Toward a Soviet Poor Art: Ilya Kabakov’s Use of Trash
Abstract
This article examines the evolution of Soviet non-conformist artist Ilya Kabakov’s work to consider questions of influence and reception from within the U.S.S.R as well as in Europe and beyond. Komaromi compares Kabakov’s use of poor-quality objects (plokhie veshchi) and trash (musor) with the practices of Italian artists associated with Arte Povera to determine in what sense Kabakov produces a Soviet poor art. She further juxtaposes his approach to trash with the techniques of Robert Rauschenberg’s combines. While Rauschenberg’s combines present the resistant materiality of discrete objects, Kabakov’s trash ultimately invites consideration of the material context according to what Komaromi calls a syntax of reception. Audience responses to Kabakov’s works, including his famous installations with trash, speak to western and post-Soviet perceptions of Soviet and Russian identity, with implications also for how those audiences understand themselves.
Downloads
References
Aigi, Gennady, “Nikolai Khardzhiev and the Maiakovsky Museum, Moscow,” A Legacy Regained: Nikolai Khardzhiev and the Russian Avant-Garde, Ed. John E. Bowlt and Mark Konecny, St. Petersburg: Palace Editions, 2002.
Bishop, Claire, Installation Art: A Critical History, London: Tate Publishing, 2005.
Boym, Svetlana, The Future of Nostalgia, New York: Basic Books, 2001.
Celant, German. “Arte Povera/Art Povera”, Trans. Paul Blanchard, Identite italienne: L'art en Italie depuis 1959, Ed. Germano Celant and Giovanni Anselmo, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1981.
Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn, “Survey,” Arte Povera, Ed. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1999, 14-47.
Crispolti, Enrico. Interview by Laura Cantone. “Il senso del dissenso.” Exibart, 8 Oct. 2007. www.exibart.com/politica-e-opinioni/il-senso-del-dissenso/ . online (last accessed 15.05.2020).
Crispolti, Enrico, “Una mostra non ufficiale della nuova arte sovietica,” La nuova arte sovietica: Una prospettiva non ufficiale [cat.], Ed. Enrico Crispolti and Gabriella Moncada, Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 1977.
Crispolti, Enrico, “I primi documenti dell’avanguardia pittorica e plastica nell’U.R.S.S.,” Marcatre, 4.19-22 (1966), 418-21.
Crispolti, Enrico, Alternative Attuali 2: rassegna internazionale di pittura – scultura – grafica [cat.]. Milano: Lerici editori, 1965.
Dolinina, Kira, “Naftalinovyi kosmos: Retrospektiva Il’i Kabakova v Ermitazhe,” Komersant 72 (April 25, 2018), 12, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3613164, online (last accessed 02.04.2019).
Eichenbaum, Boris, “How Gogol’s ‘Overcoat’ is Made,” Gogol from the Twentieth Century, Ed. Robert A. Maguire, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974.
Gambrell, Jamey, “Disappearing Kabakov,” The Print Collector’s Newsletter 26.5 (1995): 171-74.
Gambrell, Jamey, “Perestroika Shock,” Art in America 77 (Feb. 1989), 124-35.
Gookin, Kirby, “Ilya Kabakov,” Artforum 27 (Sept. 1988): 135-36.
Gray, Camilla, The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863–1922, London: Thames & Hudson, 1962.
Grotowski, Jerzy, Towards a Poor Theatre, Ed. Eugenio Barba, New York: Routledge, 2002.
Groys, Boris, “Text as a Ready-Made Object,” Trans. John Meredig, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and Soviet Grand Style, Ed. Marina Balina, Nancy Condee and Evgeny Dobrenko, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000.
Grois, Boris, Stat’i ob Il’e Kabakove, Moscow: Ad Marginem Press, 2016.
Grois, Boris, “Moskovskii romanticheskii kontseptualizm,” 37 [Tridtsat’ sem’, Thirty-Seven] 15 (1978), Samizdat, published in Project for the Study of Dissidence and Samizdat, Ed. Ann Komaromi, Toronto: University of Toronto Libraries, 2015, https://samizdatcollections.library.utoronto.ca/islandora/object/samizdat%3A37_15 , online, (last accessed 02.10.2020).
Heartney, Eleanor, “Post-Utopian Blues,” Sculpture (May/June 1990): 63-67.
Jackson, Matthew Jesse, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Jones, Jonathan, “A terrifying trip to the USSR’s dark heart – Ilya and Emilia Kabakov review,” The Guardian (17 October 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/17/ilya-and-emilia-kabakov-tate-modern-london-review, online (last accessed 02.04.2019).
Kabakov, Il’ia, et al. On Art. The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Kabakov, Il’ia, V nashem ZhEKe, Vologda: Biblioteka Moskovskogo Kontseptualizma Germana Titova, 2011.
Kabakov, Il’ia, 60 – 70e…: Zapiski o neofitsial’noi zhizni v Moskve, Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008.
Kabakov, Il’ia, et al. NOMA, ili Moskovskii kontseptual’nyi krug, Zurich: Cantz, 1993.
Kabakov, Il’ia and Boris Grois, Dialogi, Vologda: Biblioteka moskovskogo kontseptualizma Germana Titova, 2010.
Kabakov, Ilya, Installations: 1983-2000. Catalogue raisonné, Ed. Toni Stooss, Dusseldorf: Richter Verlag, 2003, 2 vols., vol. I.
Kabakov, Ilya, Der Rote Waggon: The Red Wagon, Nurnberg: Verlag fur modern Kunst, 1999.
Kabakov, Ilya, Uber die “Totale” Installation / O “Total’noi” installiatsii/ On the “Total” Installation, Ostfildern: Cantz, 1995.
Kabakov, Ilya, Ten Characters [cat.], London: ICA, 1989.
Kabakov, Ilya, “Not Everyone Will be Taken into the Future,” A-Ya 5 (1983): 34-35.
Kabakov, Ilya and Emilia, Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future [cat.], Ed. Juliet Bingham, London: Tate Publishing, 2017.
Khardzhiev, N. I., “El’ Lisitskii – konstruktor knigi,” Stat’i ob avangarde v dvukh tomakh, vol. 1, Moscow: RA, 1997, 235-50.
Krauss, Rosalind E. “Grids” (1978) The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The MIT Press, 1985, 8-22.
Lippard, Lucy R. Pop Art, London: Thames and Hudson, 1966.
Mangini, Elizabeth, “Mario Merz’s Autonomous Artist,” Art Journal 75. 3 (Fall 2016): 11-31.
Marchesini, Irina, "The Presence of Absence. Longing and Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Art And Literature," Melancholic Identities, Toska and Reflective Nostalgia. Case Studies from Russian and Russian- Jewish Culture, Florence: Florence University Press, 2015, 149-65.
Mattison, Robert S. Robert Rauschenberg: Breaking Boundaries, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003.
Monastyrskii, Andrei (ed.), Slovar’ terminov moskovskoi kontseptual’noi shkoly, Moscow: Ad Marginem, 1999.
Spieker, Sven, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2008.
Steinberg, Leo, Encounters with Rauschenberg (A Lavishly Illustrated Lecture), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Wallach, Amei, “Emilia Kabakov,” Bomb (Jan. 13, 2014), https://bombmagazine.org/articles/emilia-kabakov/ , online (last accessed 02.03.2020).
Wallach, Amei, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
