The Kabakov Phenomenon Ilya Kabakov by Boris Groys; David A
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The Kabakov Phenomenon Ilya Kabakov by Boris Groys; 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 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. College Art Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Art Journal. http://www.jstor.org 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. Paris: 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 Moscow 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- 98 WINTER 1999 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 Russia 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.