The Kabakov Phenomenon Ilya Kabakov by ; David A. Ross; Iwona Blazwick; The Palace of Projects: 1995-1998 by Ilya Kabakov; Auf dem Dach/On the Roof by Ilya Kabakov; Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away by Amei Wallach; Installations 1983-1995 by Ilya Kabakov; Über die "Totale" Installation/On the "Total" Installation by Ilya Kabakov; Monument to a Lost Civilization/Monumento All Civilta Perduta by Emilia Kabakov; Ilya ... Review by: Amy Ingrid Schlegel Art Journal, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 98-101 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777918 . Accessed: 01/05/2013 17:52

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This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Wed, 1 May 2013 17:52:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Kabakov 1988 at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New Installation, and his theories about instal- to Phenomenon York), receive his first international art lation art. magazine interview, and to be selected as The most brilliant of all the publica- Amy Ingrid Schlegel the Russian representative at the Venice tions to date on Kabakovis his own trea- Biennale in 1993. The first museum retro- tise, Oberdie "Totale"Installation/On the "Total" Boris David A. Ross, and Iwona Groys, spective of his installations is planned for Installation,a series of transcribedlectures Blazwick. Kabakov.London: Phaidon Ilya 2001 at the Kunstmuseum Basel. in Russian, German, and English the artist Press, 1998. i6o pp., color and b/w ills. The substantial literature on the Russian delivered while in residence at the Stadel- $29.95 paper. emigre artist, some of which is reviewed schule in Frankfurt in 1992-93. This trea- here, has generated what might be called tise contains theoretical musings on the Ilya Kabakov. The Palaceof Projects:i995-i998. a "Kabakov This accumulat- "cosmology" of the installation, an histor- Exh. cat. London: Artangel and Madrid: phenomenon." ed literature has reached critical so ical of installation art Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, mass, explanation why that several of each modernist and 1998. 132 pp., color and b/w ills. genres publications, supercedes painting, practi- $5o with its own usefulness, must be consid- cal advice on how to and execute paper. develop ered separately. Exhibition catalogues, such an installation within a museum context. Ilya Kabakov,Auf dem Dach/On the Roof. Exh. as the Pompidou's IlyaKabakov: Installations On the "Total"Installation is of interest primar- cat. Dtisseldorf: Richter Verlag, 1997. 191 1983-I995, are valuable primarily for their ily to students, art historians, and curators pp., b/w ills. $95. documentation of Kabakov'sephemeral who want to gain insight into the master- installations, since many readers will not mind behind the complex, yet brilliantly Amei Wallach. IlyaKabakov: The Man Who have seen the work in person. But these straightforward, simulacra of Kabakov's NeverThrew Anything Away. New York: Harry catalogues, while valuable as books, are world. N. Abrams, 1996. Introduction by Robert inherently imperfect substitutes for first- The aforementioned publications are Storr. 255 pp., color and b/w ills. $6,. hand experience. Photographs, diagrams, partial evidence of Kabakov'sstaying power Ilya Kabakov.Installations 1983-1995. : drawings, and textual descriptions are ulti- as a Russian artist in the West. To under- Centre Georges Pompidou, 1995. 259 pp., mately only a conceptual aggregate of the stand why his name has become a house- color ills. actual installation/environment. The frag- hold word (at least in the art world), we mentary nature of the documentation is, need to understand how emigration has Ilya Kabakov.Ober die "Totale"Installation/On of course, not a new dilemma, but one affected the development of his work, the "Total"Installation. Stuttgart: Cantz, 1995. that destroys the theatrical illusion and especially his installations, and why his 398 pp., $49.95. cannot replicate what Kabakovregards as work has "translated"better than virtually Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.Monument to a Lost the "integral, alive" qualities of his "Total all the other twenty-eight artists introduced to Western markets in its Civilization/Monumentoall civilta perduta. Exh. Installations."Other catalogues, such as by Sotheby's cat. Palermo: Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa The Palaceof Projects:1995-1998 and Auf dem 1989 auction and public relations Dach/Onthe tread a fine line between and Milan: Edizioni Charta, 1999. 