Ilya Kabakov

Illya and Emilia Kabakov, New York

Sprovieri Gallery, London 

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2012

Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture and Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Retrospective, 2008

Renate Petzinger and Emilia Kabakov, Ed., Ilya Kabakov: Paintings 1957-2008 Catalogue Raisonné, Vol II, Bielefeld 2008, p. 357, no. 616, illustrated in colour 

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultra-violet light.
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Where Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich led the Avant-Garde of Pre-Soviet Modernism, Ilya Kabakov has become the foremost acclaimed Russian artist of the contemporary era. His canonical ‘total installations’, in which the viewer is completely immersed into a world of the artist’s imagination, have become a global phenomenon and are testament to the artist's dedication to widening the scope of what contemporary art can achieve. The Apples are Ripe! comprises part of Kabakov’s meticulously crafted project of ‘fictitious artists’ and was created specifically for his most ambitious exhibition to date at his 2008 Moscow retrospective. This career-defining show took place over three venues: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, The Winzavod Centre for Contemporary Art and The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture. The last of these venues housed Kabakov’s most important installation titled An Alternative History of Art: Rosenthal, Kabakov, Spivak, where Kabakov transformed the vast industrial space into a replica of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s interior. Immersing the viewer in the grandeur of this famous Western art institution, Kabakov filled the walls with paintings of his own creation, including the present work.

The Apples are Ripe! is signed on the reverse by ‘Charles Rosenthal’, referring to a fictional painter whose biography Kabakov has been fastidiously inventing since the late 1990s. ‘Rosenthal’ was born into the epoch of the Russian Revolution and his oeuvre is comprised of works which combine the utopian aesthetics of Modernism with the Socialist ideals of the Communist Party. In the present work an idyllic family wander through the bright, pastoral landscape laden with the bounty of their labour. Above the bucolic scene, empty expanses emerge between the clouds which ‘Rosenthal’ has painted white in reference to the utopian hope he has for Russia’s post-revolution future. The concept of emptiness recurred throughout the An Alternative History of Art installation, being used to different ends by the separate fictional artists whose works were exhibited.  

‘Rosenthal’ died in 1933, the year Ilya Kabakov was born; therefore the next painter invented to continue the conceptual history in the installation was eponymously named ‘Ilya Kabakov’. Kabakov used this alter ego as a vessel to express many of the views formed from his own experience of the Soviet Union and so like his creator, the fictional ‘Kabakov’ inherited the failures of the Revolution’s optimism. ‘Kabakov’s’ work initially pays homage to ‘Rosenthal’ but it soon becomes afflicted; where ‘Rosenthal’s’ work was permeated by white, ‘Kabakov’s’ is steeped in black, likewise what ‘Rosenthal’ hoped would be filled with light, ‘Kabakov’ saw was consumed by darkness. Kabakov’s disdain for the Soviet Union stems from his turbulent experience of living through it. As an official graphic artist under the regime he became a somewhat famous illustrator of children’s books. However, for Kabakov this was merely a formality with which he could fund and disguise the performances and exhibitions he organised in secret with groups of unofficial artists. After living in communal apartments and attics and being censored by the regime, Kabakov left Russia in 1987 and together with his wife Emilia, the Kabakovs became a global sensation in contemporary art.

Kabakov’s final invention in the installation was the painter ‘Igor Spivak’ who grew up after the fall of the Soviet Union and whose often unfinished paintings are telling of Kabakov’s impression of the ambivalence of contemporary Russia. The content of these works look wistfully back at the Soviet years with naivety, seeing the era’s aesthetic as nostalgic and ‘retro’. The works of all three of these fictional painters take utopian Socialist ideals as their subject yet all are flavoured by the disparate dreams, emotions and experiences of the individual fictitious artists. It is with great irony therefore that Kabakov’s most powerful and honest expression of the false hope he experienced under Soviet rule is materialised in the creation of false artists. Yet it is through engaging with the history of all three of these characters that the full impact of the present work can be felt.