|
|
| Ilya Kabakov. Labyrinthine thinking in a comunal flat Laine Kristberga, Screen Media and Art Historian | |
| Prologue Today ilya kabakov is referred to as the most important russian artist, an artist who became world famous with large-scale installations in the late 20th century.1 born in 1933 in ukraine, kabakov spent most of his life in russia, the soviet union, leading a “sad, bleak, shitty, despicable (..) existence”2 and earning his living by illustrating children’s books. only in 1987 did he manage to emigrate to the west. in 1988 he started working together with his wife, emilia, and since then all their works have become co-projects.3 kabakov’s name is associated with moscow conceptualism, which emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a narrow circle of intelligentsia in moscow’s unofficial art underground. yet, this article will examine personal motives in kabakov’s artwork – from text to installations – and will attempt to follow up the multi-vocality so significant to the artist, analysing the semiotic gaps and flows between the linguistic and artistic means of expression. Moscow Conceptualism – Russian unofficial art Russian unofficial art in the 1960s partly emerged as a counter-reaction to the strict rules of the party’s nomenclature and as an alternative to the clichéd style of official art or propaganda, yet, at the same time, it was also an attempt at escape in order to avoid the cultural isolationism that developed as a result of stalinist politics. contrary to western conceptualism, soviet artists did not have easy access to the western cultural tradition or the russian avant-garde works of the 1920s and 1930s. nor did soviet artists have the opportunity to purchase high-quality materials, exhibit non-conformist art or participate in international markets and the exchange of ideas.4 Ilya kabakov characterises these stringent conditions as “the unbelievable pretentiousness and idiotism of soviet life”,5 yet, simultaneously, this “unbelievably sad, standard life recurring every day”6 was fertile ground for the conceptualists. kabakov himself was the main engine in the russian conceptual movement and is regarded as the founder of moscow’s linguistic conceptualism (the 1965-1966 work Whose Fly Is This? (Чья эта муха?) was the first work by kabakov in which a written dialogue was used in painting). because the moscow conceptualists existed secretly, underground, and were ideologically turned against soviet official art, this unofficial art can be defined as anti-art in accordance with the definition provided by the Fluxus organiser george maciunas: “(..) anti-art forms are primarily directed against art as a profession (..)”.7 as noted by boris groys, moscow conceptualism was a systematically organised “microsociety” (a special “movement” or “scene”) with its own “seemingly institutional internal organisation” and binding ideology.8 russian art historian Victor tupitsyn (Виктор Тупицын), in turn, offers the phenomenon of “communal optics” as a kind of thinking model in the soviet political circumstances.9 Kabakov admits that in the “unofficial world”, where russian artists existed in total isolation, a perspective or opinion from the “out- side” was impossible.10 the artists functioned, fantasising about the world that was located beyond the borders and influence of the soviet union. in such conditions, they secretly tried to visualise the interpretations of this closed world on the outside.11 in order to implement it, an artist had to take two positions simultaneously: he was both an author and an observer. in addition, because a genuine viewer, critic or historian was not available, the author unintentionally took on those roles as well, trying to guess how his or her work would be assessed “objectively”. the author tried to “imagine” the “history” in which he or she functioned and which “looked” at him or her.12 Painting – linguistic conceptualism American sculptor and art historian david colosi writes that kabakov used ugliness in his paintings in order to demonstrate his position on beauty.13 in the early 1980s he created works of art by affixing everyday kitchen utensils to painted surfaces and accompanied them with conversational fragments. in the work Whose mug Is This? a mug is affixed to a blue surface, but above it reads: “ekaterina lvovna soyka: whose mug is this?” “fedyor sergeevich malanin: i don’t know.” in another work a grater is affixed to the surface with the inscription: “olga ilinievna zujko: whose grater is this?” “anna Petrovna zelenguk: olga markovna’s”.14 Dialogues in the corners of the paintings resemble cartoon captions and point to kabakov’s affinity for the complicated intervention between a written word, its representation in signs and its visualisation in art. colosi defines these paintings as “conversation