality a tea set … I could see this clearly, I looked at her from above and from deep within.
Kabakov’s strategy here is similar to that in his In the Apartment series of drawings, in which objects are misidentified in the text key below. The difference is that in the Anna Petrovna albums, it is not objects in an apartment that the key chart identifies, but little, furry round things that remind Lunina of a dream she once had about her soul. “It was like a little shining ball, golden and fluffy …” – Amei Wallach
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ANNA PETROVNA’S STORY.
Album page 9 Olga Markovna HAD lots of acquaintances at the seashore 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Olga Markovna Koss Inga Borisovna Zayats Boat “Dawn” Masha Zadonskaya Shevronskaya – (special) Georgy Aslamazian Katya Bezrukova
8 Lena Korovina 9 Kiosk “Blue Wave”
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Album 7. Mathematical Gorsky Ten Characters Albums
Альбом № 7. Математический Горский Десять персонажей Альбомы
In one sense, this album functions as a score for the virtually musical composition of Kabakovs images, texts, rhythms, and series, It cannibalizes drawings from as far back as the early ‘60s, And it posits mathematical progressions for series and images, It also, however, concerns itself with the concept of “otherness” in a mathematical equation, particularly the otherness of a Kabakov: Jewish, from the provinces, virtually without a family, feeling himself always at odds and out of place in the Soviet dream, and after.
This personage is obsessed with one problem, that of the “series.” His problem could be formulated in the following way: in principle, one single series could be built from all the things of this world, no matter how diverse they arc. Everything could be arranged in such a series (like an arithmetical series: 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.), Things of equal size but of entirely different qualities could exist in the same series. The thesis which mathematical Gorsky postulates can be explained this way: if some element of the series is qualitatively juxtaposed to the entire series and cannot be assimilated by it (in the sense of integrated), then it falls out of the series to form a new, second, third, etc. series. The question is to what degree does the object fit into the series, and whether its relationship is qualified not so much by form, but by content.
Leave the row! An order.
Thus begins the introduction to Gorsky’s first and only album. Things are squeezed into little medallions in a row, Then the things break out from their circles: a thimble, a crown, a vase, a lighbulb. The sheets get larger – to the point where foldouts are in order. And there are objects being added up, including an elephant dancing and a horse, every progression leads to a new progression.
– Ilya Kabakov
– Amei Wallach 7. Mathematical Gorsky
№ 7 Математический Горский
37 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
37 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾”
Original drawings, mixed media and text
подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
He says: Stirem 46: 1. The emergence of a second, third, etc. series is possible given the appearance of special (sigvert) errors in the first “primary” series.
2. The field above the “primary” series, in accordance with the extension of the series itself, … is strengthened (expands) because of the possibility of the emergence in it of a second, third, etc. series.
Given the approach of the “primary” series toward infinity, the field itself also strives toward infinity.
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Album page 23
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Album page 14
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Album 8. The Decorator Maligin
8. Decorator Malygin 72 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾”
Ten Characters Albums
Original drawings, mixed media and text
Альбом № 8. Украшатель Малыгин Десять персонажей Альбомы In the past this personage was a small bureaucrat of some organization, and this is what he has to say about himself: Before retirement I worked in a review commission of our ministry and often went on business trips. Sometimes I would have to sit at meetings, sometimes in the presidium, for five hours. The speeches were long, they would put me to sleep, and sometimes I would sketch on all the material of the meeting just so I wouldn’t
Album page 17
fall asleep. My boss at the time, Sokolov, said: “What’s with you, Nikolai Alekseevich, why are you ruining documents? Why don’t you take a blank piece of paper?” But I had already gotten so used to drawing in the margins that on a blank piece of paper the only I could draw well were the borders and corners, and inside I couldn’t draw anything. Somehow I sorted through everything, threw away a lot, and the rest I put in order.
№ 8 Украшатель Малыгин 72 страниц каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
It is clearly visible from these reminscences that before us is a down-trodden, frightened creature with the pitiful fate of the little man. This is how his wife remembers him: We met when he was young and handsome, thin, but very shy, reserved. … We met in the corner. There was a dance at our technical school. Everyone had been dancing for a long time, and we had been standing all night by the wall.
Album page 61
I said to him: “Why aren’t you dancing? Don’t you know how?” “No,” he said, “I know how, but I am afraid to go out to the middle.” I said to him: “So am I.” That’s how we met. From a theological point of view, this is a rather specific phenomenon: Man, like this entire world, occupies merely the periphery, the edge. The center doesn’t belong to him. – Ilya Kabakov
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Album page 58
In one of his later albums, from the theoretical series On Gray Paper, in which he recycled abstract and surreal drawings from the ‘50s and matched them with stream-of-consciousness musings, Kabakov states: “Everything must be taken to its conclusion, that is, to hysterics.” That is certainly a principle that applies to this rumination on living and making art on the margins, never in the center, always poised between two abysses, as Kabakov did – or to live at all in the Soviet Union, as Prigov puts it, “That eastern land/On the western brink.”
