- 251
Ilya Kabakov, b. 1933
Description
- Ilya Kabakov
- where are they?
- all signed in Cyrillic l.r., 20 dated 78, 10 dated 74, 1 dated 73
- coloured pencil and watercolour with pen and ink over pencil
- sheet size of each: 40.5 by 27.5cm., 16 by 10¾in.
Provenance
Catalogue Note
A version of the offered lot painted enamel on masonite from 1979 is illustrated in B..Groys, D.Ross and I.Blazwick, Ilya Kabakov, Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1998, p.118
The fly is a polysemantic leitmotif which appears throughout Kabakov’s ouevre. Flies are generally perceived as unclean and ugly, and by depicting them resting on a precisely designed and bureaucratic-looking document, he establishes a link between insect and State, alluding to his own description of Russia as an ‘eternal building site and rubbish tip’.
Kabakov’s text is based on Ubi sunt, a weighty, literary topos lamenting the ephemeral nature of life and man’s mortality. However by setting it in the significantly more mediocre context of life in communal apartment, Kabakov brings it into the realm of the Absurd.
Where is the spinning-wheel?
Where are the shoes?
Where is the axe?
Where is the bucket with the lid?
Where is the towel?
…
Nina Lvovna took them all with her.