He was born in the 33rd year of the last century. He was always running away from home. He ran down the street with the intention never to return.
The strongest itch is not living where you are. Don’t be where you are Run away, die, escape into space. Humanity is obsessed with space. Especially Soviet humanity. Run where you are not. Escape from Soviet life to the informal world. Escape to freedom from behind the Soviet Iron Curtain. (see business “The man who flew from his room into space”).
War. Evacuation. The ordinary life of a Soviet little man. The brutal beating of a stranger by his classmates. But the mother ordered: find a common language with them! To create. I started drawing horses. And give bad classmates.
Then he studies at an art school in Moscow. My mother lives in the corners. No residence permit in Moscow, forced to lift corners and spend the night in chairs in their clothes. The police go to check if you are indifferent.
The recording is a famous Soviet phenomenon. Paper shackles of a little man. And mothers need to hide from denunciations, you need to be able to jump up at any moment and act like an accidental guest. Ordinary Soviet life.
He ran away from home again in 1988. Nobody caught him. Thanks to Gorbachev. Thus ended in the USA. And he became the most famous conceptual artist exhibited in the world’s most important museums.
On May 27, at the age of 90, Ilya Kabakov died. The anti-poet of Soviet everyday life. Just as Dante sang pictures of hell, Bunin (In Cursed Days) spoke of the audacity and unbridled flight to the hell of Russia, Kabakov sang the hell of Soviet everyday life. Adding his own circle to Dante’s, he drew the tenth circle of hell. And I came up with a name for him – a common apartment.
Kabakov is an arrogant poet of disgust for Sovok.
Everyone knows him and even heard of such a thing and even saw something in the Tretyakov Gallery. Ordinary people love art, and especially the Tretyakov Gallery. Well, the most expensive painter… They sold the “Bug” painting, which depicts the insect and signed that it is an insect, for six million dollars.
Note that the over-pricing of contemporary art is just part of an ironic concept.
The price and play of authorship of “Sovrisk”, the stencil drawings, the destruction of super-expensive works (Banksy’s painting “Girl with a Balloon”, which immediately performs an act of a stud as soon as it is sold-dirt) is part of a modern artist’s thoughts on the consumer society.
On the same day, by chance, I watched Andrey Smirnov’s new film “For us with you”. Here are two attempts to grasp Soviet life as one large communal circle. There is no better metaphor. Kommunalka best describes Soviet life.
Why Soviet?
life in general. We live crowded, meaningless, mingling with each other, humbly fighting for good things, not enough for everyone, first we just set our feet free.
The site is awesome! This is a meeting place. Me and the state.
cried the pre-revolutionary poet.
Community is a big thing. Where are you now? Kommunalka, I am your prisoner forever. I did not understand much in the life and reactions of my parents until I realized that they were children of Moscow communal apartments. “Poor Housing in Moscow”. We lived in the whole community. They also fought with the entire communal apartment. “Let me go, Varvara, I’m with you!” – invalid Stepanych beats at the door. The door is closed by a cabinet. So that dear neighbors do not come in. This is not a picture from Zoshchenko’s story, this is a picture from my mother’s true story. This is how people lived in Sokol about 60 years ago.
Dostoevsky believed that the image of hell was a prison bathroom. Kabakov came up with another metaphor.
Soviet communal apartment, very similar to a prison bathroom: dirt, stuffiness, noise, heat, steam, someone stole something from someone, someone is trying to defend justice, someone is rude to someone, someone – something claws, all children are growing neurotic , first of all this cheerful Soviet radio sounds hang: “Morning paints with a faint light.” This is hell on earth.
At the same time, the movie “For You and Us” is a unique set of templates that you do not clear your throat until the finale, as if suffocating in the first frame of the movie – it is so unique that it is nice to study movie templates from it. On the contrary, Kabakov’s work, which everyone is starting to revise these days, ironically uses textual and visual Soviet patterns: toilets, corridors, pots, pans, slogans, orders, bureaucratic notes, Soviet songs – to give it a spirit of independence.
It turned out to be a funny, double creative portrait of Soviet life.
It was Kabakov who coined the so-called “total installation” genre, apparently because it simultaneously showcases the entire USSR, the entire Soviet context as an art object.
Gorky had “below”. Dostoevsky was “in the bathroom”, Kabakov was “in the communal apartment”.
“Actually, everything I do is variants of Russian literature, but not Russian painting,” said Kabakov, “to understand one’s unhappiness.”
Variants of that great Russian literature about a little man crushed by an indifferent universe. However, he realizes that he has left his life. And he doesn’t know anything.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
Dolores Johnson is a voice of reason at “Social Bites”. As an opinion writer, she provides her readers with insightful commentary on the most pressing issues of the day. With her well-informed perspectives and clear writing style, Dolores helps readers navigate the complex world of news and politics, providing a balanced and thoughtful view on the most important topics of the moment.