pieces”. it is significant that neither the author nor the speakers are present; however, the object – in this case, the painting – is present. thus, the viewer must identify not only the owner of the object, for instance, the mug or grater, but also the author/owner of the painting by asking: whose painting is this?15 Although all of his works are interwoven with a subtle, ironic humour, the greatest degree of self-reflexion appears in the work Whose Fly Is This? with the following dialogue: “anna evgenievna koroleva: whose fly is this?” “sergei mikhailovich khmelnitsky: that’s nikolai’s fly.” the object in this instance is a painted representation of a fly.16 just as a fly can belong to no one or is so insignificant that no one would care to claim it (except nikolai), the painting, too, belongs to no one.17 Colosi indicates that in these works kabakov reflects on communism’s hobby-horse, or favourite topic – public ownership. to pose the rhetorical question “whose mug is this?” in the context of the soviet union is futile, since the mug belongs to everyone. to ask the question “whose fly is this?” is just as ridiculous, because, on the one hand, living creatures belong to no one, and, on the other hand, no one would claim a fly as a pet. ironically, the characters in the mug painting cannot identify the owner of the mug, but those in the fly painting know that nikolai owns the fly. thus, in his works kabakov reveals ambivalent dualism, manifesting the failure of the dream to make everything public and at the same time demonstrating that the most intimate, private and unwanted things cannot be or will not be made public property.18 Ten Characters – albums It is impossible to speak of kabakov’s artwork without drawing special attention to the cycle of ten albums called Ten Characters (1972–1975), in which cinematography, literature, stage design, performance and art are interwoven. the cycle overflows with stories, commentaries, digressions, observations, repetitions, quotations, pseudo-quotations and anecdotes as well as a wealth of visual material. it begins with a child escaping from the blackness of a closet in the album “sitting-in-the-closet Primakov” and ends with a bedridden man looking through the window in the tenth album “looking-out-of-the-window arkhipov”. kabakov writes: “the metaphors underlying these two images are easily deciphered: the door is the entrance to us, to me, to the inside; the window is the exit towards the outside, away from us.”19 | |
 View from Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s installation The Strange City monUmenTa. 2014 Photo: Līga marcinkeviča Courtesy of the artists | |
| When working on the cycle, kabakov did not anticipate it to be a successful and popular work; within the circles of moscow conceptualism, however, it has been characterised as the central work. groys calls it a “manifesto of the new current” in soviet art. Viktor Pivovarov (Виктор Пивоваров) describes Ten Characters as kabakov’s greatest contribution to the conceptualist project. Pavel Pepperstein (Павел Пепперштеин) states, “the albums are clearly the most important foundation for his [kabakov’s] art.” russian art historian margarita tupitsyn (Маргарита Тупицына), in turn, describes Ten Characters as “the most influential portion of kabakov’s oeuvre”.20 In the most schematic sense, the Ten Characters cycle consists of ten individual albums (ink, watercolour, colour pencil on paper) in the following order: “sitting-in-the-closet Primakov”; “the joker gorokhov”; “generous barmin”, “agonizing surikov”; “anna Petrovna has a dream”; “the flying komarov”; “mathematical gorsky”; “the decorator malygin”; “released gavrilov”; “looking-out-of-the-window arkhipov”. the shortest albums, “anna Petrovna has a dream” and “the flying komarov”, consist of 32 pages, while the longest – “the decorator malygin” – has 72 pages.21 Ten Characters cannot be categorised; the work cannot be framed in the trajectories of any genre or medium. its narrative leads to thoughts about literature and its visuality leads to thoughts about art.22 although there is one character in each album, kabakov does not include representations of the eponymous figure. instead, each album proceeds according to a rigid plan: a title page, then a page featuring a quotation from the character, then two citations from “real” textual sources (usually excerpts from a novel, or folk wisdom). following the introduction, the viewer encounters visual stories that make up the bulk of the work. like a matryoshka, each sentence reveals further albums within each character’s album.23 in his notes on the albums, kabakov calls his characters “theme-myths” – something more than plot devices but less than visual allegories.24 Ten Characters – performance In his treatise on the “Total” Installation (1995) kabakov characterises western installation art as a product of happenings. in his opinion, installation became “...what has remained after the action, what has already been discarded, the stationary remains, objects after the action has been completed and the actors and the public have dispersed”.25 kabakov suggests that eastern, or at least soviet, installation art emerged from atriumvirate of theatrical tradition,especiallythatof stage design.26 it must be noted that the artist’s works are frequently described as “theatrical”, meaning that they resemble a theatre or film set. kabakov, too, often compares his artwork with theatre. an installationartist,hesays,isthe“director”of“awell-structureddramatic play”, and all the elements of the room have a “plot” function; lighting, for example, like the use of sound and reading matter, plays a vital role in enticing the viewer from one part of the space to the next.27 It is interesting that kabakov implemented the Ten Characters cycle as a performance in a manner similar to john cage, testing the spectators’ patience in a reading lasting for several hours. his contemporaries remember that for the first audiences Ten Characters was a long, hard trial. though occasionally light-hearted in tone, the work demanded a punishing degree of concentration from its spectators. whereas audiences at plays and concerts approach such performances with a range of expectations in mind, the first spectators of Ten Characters were denied such opportunities. haplessly inclined to deem all information in Ten Characters significant, the guest of the unofficial art underground was worn down by the album’s trail of supplements and reiterated repetitions.28 in his notes kabakov compares his “concerts” with “a situation entirely familiar to everyone, when we arrive at someone’s house and the hostess, not knowing how to occupy us, begins to show us the fat ‘family’ album with family photographs. ‘this is our aunt, this is our brother-in-law, these are my sister’s acquaintances from the institute....’”29 Artists rimma and Valery gerlovin (Римма и Валерий Герловины) remember: “the manner in which these albums were presented, resembling the first experimental shows of the lumière brothers, is characteristic. after placing the book on a lectern, the author himself turns the pages and reads the text to the audience, which sits before him, as in an auditorium. this performance lasts from two to four hours, during which the audience passes through various states of immersion.”30 clearly, kabakov himself also viewed the albums as a test of his spectators. he describes being “very aggressive” in trying to show as many albums as possible each night and was delighted when he heard someone snoring.31 Ten Characters – installations The Ten Characters series plays a crucial role in kabakov’s artistic handwriting, growing from a textual and visual samizdat publication to performance and large-scale “total” installations.32 in the installation The man Who Flew Into Space From His apartment (1985) kabakov staged a narrative scene for the viewer to unravel. first, a spectator enters a sparsely decorated hallway with coats and a hat hanging up on one wall; on another wall is a shelf, upon which a number of framed documents are put. these comprise three reports of an incident – a man flying into space from his apartment – that were ostensibly given to the police by the three men who shared the flat with the escapee. looking around the hallway, a spectator notices an incompetently boarded-up doorway; peeping through the cracks the spectator can see a small cluttered bedroom strewn with posters, diagrams and debris, a home-made catapult with a seat, and a hole in the ceiling.33 | |
 Details from Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s installation The Strange City monUmenTa. 2014 Photo: Līga Marcinkeviča Courtesy of the artists | |
| The man Who Flew Into Space From His apartment was initially intended as part of the bigger installation Ten Characters (exhibited in 1988), which comprised seventeen rooms and was designed as a communal apartment complete with toilets and two kitchens, each room inhabited by a different personality.34 representing the characters by the ephemera they had left behind in each space, kabakov invited the spectators to fantasise about the complex psychological condition of the apartment inhabitants. for example, in the room where “the man who never threw anything away” had lived was an enormous collection of valueless objects, whereas in the room where “the talentless artist” had lived spectators could see a selection of banal socialist realist paintings.35 as indicated by kabakov, “rubbish not only is a symbol of the ruin of destruction and entropy, but it also has a particular potential because all these peoples’ lives are