248 pp., Roof, extravaganza. Kabakov'sdifficult of color ills. $49.95 paper. the facsimile artist's book and the docu- process transition mentation of site-specific works of art, from Communist Soviet culture to democ- Since Ilya Kabakovemigrated to the West and are valuable as hybrid publications. ratic Western society is not complete, nor little more than a decade ago, the rising So far, two monographs on Kabakov is it likely ever to be. Emigration has per- tide of publications on the artist and his have been published: Amei Wallach's Ilya manently changed the physical conditions work-books, exhibition catalogues, artist's Kabakov:The Man Who Never Threw Anything of the artist's life and artistic production, books, articles, and reviews-has helped Awayis more a traditional biography than though he claims that, at least psychologi- make him a senior international art world an art historical exegesis. The other is an cally, he remains a Soviet artist. "I have to star. Children on the streets of Amsterdam unconventional, multi-authored mono- say that today I have a comfortable feeling reportedly have rushed to ask for his auto- graph from Phaidon Press, which provides that I didn't emigrate, I didn't leave my graph. During the last ten years he has had a solid introduction to the artist's work. country," he told David Ross in an inter- thirty-seven solo exhibitions (mostly in While the two books complement each view published in the Phaidon Press mono- European museums) and seventeen com- other, ample room remains for deeper and graph. "I simply work. . . . This has a long missions for installations. He more art historical tradition . In case, I know for sure permanent comprehensive analyses .. any works every day, all day. Some might say of Kabakov's preeminent position in the that I will never return."' he is a workaholic. Others would interpret second, postwar Soviet avant-garde and In fact, Kabakov had applied to emi- his work habits as a form of flood control. of his stature as a Conceptual artist of the grate three times, beginning in the early But his fame has not come without a price. first order. Future critics also will want to i97os, but backed out each time. Reflecting Kabakov had to wait more than thirty years assess his contribution as a postmodernist on his life recently, he claims the decision to have his first solo gallery exhibition (in to a new genre of installation art, the Total to leave for the West in 1988 was no dif-

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This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Wed, 1 May 2013 17:52:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ferent than what he identifies as "other strategies-also his signature as a Con- psychologically speaking) to other, radi- methods of dislocating and abandoning ceptual artist. The Harvardsociologist cally different contexts of reception. [which] are no less radical" than emigra- and Russian emigre SvetlanaBoym links Boym claims that, during the 1970s, tion.2 The recent literature on Kabakovdis- Kabakov'spreferred mode of narration to self-conscious graphomania was "the only cusses the circumstances of his emigration a literary device called graphomania. In honest artistic practice. Speaking in quota- (Ross's interview is especially enlightening contrast to what Boym refers to as "insti- tions was the only way of speaking sin- in this respect) but is generally hesitant to tutionalized graphomania [as] a form of cerely, thereby estranging and questioning analyze the effects it has had on both the pre-modern writing of commonplaces," the possibility of sincerity in the highly form and content of his work. Emigration Kabakovpractices "self-conscious grapho- compromised society of the era of stagna- has undeniably played a pivotal role in mania, with its multiple personae, pseudo- tion."' Even after the collapse of the Soviet Kabakov'slife, one that has enabled him Union, Kabakovstill employs this strategy, to realize his goals as an artist, to execute though clearly the code has changed and his Total Installations (instead of planning no longer is necessarily the best option them conceptually in his albums), and to for expressing oneself "honestly" and exhibit and travel internationally. Preferring "sincerely." While self-effacement and the Communist system, with all its failures, graphomania may have been personal and to a post-Communist system with even artistic survival strategies under the Soviet greater failures, Kabakovdid indeed choose Communist regime, they now seem to be to exile himself from physically, a good way for Kabakovto protect his socially, and linguistically once the policies right to privacy, which one can imagine of perestroika and glasnost took effect in he cherishes after having lived fifty-six the late 1980s. years in a system that undermined it at Kabakovprefers to liken himself to "a every turn. stray dog." "My mentality is Soviet; my Because Kabakovis deeply interested in birthplace is the Ukraine; my parents are viewers' responses, he has addressed the Jewish; my school education and my lan- reception of his work by Western audi- guage are Russian,"3he told Ross. In this ences as he develops his installations. He respect, his identity has not changed as has focused on demystifying Western per- a result of his emigration. To a certain ceptions of the , Communism, extent, he was an outsider in his own soc- and "the evil empire." He thinks that his iety. As Wallach points out in her biogra- works are often misread as literal recre- phy, he is a Jew whose surname "Kabak" nyms, and narrator-ventriloquists."4 ations