Album page 11
So they were seated On the same branch One Lenin Lenin The other Lenin Stalin Having a quiet talk Way above everyone Their feathers fluttering On the edge of the land That eastern land On the western brink At the center of the world Branches on the brink.
In the album, Kabakov presents, as the doodlings by one Maligin, insane elaborations on what to do about edges, and how to frame whiteness, Maligin was an inspector at the ministry who
indulged in drawing during five-hour conferences. First he tentatively decorates a corner, with a battleship precariously riding diagonal waves; then an opposite corner to show a landscape and the curvature of the earth. He finds more and more things to put in the corners: a stool, a garden ornament, a dumb blonde hero face. Then he strings a row of balls along the top edge, then a frieze of an upside-down village, then a frame of apples, then of balls, of food, of rose bushes, of meadows, of the heads and hands of schoolboys. Then schoolboys only in the corners, and on and on. At the end, the scenes at the margins are being dissolved in light. This Maligin
could only start projects, never finish them, as in Kabakov’s aborted project to emigrate. Maligin was afraid of authority figures. “And so we never went anywhere.” Kabakov stayed in Moscow and made ten albums about little people who escaped into “radiant light.” However, the equivocal light is an expression of his ambivalence, because they all die. In the white paintings to come, Kabakov will exhaustively explore this theme of the dangers of living on the edges. At the moment, however, he lets himself off the hook. – Amei Wallach
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Album 9. The Released Gavrilov Ten Characters Albums
Альбом № 9. Отпущенный Гаврилов Десять персонажей Альбомы 9. The Released Gavrilov 43 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text
№ 9 Отпущенный Гаврилов 43 страниц каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст
As early as 1963, Kabakov had made drawings that in Western terms that would be considered Minimal, in that they consisted of geometrically organized fields of colors. However, Kabakov considers such a drawing – on yellow paper overlaid with blue so that the center is lime green and the ruled corners yellow – to be merely an example of bureaucratic design. This is the principle underlying his Released Gavrilov album. It is a matter of design and text, no illustration. The subject is Kabakov/Gavrilov in his habitual communion with nature: “Everything all around is bathed in sunlight.” Through his meditation on silence, he releases the voices within. The voices bounce from text block corner to text block corner, posing the workaday questions of the “experimental group.” But on a deeper level, there are questions of identity and place in the universe: “Volodya, where are you?” “I’m here.” Then the pages divide evenly in half, framed in sky blue, and the text – always concerning placement – is in the center. The last blue-framed words are (left) “Nothing”; (right) “Nothing.” Once we have learned some totally unhelpful details such as that Gavrilov was no good at fishing, the white is permitted to stay clear, like a board, and the script is placed in a band beneath it. The words are hysterical and lyrical; a traveler enters the country of words:
the shoeless pilgrim to liberate the words from their earthly flesh so that the naked meaning could dance …
And the words become theological and filled with shame: because we were born out of emptiness and we cry, embracing that emptiness with ourselves so that the holy place would not be empty the place where are you [you are].
The last page, as usual, represents “the white, free depths of eternity.” This time it is framed, along with a line of black, with a green, earthbound halo. – Amei Wallach
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Volodya, are you here? I don’t know.
Album page 19
Album page 35 because we were born out of emptiness and when we cry, embracing that emptiness with ourselves so that the holy place would not be empty the place where you are
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Album page 1
Album page 2
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Album page 42
Album page 43 The last two pages of the album
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Album 10. The Looking-out-of-the-Window Arkhipov Ten Characters Albums
Альбом № 10. В окноглядящий Архипов Десять персонажей Альбомы
10. The Looking-out-of-the-Window Arkhipov 50 pages, each 72½ x 35 cm, 28½” x 13¾” Original drawings, mixed media and text
№ 10 В окноглядящий Архипов 50 страниц, каждая 72½ x 35 см, 28½” x 13¾” подлинные рисунки, смешанная техника, текст Album page 10 In his introduction to the publication of this album as The Window, Kabakov points out that the Ten Characters cycle begins with a door (Primakov in the closet) and ends with a window, and that the progression of the albums is from a dark closet to “endless space, out of confinement into the light.” He posits the door as “the entrance … to me, to the inside; the window is the exit towards the outside, away from us … “While real life – and also its conventional artistic representation in Renaissance perspective – appears to be going on outside this window, we are really in a fixed place looking at only one aspect of what appears to be real-
ity. Kabakov is playing with the notion that an artist should be the interpreter of the world – even some of his friends took this position. No, suggests Kabakov in this album; all an artist can supply is personal context, as varied, as complex, and ultimately as limited as his cycle of albums. And so Arkhipov affixes dumb objects to the window frame, as Kabakov does to his drawings and paintings: a steamboat, an apple, an airplane. This, at least, transforms the limited reality of which he is cognizant into “his own fragment” of reality.