really basically a clutter of things that have been drawn from that rubbish. so rubbish has a capacity to go either way. it is sort of neutral but a symbol of both things, of construction and destruction.”36 in discussing his works containing garbage, kabakov says: “i spent twenty-plus years in my studio, and i don’t remember taking out the garbage, and it accumulated over the years. it gave me great pleasure to examine and sort through each paper again and again, especially those that had really become old.”37 this tendency to recycle not only his own garbage but also his own artwork plays a significant role in kabakov’s production. he combines early drawings, paintings, albums and characters in later installations and often combines previous installations in later installations.38 The total installation Kabakov refers to an installation as a “total installation” if it offers the spectator an immersive experience, namely, a very particular mode of looking in which a spectator not only physically immerses in a three-dimensional space, but which is psychologically absorptive, too. kabakov often describes the effect of the “total installation” as one of “engulfment” – we are not just surrounded by a physical scenario but are “submerged” by the work; we “dive” into it and are “engrossed”, as when reading a book, watching a film or dreaming.39 according to kabakov, “the main actor in the total installation, the main centre toward which everything is addressed, for which everything is addressed, for which everything is intended, is the spectator. the whole installation is oriented toward his perception, and any point of the installation, any of its structures, is oriented only toward the impression it should make on the spectator, only his reaction is anticipated.”40 In his treatise on the “Total” Installation41 kabakov presents many arguments about installation art, several of which epitomise the general tenor of opinion since the 1960s. the artist argues that installation is the latest, dominant trend in the succession of artistic forms (which have included the fresco, the icon and the painting) that all serve as “models of the world”. for kabakov, what confirms the place of installation in this trajectory is its status as a non-commodifiable object: “(..) the installation cannot be repeated without the author; how to put it together will simply be incomprehensible. it is virtually impossible to exhibit an installation permanently because of the lack of sufficient space in museums. (..) it is impossible to reproduce, recreate; a photo gives virtually no impression at all.”42 Personal motives – The Corridor (My Mother’s Album) (1990) The Corridor (my mother’s album) (1990) is presented to spectators as the autobiography of bailey solodukhina. although she is one of the fictitious characters whose dreams and disappointments are narrated through kabakov’s albums and installations, the portrayal of the character is based on the life and memories of kabakov’s mother, berta solodukhina (Берта Солодухина). adapting the narrative legacy of dostoyevsky, gogol and chekhov, kabakov creates a “three-dimensional novel”.43 two parallel stories are told as the spectator walks through a winding corridor that recalls the dim lighting and shabby décor of the communal apartments of moscow. in a series of texts hung on the wall solodukhina recounts the hopes, deprivations and uncertainties of her lifelong struggle for survival, adopting a neutral tone that implies “this is normal”. her life story is collaged with photographs, the so-called “pictures of happiness” that officially documented life in the soviet union as an inevitable progress towards a joyous future.44 The sound of muffled singing can be heard in the corridor – it is kabakov’s own voice, which gradually becomes louder as the viewer approaches the centre of the labyrinth to find nothing else but a pile of discarded boards, sticks and panelling (kabakov has intentionally created the central space as an anti-climax). walking through the claustrophobic corridors offers the visitor an experience that kabakov himself often came across: “numerous corridors have persecuted me all my life – straight ones, long ones, short ones, narrow ones, twisted ones – but in my imagination they are all poorly lit and always without windows, with closed or semi-closed doors along both sides.... all the corridors of my life, from earliest childhood on, have been connected with [the] torture of endless anticipation.”45 thus, the spectator, too, is caged in a time trap, waiting for something that will never come.46 This labyrinthine archive, constructed with the artist’s wife, emilia kabakov, can be seen as a microcosm of soviet culture, bureaucracy, the museum, everyday life and one individual’s memories. it ironically juxtaposes the promise of utopia