of Soviet spaces, whereas he intends (meaning "beer joint" and "pigsty") did Self-conscious graphomania is a narrative them to be metaphorical investigations not sound Jewish, although his internal strategy that parallels Western post- of the social and psychological failures of passport labeled his nationality as Jewish. structuralisttheories of authorship. Both Communist ideology as manifested spatially His first name, in contrast, is quintessen- do away with the figure of the author in Soviet institutions (especially the com- tially Russian. He is from a poor, provin- endowed with individuality, subjectivity, munal apartment). Kabakovtold Boris cial family, often so destitute they had to and agency, in favor of open-ended, inde- Groys in a 1992 Parkettinterview that "an live apart, and he was displaced for the terminate polyvocalism. Self-conscious orientation toward the Western public has first time when he was eight, during the graphomania can also be equated with the led me . . . to emphasize the 'sentimental' 1941 Nazi invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, postmodernist strategies of appropriation, aspects of my works, one could say, that he never became a member of the official quotation, ventriloquism, and critical mim- Soviet art world's upper echelon of the icry, though its political valence is entirely Ilya Kabakov.He Lost Painting Section, preferring instead the different, since these strategies depend His Mind, Undressed, and Ran second-tier Arts Section, with its on both the cited source and the Away Naked, Graphic heavily 1990. Four socialist benefit of work and minimal KGB of for this steady context(s) reception. Apparently realist murals, acrylic scrutiny. He was, however, a member of reason, in her book Wallach more than on paper, and seven masonite the U.S.S.R. Union of Artists, which meant once describes Kabakovas an "unknowing panels. Installation he was a artist and but it is hard to tell whether view, "legalized" given per- postmodernist" Ronald Feldman Fine mission to build a studio for himself in she is being complimentary or disparaging. Arts, NewYork, 1968 with his own funds. In these terms, then, Kabakov'swork made January 6-February 3, 1990. Courtesy Ronald One major reason that Kabakov has prior to his emigration translateswell from Feldman Fine Arts, been successful in the transition from East one politically and historically specific con- NewYork. Photo D. to West lies in his mastery of narrative text of production (both physically and James Dee.

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This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Wed, 1 May 2013 17:52:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions which is common to all humankind, which Western European art museum, just as his ful history, Wallach's engrossing narrative did not have a place in Russia . .. That is, readers are German and English speakers, recounts Kabakov'sstruggle to survive "on in the West, my art has turned out to be not Russian. the street" during Stalinism. She follows oriented toward normal, general human- Kabakov (the male narrator) describes her detailed account of an extraordinarily istic values of the little person; . . . my the relationship between the two characters difficult childhood marked by war-time works rouse the appropriatereaction as "two unconnected plot lines" which evacuation, hunger, homelessness, and when it ceases to be important that I am share a "common fate" in childhood, but poverty with a description of how, as a a Russian, American, or German."' After which then diverged."oNo social, histori- young adult, Kabakovwas saddled with several years of theorization as well as trial cal, or political context is offered to help responsibility to support his mother and and error, Kabakovis evidently feeling explain why these "plot lines" (the life in-laws through his book illustration com- more at home with his Total Installations. trajectories of Kabakovhimself and his missions. Wallach captures some precious He even told Wallach that he predicts wife Emilia, whom he married in 1994) details, such as Kabakov'sreaction when he "there will come a time when there are diverged and how their common fate saw Stalin's corpse: "At the funeral, what only installations, and . . . everyone will reunited them. By denying viewers and struck Kabakovwas how pockmarked and live in an installation."7 readers this information, Kabakovuses ravaged the face was, despite its waxen Within the past few years, Kabakovhas autobiographical material to universalize cosmetology. It was a metaphor for the moved away from specifically Soviet mater- the installation's message about family life irreconcilable gap, now impossible not " ial and from HomoSovieticus as his protago- while obscuring his own biography. What to acknowledge, between lies and life." nist. He is now striving to universalize the makes this "family viewing" universal is Wallach then reports how a period of rela- subjects of his Total Installationsby infus- the banality of the photographs and the tive professional and financial