All color has been banished from this album, except in the text blocks. The drawings are Kabakov’s typical outlines without being filled in, giving them at once a more simplistic appearance and a greater ability to merge with the white of their surroundings. Lying in his hospital bed, Arkhipov sees a worker in the corner of the window, then two babushkas, then a train engine, a timetable for the suburban electric trains, the debris of the Moscow street, that cozy living room en famille (except that he is in a corner looking), a Magritte-scaled apple in an orchard. But when the windows are opened, it becomes apparent that those scenes
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Window
Windowsill
Album page 11 belong only to the reality of the window panes. They were Gogol’s “strange visions, each weirder than the last, [which] paraded endlessly before him. …Beyond the window is whiteness, and then angel wings, which accumulate until they form a vortex, a tunnel for him to enter, and take flight. Into white. By the end of the cycle, Kabakov has tunneled his way through the ten albums, through characters as “various facets and aspects,” to Hermann Hesse’s “higher unity ... of the poet’s soul.” Hesse was being widely read at that time, especially by the young artists in Kabakov’s circle.
The breast and the body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are … countless in number. Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality.
However, we are not left for long to float on the aura of Kabakov’s “exact technique.” Lunina says: “I feel sorry for the little bird in the corner of the window.” And again we are brought crashing back to earth. Perhaps it was only a bird after all.
That being the case, what are we to make of this cycle of albums, which seems always to fly into “radiant light,” into a “higher unity,” into emptiness – only to plummet and begin again? Emptiness becomes a treadmill; an endless conundrum, endlessly demanding restatement. Increasingly, Kabakov, too, will begin to focus on the bird instead of the wings of angels. – Amei Wallach
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The following text was written by Kabakov as an introduction to Album 9 “The Looking-out-of-theWindow Arkhipov" See Appendix A for English Text
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Ten Characters: the Installation
Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. I, #15, p. 132 - 145 Каталог Резоннэ, Установки Том I, №59, стр. 132 - 145
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Kabakov’s first major installation in the West was called Ten Characters, shown in New York in 1988. When it came to deciding how he should best exhibit his work in the West, Kabakov was of course being entirely consistent in instantly falling back on the old idea of fictitious authorship that he had developed at the beginning of the seventies in his albums of the same title. The works in his New York installation, which had been mainly created in Russia, were distributed among ten different fictitious authors – whereby each figure was given an imaginary biography, presenting each in turn as a lonely, withdrawn individual who practised his art in the seclusion of a small room. This demonstrates how Kabakov’s installations are rooted neither in Performance art nor Post-Minimalist site-specific art, unlike most of his Western colleagues, but rather in narrative literature – or more precisely, the novel.
Every installation by Kabakov tells a story – almost always the same story about an isolated soul living in an uncomfortable, menacing environment. But no less interesting than the similarities shared by his earlier works and his installations are the things that set them apart. One purely formal and immediately conspicuous distinction is the spatial arrangement that was entirely lacking in the earlier version of this work. But equally
characteristic is that, far from being brightly illuminated, as were the white pages of the original albums, the space containing the installation Ten Characters is quite dark and shadowy. This somberness, coupled with the arrangement of the various pictures and objects around the space, is a deliberate disruption of the viewer’s gaze, making it hard for him to see clearly. These almost baroque installations offer a programmatic contrast to the “white cubes” of minimalist and conceptual installations; they play a game of light and shadow with the viewer’s gaze drawing attention to the difficult issues raised by prying into other people’s private lives and perusing the intimate trash of their existence – but it also emphasizes the pleasure of such voyeuristic incursions into the darkness of hidden intimacy. Art here is seen as the disclosure of private rubbish, which in fact ought to be protected from the dazzling light of the public gaze. Yet it is precisely this disclosure of intimacy that renders the whole thing interesting. It is no accident that the entire installation space of Ten Characters was made to look like a typical Soviet communal apartment where the former residents had left behind some nondescript rubbish which should really have been cleared away. The shared apartment was also the theme of several earlier albums by Kabakov. As an be seen in the installation Ten Characters, the communal apartment is
inhabited by artists only. While the person living in each of the rooms is cocooned within his own private dreams, they all live together in one apartment. This is a case of communication without communication, of a closely-knit daily life led in total inner isolation. The communal apartment is of course representative of the general quality of life under the conditions of Soviet communism, a life marked by the fear of selfexposure and consequently of self-betrayal. At the same time people were also living at extremely close quarters, both physically and spatially. This mixture of inner isolation and outward intimacy must undoubtedly have imposed an immense emotional strain. However, as so often in such cases, Kabakov endeavours to discern in this unbearable existential concoction a condition humaine universelle – and even a utopia. The installations he has created in the West are almost always evocations of the collapsed world of Soviet communism that bring to life all of its ugly, intolerable, boring, and depressing features. Yet far from acting as a critique or a downright accusation, they attempt to formulate the experience of Russian communism as the discovery of a dimension of human existence which would otherwise remain obscured – one which not only holds negative promise, but also suggests a certain hope. – Boris Groys
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Kitchen I. “Gallery” “In this kitchen, despite that it belongs to all tenants to no one person, the artist who lives in the neighboring room puts his paintings here. We don’t know exactly why, maybe nobody needs them, maybe his commissions were not accepted, but he puts them here assured that everyone in the communal apartment will be glad to look at them.” – Ilya Kabakov
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Nikolai Petrovich/The Untalented Artist Displays His Work for All to See
Николай Петрович/Бездарный художник показывает свои работы для всех 1980 Installation From the “Kitchen #1” room of “Ten Characters” installation
Painting
Инсталляции «Кухня #1» из инст
Картина
260 х 190 cm, 102½ ” x 75”
260 х 190 см, 102½ ” x 75”
Oil on wood
Дерево, масло
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #59, p. 118
Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №59, стр. 118
7. A large group of paintings emerged that were made as works of a “mythical” artist from the ZhEK. (ZhEK is a state bureau responsible for the maintenance of buildings as well as all questions involving residence permits, inventory, certificates, etc.) These large-format paintings were drawn in the spirit of “Sots realism” (this artist works by social order and in the reigning style in “our” art), but executed with unexpected mistakes and blunders. They were done in the technique of street signboards.