with disillusionment, the frustrations of enforced communality with the pleasures of fellowship, the profoundly tragic with the comically absurd.47 Personal motives – The Toilet (1992) Kabakov’s work The Toilet (1992) was created for the purposes of exhibition at documenta ix in kassel, germany. because the most innovative artists from all around the world are invited to take part in documenta, kabakov interpreted his inclusion in the exhibition as an invitation to create a work that was explicitly “russian-soviet”. as the “representative of the soviet motherland,” he explained that he felt he “should take the position which corresponded to its position in the world.... that place, of course, was in the rear.... [in] the front was america, europe was in the middle, and russia was in the back.”48 Kabakov created a public toilet exactly like those he remembered seeing throughout russia during the 1960s and the 1970s – “sad structures with walls of white lime turned dirty and shabby, covered with obscene graffiti that one can’t look at without being overcome with nausea and despair.”49 Visitors patiently lined up by gender, as directed by the familiar signage on the two entrances. upon entering, they found that the space, still containing open stalls with only crude holes for squatting, had been transformed by the artist into a typical, modest two-room soviet apartment – the living room and kitchen on the “men’s” side, the bedroom on the “women’s” side.50 kabakov had created a room in which the visitor was over-whelmed by contradictory feelings: “[he/she felt] at once the only host of this abandoned home and an uninvited guest who came to the wrong place at the wrong time.”51 | |
 View from Ilya and Emilia Kabakov’s installation The Strange City monUmenTa. 2014 Photo: Didier Plowy, rmn-Grand Palais Publicity photo Courtesy of the artists | |
| This work, too, resonates with kabakov’s personal childhood experience. the artist illustrates his mother’s living conditions at the time when he was enrolled in a moscow boarding school for art students. because he was a young boy, his mother wanted to be nearby, so she took a job as a housekeeper at the school. unable to afford an apartment, she lived clandestinely for a brief period in a pantry that had originally been a small public toilet. the humiliation of his mother’s eventual ejection even from this pathetic little corner is made endurable for kabakov only by his insistence on the dignity with which she survived her homelessness.52 In The Toilet kabakov paid tribute to his mother’s endurance and, following her example, he demonstrated in kassel his ability to make a home of art wherever he finds himself. the habitations he creates are never idealised fantasies but environments in which the concrete specificity of each object, each chipped plate or frayed jacket, even each stain on the wall, has been meticulously created by the artist with the care and tenderness that lies at the heart of home – even in a public toilet.53 Epilogue The latest work by ilya and emilia kabakov is the grandiose largescale installation The Strange City (l’Étrange cité), which was exhibited from may 10 to june 22 of this year in the framework of the monumenta project in Paris under the 13,500-square-metre-round and 35-metre-high grand Palais cupola. this time, too, visitors had an opportunity to “immerse” themselves in the labyrinth of streets, temples and vaulted passages of the architectonic installation “going back and forth, stopping, taking time to look and think”.54 in this work, similarly to his previous work, kabakov faithfully follows his principle of multi-vocality and multiple interpretations, interweaving the work with stories, sub-plots and metaphors so that it “would consist of a series of traps, or concealments, through which the viewer has to pass”.55 it is a labyrinth not only full of narratives and tactile evocations; it is also a paradigm of the artist’s mind, reflecting the thoughtful direction of each total installation as the world model. Translator into English: Laine Kristberga 1 kabakov is a surprisingly productive artist. his creative oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, installations and theoretical treatises. for example, in the time period from 1983 till 2000 kabakov created 155 installations. 2 rītups, arnis, kabakovs, iļja. zaķis bundzinieks. rīgas Laiks, may 2014, p. 53. 3 the works of ilya and emilia kabakov have been exhibited in the museum of modern art in new york, the hirshhorn museum in washington, the state museum in amsterdam, at Documenta IX, at the whitney biennial in 1997 and the state hermitage museum in st. Petersburg. in 1993 the kabakovs represented russia at the 45th Venice biennial with the installation The red Pavilion. the kabakovs have worked on commissions throughout europe and have been awarded numerous awards and honours, including the chevalier des arts et des lettres in Paris in 1995 and the oscar kokoschka Prize in Vienna in 2002. 