security ing them with a global, or at least postna- genre of the family photo album, the com- allowed the artist to devote his energy tionalist, perspective. He recently admitted monness of the experiences documented, to the development of his "unofficial" in a catalogue interview for the Palermo and the very notion of familial relation- paintings, drawings, and albums. She also exhibition Monumentto a LostCivilization that ships. These universal aspects do not, how- describes his status as one of the leading "I have worked on the memories of the ever, negate Kabakov'sindisputably auto- figures of NOMA, the Moscow Conceptual Soviet Union for more than ten years. Now biographical visual and verbal presentation. Circle of artists, during the 197os and this memory is beginning to fade . . . The Their coexistence, and even deliberate 198os, and the development of his theory Soviet world] is a metaphor for everyone. confusion, allows the "borders between of Total Installation since leaving the Soviet . art has and literal trans- Union. .My extremely open principles literary [to be] easily in which each aspect has a very clear level gressed," as Boym puts it." In Auf demDach/On the Roof, Kabakov and which everyone can relate to according Because Aufdem Dach/On the Roof uses constructs a portrait of a Soviet artist's to their own actual of which life in both installation and book format. interpretation.",8 family photographs (many Aufdem Dach/On the Roof, published in also appear in Wallach's biography), it is Common or not, the content of such a life 1997 after the eponymous 1996 installation quite unlike Kabakov'sother artist's books was hidden from Westerners during the Surle toit/Ophet dakat the Palais des Beaux- and exhibition catalogues. We are lured Cold War. There is also the female emigre's Arts in Brussels, is a good example of into viewing the family photographs trans- parallel story, which bridges both worlds this shift. In each of the installation's ten parently, as "real" traces of the artist's and signals the increasing dissolution of rooms, which viewers accessed sequentially existence in the Soviet Union prior to emi- spatial boundaries at this historical moment, from a simulated rooftop, slides of an gration and to Emilia's parallel life in the at the beginning of a new millennium. ordinary family's life cycle were projected Soviet Union and the since This artist's book/exhibition catalogue is chronologically. In the book's introduction, the mid-197os. We are tempted to read the a salient illustration of Kabakov'sstaying Kabakovcalled the slide show a "'family captions in the same, transparentway. Yet power; it demonstrates his mastery of nar- viewing' that is familiar to everyone," many questions remain unanswered, the rative strategies that are simultaneously even though the viewer "has simply 'come status of the photographs remains ambiva- specific and universal. upon' something which has nothing to lent, and the relationship between text Kabakovis now sixty-five years old- do with him at all."9 The viewer's position and photograph as signs is customarily older than many people realize. Yet he is "on the roof' is symbolic of his or her arbitrary.When compared with Wallach's at the peak of his career with commissions, outsider status, dropping in to someone's account of Kabakov'slife, the two narra- competitions, and invitations to exhibit home like a stranger. This is also our tives do not concur. The story Wallach across the globe. His installations serve as a voyeuristic position as readers of this fac- tells, based on her extensive interviews warning to future generations, as Kabakov simile artist's book, in which the slides with the artist and his close friends, is, himself has pointed out: "Don't repeat our are reproduced as photographs. Kabakov's in fact, strikingly different. mistakes, look at your dreams clearly, but viewers are figuratively located "on the Instead of an ahistorical portrayal of don't sacrifice the people in the name of roof"-outside Russia-and literally in a one "bourgeois" family's happy, unevent- ideology. Stay together and don't forget

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This content downloaded from 128.114.163.7 on Wed, 1 May 2013 17:52:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions the past. Do everything possible not to Seeing Things Hanh Thi Pham, Sunil Gupta, Catherine repeat our mistakes and to make your Opie, and many others, making the book dreams become reality."13 Differently an excellent resource for courses on queer Grant H. Kester representation in general and contemporary A. in I. David A. Ross, "Interview: David Ross art in particular.Contributing writers Conversation with Kabakov,"in Kabakov Ilya Ilya Deborah Bright, ed. ThePassionate Camera: include Michael Anton Budd, Mark Alice Phaidon Press, 17, 19. (London: 1998), andBodies of Desire.London: 2. Correspondence with the author, March 14, Photography Durant, Liz Kotz, Mysoon Rizk, James 1999. Routledge, 1998. 