8. Large amounts of text were gradually included in paintings of this nature. The text is written on the painting or various objects are attached directly to its surface. Both the paintings and the texts are of a utilitarian, functional nature, both in terms of the materials used in their preparation (orgalyte, enamel), and in their appearance. They resemble the illustrative stands or signboards which covered the exterior walls of Russian buildings and which stood on special supports at intersections, on squares, in parks, etc., from the 1950s through the ‘70s. Simultaneously full of hot optimism and cold indifference, this anonymous production reflects the same everyday, ideological propaganda which comprised for the most part the face of our cities and streets during that time period.
– Ilya Kabakov
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Nikolai Petrovich/The Untalented Artist Displays His Work for All to See
Николай Петрович/Бездарный художник показывает свои работы для всех 1980 Many times I have made works that simultaneously contain, usually one under the other, an image and a text. In meaning they often contradict one another and in this game each participant receives a new meaning and significance. In the painting “Nikolai Petrovich,” the relationship between the image and the text is tautological. The text can be understood as an explanation for what is depicted. Wherein lies the intrigue; what purpose was there in creating a literal situation where the painting and the inscription directly correlate to one another? In order to understand what follows, it makes sense to include here the text written on the board, at least the beginning of it: “It was a quiet, gray, cold autumn day. The horse was harnessed, but Nikolai Petrovich kept stalling and could not bring himself to go out for anything. The trip did not frighten him. In fact, he was totally indifferent to the new journey, and he was not thinking about the cold night, the mud, the bumpiness, or any of the other usual discomforts. “So, are we going?’ asked his traveling companion, a local agronomist, also called Nikolai, in a slightly hoarse voice after the cold night. Nikolai Petrovich didn’t feel all that well either. “It’s getting cold already, and I left the house in only a short and a jacket.” And so on. The entire text moves along in this spirit, right to the very end, and it is impossible to find either an unexpected turn, or some “other” meaning either in the phrases or in the plot itself that quickly bring to mind hundreds of similar ones. Everything – the text, going on and on monotonously like chewing gum stuck in one’s mouth, or the subject of the painting that has also been familiar since time immemorial and therefore we are sick of it, the view of some Siberian river – all of this doesn’t have any internal develop-
ment, everything is tautological and equal only to itself.
is drawn on masonite, the material which was used tomake virtually all stands, posters, propagandistic Everything taken together does not focus attention slogans in the Soviet Union during the 1960s and 1970s, and such was the standard style of painting of on itself and is perceived not as an independent isolated whole, but rather as a fragment of something. But the anonymous “executor” and such was the standard the entire matter rests precisely in this fragmentariness. script of a handwritten text. In a word, there is nothing The painting as a whole presents itself as a fragment of more to discuss here: the painting does not hold our attention, and one feels like walking away. something located somewhere beyond the boundaries of this “part.” The entire written text is the exact same But still it seems that you could take one more kind of fragment. It begins with a truncated half of a look at the painting before stepping away. The nature word “ ... us” and breaks off also mid-word. We don’t of a fragment is paradoxical precisely because it is a know the continuation, the end of the story. fragment. And the nature of our consciousness is such that seeing the fragment, we cannot help but activate It would seem to be logical to make a few paintings before this one proposed for the exhibit, and a few our imagination, our memory. The banality of the fragment evokes an entirely non-banal reaction to recreafter it in order to complete, to perfect the narrative ate the missing components, to recreate the context, chain, to connect the beginning and the end. But with a glance at the painting hanging before us we see that on – ultimately, to recreate the reasons why this particular the wall there is a boring, totally unattractive banality, fragment was chosen by the author. It becomes unexpectedly an unsolvable, almost detective-like mystery a banality that was discussed above. And it is not difficult to propose that no matter how many works there and it tums out to be quite difficult to explain why the fragment appears to be banal, and this turns out to afmight be “before” and “after” this one, they would be fect the deep layers of consciousness even more, and exactly the same, and most likely, it would be imposthe problem to which there is no answer turns out to be sible during such a viewing to discover the “FIRST” painting and the “VERY LAST” painting. Banality has all the more strange and mysterious. neither beginning nor end; it covers over any reality with a fine layer, reducing everything to a common denominator, to a single surface. Banality is always equal to itself in all of its manifestations, in it any part is equal to its whole and therefore any fragment of such banality does not appear to be something deficient, but rather quite the contrary, a full-valued representation of all the rest. Both the materials and the technique used in making “Nikolai Petrovich” speak about the banal. It
It is curious that a fragment that is really a valuable piece of an ancient vase or sculpture does not evoke such a strange and vague tension as the scrap or shard of something that is familiar to everyone lying about under foot. Moreover, it is probably necessary to hang this work neatly on the wall, preferably of a museum, and to supply an appropriate commentary. – Ilya Kabakov