4 for more on russian conceptualism see: tupitsyn, margarita. “on some sources of soviet conceptualism”. in: alla rosenfeld and norton t. dodge (eds.). nonconformist art: The Soviet experience, 1956–1986. london; new york: thames and hudson, 1995; tupitsyn, margarita. “about early soviet conceptualism”. in: Global Conceptualism: Points of origin 1950s–1980s. new york: Queens museum of art, 1999, pp. 99–108; tamruchi, natalia. moscow Conceptualism 1970–1990. east roseville: craftsman house, 1995. 5 rītups, arnis, kabakovs, iļja. zaķis bundzinieks, p. 53. 6 ibid. 7 wallach, amei. Ilya Kabakov: The man Who never Threw anything away. new york: abrams, 1996, p. 40. 8 groys, boris, hollein, max and fontán del junco, mannuel (eds.). Total enlightenment: Conceptual art in moscow 1960–1990. ostfildern-ruit: hatje cantz, 2008, p. 29. 9 tupitsyn, Victor. The museological Unconscious. cambridge: mit Press, 2009. 10 smith, dan. the house of dreams: Program and impulse within the work of ilya and emilia kabakov. Spaces of Utopia: an electronic Journal, no. 5 (summer 2007), pp. 36–37; accessible at: ler.letras.up.pt. 11 ibid., p. 37. 12 kabakov, ilya. foreword. in: laura hoptman and tomás Pospiszyl (eds.). Primary Documents: a Sourcebook for eastern and Central european art Since the 1950s. new york: museum of modern art, 2002, pp. 7–8. 13 colosi, david. a Conversation Piece on narrative Conceptualism. ed kienholz and ilya kabakov, p. 22; accessible at: www.3dlit.org/practice/kienholz_kabakov/colosi_ kienkaba_2013.pdf (accessed on 15.07.2014). 14 ibid., p. 22. 15 ibid., p. 23. 16 ibid., p. 23. 17 ibid., p. 24. 18 ibid., pp. 24–25. 19 jackson, matthew jesse. The experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, moscow Conceptualism, Soviet avant-Gardes. chicago: the univ. of chicago Press, 2010, p. 143. 20 ibid., p. 141. 21 ibid. 22 ibid., p. 157. 23 ibid., p. 142. 24 ibid. 25 kabakov, ilya. on the “Total” Installation. ostfildern: cantz, 1995, p. 321. 26 ibid., p. 321. 27 bishop, claire. Installation art: a Critical History. london: tate, 2005, p. 14. 28 jackson, matthew jesse. The experimental Group, p. 161. 29 ibid., p.150. 30 gerlovin, rimma, gerlovin, Valery. samizdat art. in: doria, charles (ed.). russian Samizdat art: essays. new york: willis locker and owens, 1986, pp. 95–98. 31 jackson, matthew jesse. The experimental Group, p. 158. 32 the title of kabakov’s first show in new york in 1988 was also titled Ten Characters. 33 bishop, claire. Installation art, p. 14. 34 ibid., p. 16. 35 ibid., p. 17. 36 kabakov. in: furlong, william. speaking of art: four decades of art in conversation. london: Phaidon, 2010, p. 309. 37 wallach, amei. Ilya Kabakov, p. 171. 38 ibid., p. 90. 39 bishop, claire. Installation art, p. 14. 40 kabakov, ilya. on the “Total” Installation, p. 321. 41 ibid., pp. 243–260. 42 bishop, claire. Installation art, p. 17. 43 three-dimensional literature is the merging of art and literature into one work of art. neither the text nor the art are mutually excluding or illustrative. rather, one form grows into the other, creating a multimedial work of art, or, as defined by david colosi, three-dimensional literature. in colosi’s research the idea of three-dimensional literature is the main keyword in kabakov’s artwork. see more at: www.3dlit.org/practice/kienholz_kabakov/ Kienholz_Kabakov.html. 44 www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/between-cinema-and-hard-place/between-cinema-and-hard-place-artis-11 (accessed on 15.07.2014) 45 kabakov, ilya. “the corridor (my mother’s album)” 1988. in: Der Text als Grundlage des Visuellen = The Text as the Basis of Visual expression. köln: oktagon, 2000, p. 369. 46 www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kabakov-labyrinth-my-mothers-album-t07923/text- summary (accessed on 15.07.2014). 47 www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/between-cinema-and-hard-place/ between-cinema-and-hard-place-artis-11 (accessed on 15.07.2014). 48 wallach, amei. Ilya Kabakov, p. 222. 49 kabakov, ilya. on the “Total” Installation, p. 162. 50 gershenson, olga, Penner, barbara (eds.). Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender. Philadelphia: temple university Press, 2009, p. 160. 51 boym, svetlana. The Future of nostalgia. new york: basic books, 2001, p. 310. 52 wallach, amei. Ilya Kabakov, p. 199. 53 gershenson, olga, Penner, barbara (eds). Ladies and Gents, p. 163. 54 www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/mar/11/art-paris-kabakov-ilya-emilia-monumenta (accessed on 15.07.2014). 55 kabakov. in: groys, boris, ross, david a., blazwick, iwona. Ilya Kabakov. london: Phaidon, 1998, p. 129. | |
| go back | |