441 pp., 200 b/w and Smalls, and Alisa Solomon. The book also 3. Ross, 8. color ills. $8g. features a useful bibliography of sources 4. Svetlana CommonPlaces: of Boym, Mythologies on and EverydayLife in Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard queer theory, photographic history, University Press, 1994), 193; thanks to Marianne As Jerry Falwell's recent attack on the "gay visual culture. Hirsch of Dartmouth College for suggesting subtext" in Teletubbies suggests, queer Bright's introduction reviews some of work to me. Boym's identity in our culture has a particularly the and theoretical sur- 5. Ibid., 193. political questions close and to the of in 6. Boris Groys, "'With Russian On Your Back':A complex relationship questions rounding staging gay sexuality Conversation between Ilya Kabakov and Boris of visual representation. Is that a television the mass media, political discourse, and no. 34 36. Groys," Parkett, (1992): antenna on Tinky Winky's head or a gay art. Bright challenges what she describes as 7. Amei Wallach, IlyaKabakov: The Man Who Is Tinky a of the the- Never ThrewAnything Away (New York: Harry N. pride "pink triangle"? holding misinterpretations performative Abrams, 1996), 86; cited from a 1992 letter from purse or just a "magic bag"? And what are ories of sexuality and identity associated Kabakovto Wallach. we to make of the Teletubby fascination with writers such as Judith Butler, which 8. Paolo Falcone interview with llya and Emilia with wearing skirts?Falwell's decision to tend to view the assumption of sexual Kabakov, in Ilyaand EmiliaKabakov, Monument to fixate on obscure as a kind of ludic a Lost Civilization/Monumentoall civiltaperduta, remarkably (and perhaps identity open-ended exh. cat. (Palermo: Cantieri Culturalialla Zisa and nonexistent) signifiers of queerness in the play. She points instead to the material and Milan:Edizioni 17-18. Charta, 1999), Teletubbies, while such obvious examples political forces that impinge on and con- 9. Wallach, 84. as Xena:Warrior Princess captivate millions of strain what be termed the 10. llya Kabakov,Auf dem Dach/On the Roof exh. might "privilege cat. (Dusseldorf: Richter Verlag, 1997), 8. children each week, tells us a great deal of performance." Bright is particularlycon- II. Boym, 193. about straight, conservative fantasies of cerned with diversifying the construction 12. Wallach, 29. queerness as a discourse of subversion of queer sexuality to include vectors of I3. Monument, I9. and seduction. It raises another question class, race, and ethnicity. Thus the book Amy IngridSchlegel is curator at the Philadelphia as well. Is there a specifically queer her- includes essays and stories by Elizabeth Art Alliance and organizer of the current traveling meneutics of the image? What are its con- Stephens, Paul Franklin, Linda Dittmar, exhibition YouCan't Go Home Again:The Art of ditions, and how is it different from either Mark A. Reid, and Catherine Lord, among Exile, which includes the work of llya Kabakov, Falwell's for Wlodzimierz Ksiazek, Dinh Q. Le, TanjaSoftic, homophobic paranoia, or, others, which do a superb job of outlining Irene Sosa, and Ana Tiscornia. It was on view that matter, from mainstream art historical the complex effect of these forces. at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, methodologies? In her book ThePassionate One of the key points of articulation Brattleboro, Vermont, from May 14 to July I8, Camera: andBodies of Desire,Deborah for a of concerns 1999 and will be on view in Philadelphiafrom Photography theory queer visuality February7 to March 19, 2000. Bright provides an invaluable guide to the the status of desire within intellectual dis- conditions of queer visuality in the specific course. Conventional art history, founded context of photographic as it is on the myth of disinterested schol- history and art practice. arship, must expel or suspend the desire of Bright, a photo historian and artist the historian, whose job it is to dispassion- who teaches at the Rhode Island School ately situate the recalcitrant "work of art" of Design, has combined a wide range of within the already established narrative materials, including historical and archival of art historical progress. This attempt to studies, analyses of contemporary art make the difference of the singular work activism, short stories, and an impressive intelligible within, or conformable to, the selection of works by contemporary artists. normative standard of artistic achievement, Given this diversity, the writing through- might be seen as particularly problematic out is fairly consistent, with relatively few for a viewer whose own identity is con- lapses into excessively turgid academese. structed against the grain of a hetero- Though at eighty-five dollars, the hardback normative culture. price is a bit steep, the book is heavily David Deitcher's discussion of his illustrated, with both black-and-white and relationship to an anonymous ambrotype color images. Among them are works by of two (possibly) gay men from the Lyle Ashton Harris, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, I8gos, which opens Bright's book, offers

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