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for us and a quiet, gray, cold autumn day. The horse was harnessed, but Nikolai Petrovich kept stalling and could not bring himself to go out for anything. The trip did not frighten him. In fact, he was totally indifferent to the new journey, and he was not thinking about the cold night, the mud, the bumpiness, or any of the other usual discomforts. “So, are we going?” asked his traveling companion, a local agronomist, also called Nikolai, in a slightly hoarse voice; after the cold night Nikolai Petrovich didn’t feel all that well either. “It’s getting cold already, and I left the house in only a shirt and jacket. Good thing I brought a raincoat, just in case. Damn this weather!” he thought. “You never know what it’s going to be like. Well, I guess it’s time to say goodbye to summer.” “Yeah, let’s go,” he said and with a sigh stood up from the bench. The door opened with a squeak and, letting the agronomist out first, he saw the already pinkening sky, courtyard, village outskirts, the road winding down the mountain and the view so familiar and already tedious to him after all these years. In the wagon, looking silly among the other things, lay an old refrigerator, which the landlord of their lodgings, taking advantage of the opportunity, asked Nikolai Petrovich to deliver to his brother-in-law’s house in the next village.
Gallery view at the The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
Nikolai Petrovich had worked there for a long time, changing his profession often, and now, as a senior forestry inspector, had been called to Usolye-Verkhnee where “his presence was needed immediately” and where they had been waiting for him three days already. Because of the bad road and the wagon breaking down, though, he had been unable to get there. “If there were only a decent road in these regions! At least like the one between Vyshgorod and Khalupin,” he thought with his usual annoyance. “Then they would be perfect. Ah, why talk about it?” He even squirmed a little as he remembered the Zheludovsky Ravine between Beryozov and Lugovinov which they still had to cross today and in which all wagons, horses, and even vehicles, without exception, bogged down. Last month a tri-axled dumptruck became so stuck that even two tractors had difficulty dragging it out after it had sat there for a whole week. “After the rains these past few days, what will it be like now?” thought Nikolai Petrovich melancholically, but then right there he resolved not to think about such a thing, and instead, in his usual manner, think about something pleasant. And that something pleasant had happened not all that long ago.
Translation of “Nikolai Petrovich …”
Pleasant, and even joyful, was the following: Nikolai Petrovich’s daughter, Marusya, who went to Kranoyarsk, passed her examination and entered the agricultural institute. How many problems there had been with this Marusya! “She has my character,” mused Nikolai Petrovich with pleasure, recalling the many unpleasantries Marusya’s “stubborn” nature had always brought them. He had only to remember the many arguments, tears and persuasions the whole family had been through with her decision to move to Krasnoyarsk and take the examination for the “aggie” institute. “What’s the matter, there’s not enough work for you here in our area?” her sister and mother had yelled at her. “Where will you live? You won’t be among your own kind there!” echoed her grandmother. Nikolai Petrovich only…
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Since the early 1970s, Kabakov has made the future of the modern artist the main subject of his reflections. Reflecting on the conditions of art production in the artwork itself is a typical feature of the art of the 1960s and 1970s. This reflection usually took the form of institutional critique. All aspects of the system of art – the art market, the museum, art criticism, etc. – were analyzed and criticized. Unlike this well-known type of institutional critique, Kabakov concentrates his attention not on the institutions of art but on the position of an individual artist – and specifically an average, “normal” artist, millions of whom exist in our world today. … Kabakov, even if his art addresses a theme that is universal in our day and age and applies equally to artists everywhere in the world, refers on the formal level of his oeuvre primarily: to two seemingly irreconcilable traditions in Soviet painting: Suprematism and Socialist Realism. The reasons for this choice of formal means surely lie first in Kabakov’s own biography, since they are formal means with which he has been very familiar since his youth. There are, however, also deeper reasons for this choice of formal means. …
Suprematism, as Malevich understood it, wanted to eliminate every individual artistic style and taste and create a new collective style for the communist humanity of the future. Socialist Realism, though clearly distinct from Suprematisrn, also wanted to create an anonymous, collective style. This nonindividual character of Soviet art clearly distinguishes it from the art of the West, which is marked by the artist’s search for an individual style. Soviet art certainly did not practice a free combinatorial use of all possible forms of art – on the contrary, many such combinations were explicitly prohibited. At the same time, Soviet art, including Soviet painting, had a nonindividual character that made any claim to individual authorship implausible. Because viewers could not really distinguish between the works of two artists – let’s call them Petrov and Ivanov – these names seemed purely fictional to them. In a certain sense, Kabakov made explicit the deep destabilization of individual authorship that official Soviet art had always implicitly pursued. … And so when quotations from mass culture turned up in paintings by Pop artists like Andy Warhol, it was perceived as an aesthetic shock. Soviet painting, by contrast, functioned in the context of mass culture from the outset –and hence it can be unproblematically appropriated today. – Boris Groys, Catalog Raisonné, Paintings
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The Untalented Artist/Hello the Morning of Our Motherland installation
