One of the world’s most famous concept artists, Ilya Kabakov, has died aged 90.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Ilya Kabakov, the beloved and adored great artist, philosopher, husband, father and grandfather,” the Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Foundation said in a statement. “A man who devoted his whole life to imaginary utopias left this world on Saturday May 27, surrounded by his family, just before his 90th birthday.”
Gallery owner and artistic director Marat Gelman wrote on Facebook: “Woe to loved ones, a great loss to everyone.”
Spell and lottery
For non-conformist artist Vitaly Komar, one of the founders of Sots Art, Ilya Kabakov is above all the author of the unforgettable installation “The man who flew into space from his bedroom”. Vitaly Komar saw unexpected symbolism in the fact that on the day of Kabakov’s death, the Order of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was established in Russia.
Album “Flying mosquitoes”. Zimmerli Museum. Photo: Oleg Sulkin
In a phone interview with the Russian service American media, Komar pointed out that Kabakov had been a great help to him and his co-writer Alexander Melamid at the very beginning of their creative careers.
As you know, Kabakov became one of the few representatives of “Moscow Conceptualism” who managed to achieve long-term commercial success in the West. Thus, his works “Beetle” ($5.8 million, 2008) and “Luxury Room” ($4.1 million, 2006) are, according to some sources, the two most expensive works of contemporary Russian art ever. sold at global auctions.
“The phenomenon of his success is difficult to explain,” says Komar. – You could say, fate, a combination of several circumstances. But, you see, to win the lottery, you must first spend money on a lottery ticket. It means you have to have talent. Kabakov is certainly one of the most outstanding contemporary Russian artists. Artists are not military, they don’t have epaulettes, badges and rank charts. For me, the highest mark of an artist is unforgettable. Kabakov exhibited extensively at the Feldman Gallery in New York, and I remember those exhibits well.
“I remember with gratitude, continues Vitaly Komar, how in 1972, at the very beginning of our common career with Alik (Melamid), Ilya was one of the first to invite us to his studio in Moscow, and we showed him and his friends slides of our work. Thanks to him, we met many artists around him. He was open to anything new.”
The attic as an alternative
Ilya Kabakov was born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnepr) into a Jewish family. Together with his parents, he was evacuated to Samarkand (. He graduated from the Moscow Art School (1951) and the Surikov Institute (1957).
Since 1956, he has illustrated children’s books. Like other nonconformists who were cut off by party censors, Kabakov found a way to fulfill himself in such a specific field as illustrating children’s books. Working as an illustrator for major Soviet publishing houses allowed him to financially support himself and his family and see the fruits of his labor realized, albeit partially and not in his main field. It is known that when he lived in the Soviet Union, Kabakov illustrated about 150 books. And these “daily” earnings were quite enough to feel financially independent. Sometimes, as Kabakov recalled many years later, it was necessary, reluctantly, to tinker with, to imitate the official style of socialist realism.
From the second half of the 1950s, Kabakov began to actively engage in painting, to participate in exhibitions of alternative art to the administration in the Soviet Union and abroad. It is curious that later he publicly refused to consider himself a dissident artist.
Together with Hulot Sooster, he built a workshop in the attic of an old building on Sretensky Boulevard in Moscow. Together with Oleg Vasiliev, Eric Bulatov and other mavericks, he took part in exhibitions at the Blue Bird cafe. Art critics dubbed the group, which included Kabakov, Bulatov, Pivovarov, Yankelevsky, Steinberg and others, “Sretensky Boulevard School”.
In the 1980s, Kabakov became less involved in graphic design and concentrated on large-scale works, which he called “total installations”.
The absurd is a sign of the times
In dozens of countries, in the main museums and art galleries of the world, personal and collective exhibitions of Kabakov took place. One of the last took place in 2019-2020. at the Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey, where the early works of Ilya Kabakov and his then associate Viktor Pivovarov are on display. The museum is located on the campus of Rutgers University and houses thousands of works from the Norton Dodge collection. This is the largest collection of Russian nonconformity in the world.
The figures of the visitors are reflected in the work “The hand and the broken mirror”. Tretyakov Gallery, 2018 Credits: AP
The exhibition is devoted to the genre of the album, which Kabakov and Pivovarov began to actively master in the 70s. Visual imagery was combined in their work with handwritten texts and represented an unusual combination of graphics, performance and installation.
The albums of Kabakov, a pioneer of this genre, emphasized the absurd as the main characteristic of the time and were aimed at a like-minded viewer in the safe environment of an apartment or a private studio. From the presentation of the albums, the artist made a kind of performance. He showed them page by page and read the texts.
It is curious that Kabakov does not consider his albums of the 70s and later installations close in subject matter as related works. He dropped the album as a genre when he had the opportunity to make great works of art.
As art historian Jane Sharp, a professor at Rutgers University, explained in response to a question from the Russian American media service, Kabakov’s albums have practically no analogues in art contemporary american conceptual.
“Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein come to mind,” Professor Sharpe said, “they were also in the serial. But the storytelling (of Kabakov and Pivovarov) is unique.
“Eternal Hero!”
From 1988 until his last days, Ilya Kabakov lived near New York, on Long Island, and worked in his studio-workshop. Its co-author in recent years is Emilia Kabakova, the artist’s wife.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Credits: Reuters
Director and playwright Nina Zaretskaya has made four documentaries for the Russian television series Russian America. One of his heroes was Ilya Kabakov.
“Kabakov is an amazing, deep and versatile artist who managed to embody the image of the Soviet era in his, as he calls them, total installations,” Zaretskaya said in an interview with the author of these lines. – First of all, he’s a thinker, and that’s very valuable. It is true that the Sots Art is no longer as requested as before. But Kabakov is not a literal social artist, he is a subtle conceptual master, a philosopher. At the same time, Kabakov himself does not consider that he lives in the West, he is little interested in the everyday side of life, he says that he lives in museum institutions, from project to project.
“Great grief: Ilya Kabakov is one of the last, if not the last, of the Russian-Ukrainian avant-garde artists,” writes Brigit Schenk, German gallery owner and art dealer, on her Facebook page. “It was a great honor to work with him. A brilliant artist, an exceptional talent, an exceptional personality, a completely unique creator, completely independent and free in his judgments and actions. Our thanks to his alter ego – his wife and colleague Emilia. Rest in peace. Eternal hero!
“Strange City” installation. Paris, 2014 Credits: Reuters
In the 2000s, the artist began to actively exhibit in Russia. So, the Moscow House of Photography presented the project “Ilya Kabakov. Photo and video documentation of life and creativity. In 2004, the Tretyakov Gallery hosted the exhibition “Ilya Kabakov. Ten characters. In the same year, the Hermitage hosted an exhibition by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Incident at the Museum and Other Installations. At the same time, the couple presents the Hermitage with two installations.
The already mentioned installation by Kabakov “A man who flew into space from his bedroom” was included in the prestigious exhibition “Russia!” in 2006. at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. And in 2008, a large retrospective of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov was shown in Moscow, and it was shown in three places at once. In 2018, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov donated their studio to the Tretyakov Gallery.
The notice from Kabakov’s family says the farewell ceremony for him will be private and a public memorial service will be held in a few weeks.
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