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The Untalented Artist/Hello the Morning of Our Motherland
Николай Петрович/Бездарный художник показывает свои работы для всех 1981 Three paintings created by The Untalented Artist in the “Ten Characters” Installation, 1980 - 81
Три картины, написанных Бездарным художником для инсталляции «Десять персонажей», 1980 - 81
Triptych
Триптих
260 х 570 cm, each 102½” x 74¾ ”
260 х 570 см, каждая 102½” x 74¾
Oil on wood
Дерево, масло
3-page installation text on shelf
текст из инсталляции (3 страницы) на полке
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #60, p. 120 - 122
Catalogue Raisonné, Установки Том I, №60, стр. 120 - 122
Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. I, #17, p. 152 - 157
Catalogue Raisonné, Установки Том I, №17, стр. 152 - 157
Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. II, #98, p. 142 - 145
Catalogue Raisonné, Установки Том II, №98, стр. 142 - 145
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Text of “The Untalented Artist/Hello
The Untalented Artist … He works at home, making these paintthe Morning of Our Motherland” ings of his in the “stand” genre – quickly and garInstallation ishly painting images which are always in time for some holidays, events or decrees, corresponding to some solemn occasion. Most often these “paintings” This is an anonymous artist; he doesn’t have a name. In general, he is an average person; like many, are taken down right after the event, but it happens sometimes that they remain on the streets and in the a semi-failure. It’s possible that he used to like to squares for a long time, and belong to, shall we say, draw in his youth. He even graduated from a special visual agitation, and as such they are exposed to the elementary art school and dreamed of becoming a vicissitudes of all types of weather: they get soaked professional artist. But then his fate decided differwhen it rains, damp, crack, and after a while, dependently: a bad environment, a failed marriage, family, ing on their condition, they are touched up, repaired perpetual financial problems – and he had to say farewell to career as a professional artist. He got a job or replaced by new ones. This type of “stand” which our artist makes as an artist-decorator at a factory in a small provinbelongs to this period of the end of the 1950s – becial town, where for many years he executed orders ginning in the 1960s in our country, and by now this for decorating day-care centers, the streets, the local form of visual agitation has taken on different forms museum, even decorations for city holidays. They and sizes. are typical provincial productions, done on quickly assembled plywood or masonite boards. They are It must be said at the outset that these “paintingmediocre artistic works like those that were produced stands” were made not by one, but by at least two by the thousands all over our country. artists; two participated in the conception and actual But the paintings of our artist have their own characteristics which distinguish them a little from the usual, standard production of this type. He is not by nature an untalented person. The monotony of the flood of orders has not completely extinguished in him the spirit of improvisation and the artistic ambitions of youth. Some orders he executes like a genuine maestro, and certain paintings he even does for himself and not on someone else’s orders. … Therefore, the works of his brush are the result of a unique mixture of everyday artistic production (reproductions, postcards, photographs), the skills of a basic professional education which he received in school, and the spark of creative ideas, improvisation, and illumination which sometimes visit him and thanks to which he carries out the work entrusted to him with love and enthusiasm … The text located to the side in this room tells in detail about the fate of this character:
realization of these “works.” The first of these is the “boss” who ordered the “stands,” who proclaimed its theme and idea. This might be the second and third secretary of the party executive committee, the one responsible for “propaganda.” Before the approaching holiday he commissioned our artist to do his work “with real materials.” Before this the artist had already done all sorts of routine work for his committee: writing slogans, posters, announcements – any work involving lettering and images. The second author is that very artist who calls himself “untalented” aloud to others (although in fact he himself doesn’t think this is so). He is far from young, he is already over 50, and he lived a rather complicated “artistic” life before settling as an artistdecorator at the executive committee, for which he perhaps was promised and eventually received a small room in a communal apartment where he lives, receives guests, and carries out his work all at the same time. According to his stories, he graduated from some kind of “course” when he was young, and
had an “elementary art education”, but then life threw him around, pushed him in, “swallowed him up” and there was no longer the time nor energy to become a “real artist”... But the “talents of his youth” are still alive and come to the fore in this or that work ordered which are at times executed with skill and even inspiration. In essence, no one has a need for these “standpaintings” which we are discussing, just like the two people who are directly connected with them don’t have need for them; neither the young “boss-client” nor the artist-producer. The addressee of these works is absolutely ANONYMOUS. Both want to be rid of these “works” as soon as possible, as one wants to be rid of an importunate and tiring fly which refuses to be chased away; and both are governed by a feeling not only of boredom, but also of fear, but if it were
91 Left panel: Greetings, 8 VI Construction of mountain road Usa-Chun. 1978 Relaxation Zone. Dnepovskoe Sea. Kanev. Center panel: Morning / of Our Main match of the season. Central Stadium “Dynamo.” Moscow. Project Bureau TsH FT. Omsk. Right panel: Motherland! Sunny morning on the boulevard. City of Ulan-Ude. During practice lessons at FZU. City of Kaliningrad.
possible to say how, in a different sense for each of them. Upon viewing each finished “work,” the “boss” ponders whether he’ll catch hell from his direct superior (perhaps from the chairman of the committee) when his superior sees this stand in the appropriate place in the square or near the committee during the holiday; and trying to guess at the result, he tries to decide to himself whether to give his approval or not to the finished, but obvious hack-work, to make the artist add something or not to give a damn, having decided that “it’ll do as it is.” On the other hand, the artist himself, afraid not so much of his boss as afraid that he won’t “close” the order, assures him that he has does his best and that the result is simply magnificent. A long, agonizing struggle begins between them, in which the boss, himself thinking about future retribution, will plead,
threaten and invoke the artist’s skill so that he would somehow improve it, add to it, touch up the highly questionable work, and the artist in his turn, assures him that he has done everything possible, that he can’t make it any better than it is, and that they should “put it in the shade, under a tree, and then it’ll do just fine, after all, it’s only for two days …”
that that’s how the “great masters” work, and others he leaves out, not suspecting that they even existed. But some of them turn out quite well (like the “game at the stadium” and a few others).
However, we must be fair to the artist, who, feeling the scale and significance of the order, ambitiously gives free rein to his intuition, visual memory, and to his “elementary art education.” Repudiating pathetic repetitions – even though one might expect from him entirely standard ideological production which has been turned out many times before – he makes certain elements and images “from himself,” just like he imagined them. And this often lets him down – many fragments of the stand he executes carelessly, thinking
But as often is the case, a child who is wanted by no-one, not his parents, not uncles, not aunts – turns out to be entirely healthy, capable and joyful . . . The rejoicing and the sun somehow break through and exist in the work which is produced in this way, despite, and maybe thanks to the fact that both parents didn’t apply to it “all their talent,” “responsibility” and “their entire hearts and souls.”
What results is a dreadful mixture of obvious hackwork, simple lack of skill, and bright flashes here and there of artistic premonitions and “illuminations.”
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Left panel: Greetings, 8 VI Construction of mountain road Usa-Chun. 1978 Relaxation Zone. Dnepovskoe Sea. Kanev.
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Center panel: Morning / of Our Main match of the season. Central Stadium “Dynamo.” Moscow. Project Bureau TsH FT. Omsk.
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Right panel: Motherland! Sunny morning on the boulevard. City of Ulan-Ude. During practice lessons at FZU. City of Kaliningrad.
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Kitchen II. “VOICES” “In this huge space of the kitchen of the second communal apartment I can hear the voices of all the people who ever lived here as they stand over their stoves preparing their meals: the quarrelling, the insults and the moment when they become friends again … These voices, these questions without answers, these answers without questions, I hear them til this day …” – Ilya Kabakov Additional Text
“When I submerge into my childhood world, I see it inhabited by a number of the most strange and comic individuals, neighbors of our large, communal apartment. Each one of them, it seemed to me then, had an unusual idea, one all-absorbing passion belonging to him alone.”
Eva Alexandrovna Kazaryants: “Whose Fly is This?” Ева Александровна Казарянц: «Чья это муха?» 1987 From the Communal Kitchen in the “Ten Characters” Installation
Из инсталляции «Десять персонажей» из «Коммунальной кухни»
Painting
Картина
Oil on wood Artist-made frame 64 х 102 cm, 25” x 40½” Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, # 129, p. 214
Масло, дерево Рамка сделана художником 64 x 102 см, 25” x 40½” Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №129, стр. 214
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Eva Alexandrovna .Kazarjanz: Whose fly is this?
Elizaveta Evovna .Svethchnaya: . Don’t know
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The painting is a small board, evenly painted blue with thin boards painted green nailed to it in the shape of a frame. Two rectangles, also green run along both edges near the top. Something is written in each of them in clerical calligraphic handwriting. On the left one: Irina Mikhailovna Korobova: Whose fly is this? On the right one: Ignatevich Berestetsky: This is Yuri’s fly.
The fly they are talking about is depicted in the center against the blue. In terms of composition, material, quality of the colour, this painting has the same “image” and same origin as The Kitchen Series; only instead of pots and other kitchen items, there is a “fly” in the same place. Hence, the dialogues between I. M. Korobova and I. P. Borisov have the same sacred significance as those of the other “kitchen personages.” But there is, of course, a small difference. Because the background of the painting, even though it is dull, is nonetheless blue, one could presume that what was in mind was the depiction of the sky and, naturally, the image of the fly is flying in the blue space. Then the voices on the right and left acquire a somewhat different meaning, if we take into
account their arrangement above, below the very frame itself. This place and the green shadowboxes resemble the depictions and texts on medieval engravings of those who live in the heavens. In this way, we hear a dialogue of “heaven-dwellers,” conversing with one another about the fate of the fly, although unlike the fly, we cannot see their faces, we only know their names and what they say to one another. But if this is the case and these are unique gods of some unfamiliar heavenly hierarchy, then it becomes clear who this “fly” really is. The fly is a small, unnoticeable soul, more like a little soul, almost invisible to the eye and who is getting lost in the air. And the questions about this soul are so ridiculous in relation to the fly – as though the fly could actually belong to someone in reality – they become nonsensical. The question on the left could sound like this: Who is concerned about, who takes care of, who protects this soul? The answer on the right appears austere and despairing – perhaps it doesn’t have a protector and it is completely alone in the world. Hence, given such an interpretation, we enter into profound areas of theology. But the whimsical, anecdotal appearance of the painting does not permit us to take further steps in this direction, and proposes that we remain within the bounds of the ludicrous and ridiculous. – Ilya Kabakov
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Ira Grigogyevna Goreva: “Whose Pot Is This?” Ира Григорьевна Горева: «Чей это ковшик?» 1991 From the Communal Kitchen in the “Ten Characters” Installation
Из инсталляции «Десять персонажей» из «Коммунальной кухни»
Painting
Картина
70 x 120 cm, 28” x 47”
70 х 120 см, 28” x 47”
Oil on wood with mixed media
Масло, дерево, смешанная техника
Artist-made frame
Рамка сделана художником
Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #217, p. 287
Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №217, стр. 287
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Ira Grigorievna Goreva: Whose pot is this?
Ira Grigorievna Goreva: Don’t know.
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Zoya Alexandrovna Lekh: “Whose Grater Is This?” Зоя Александровна Лех: «Чья это терка?» 1991 From the Communal Kitchen in the “Ten Characters” Installation Painting 70 х 120 cm, 28” x 47⅝” Oil on wood with mixed media Artist-made frame Catalogue Raisonné, Paintings Vol. I, #218 p. 288
Из инсталляции «Десять персонажей» из «Коммунальной кухни» Картина 70 x 120 см, 28” x 47⅝” масло, дерево, смешанная техника Рамка сделана художником Каталог Резоннэ, Картины Том I, №218, стр. 288
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Zoja Alexandrovna Leks: . Whose grater is this?
Boris Michailovich Kovin: Vera Ignatievna.
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6. In “monochromatic” works the entire essence
of the painting was contained in these “RussianSoviet” colors – colors which for me turned out to be metaphors for our earth, sky, and nature. The texts in such paintings were arranged in the corners. Sometimes, in addition to these corner elements, small objects were added in the center, as can be seen in the “Kitchen Series.” – Ilya Kabakov
Opposite page: Galerie Dina Vierny, Paris, 1991
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Children’s Corner Детский уголок 1980 – 1988 12 Drawings Pencil, paint, mixed media on paper in 12 parts 12 pieces each 30 x 21 cm, 11⅜” x 8¼” installed with mattress and pillow Catalogue Raisonné, Installations Vol. I, #22, p. 182 - 185
12 рисунков карандаш, масло, смешанная техника на бумаге в 12 частях 12 частей, каждая 30 x 21 см 11⅜” x 8¼” инсталлировано с матрасом и подушкой Каталог Резоннэ, Установки Том I, №22, стр. 182 - 185
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Installation Text Children living in this “apartment” have found themselves a refuge in a darkened nook where old things that no one needs are piled up. This place, like all others, is semi-dark: the light of the weak bulbs doesn’t penetrate this place. There are drawings from children’s books hanging on the walls, but all of them are just scraps, and are placed haphazardly – no one tends to this corner; on the contrary, it is an undesir-
able place for both parents and the person “responsible” for the apartment. They all wonder why the children gather here, and why they cannot play in the rooms together with the parents, why do they have to play separate, what kinds of secrets do they have …? But the children need “secrets” from the adults, they are absolutely necessary.
Although the apartment is filled with people, in essence no one pays attention to the children, the parents are consumed with other worries, none of the children has any place in the rooms because of the overcrowding, and therefore, they run around and race about among the adults, always getting under foot, and they are always getting chased away and smacked by their own parents and by others.
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