Ilya Kabakov, b. 1933

Dina Vierny, Paris;
Collection of Max Dolgicer, New York

I. Kabakov, In the Communal Kitchen, Paris: Galerie Dina Vierny, 1993;
I. Kabakov, “The Kitchen Series,” A–Ya Contemporary Russian Art Journal, No.6, 1984: pp. 24–27;
V. Tupitsyn, “From the Communal Kitchen: A Conversation with Ilya Kabakov,” Arts Magazine (Oct. 1991): pp.49–54;
A. Wallach, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, introduction by Robert Storr, with commentaries by Ilya Kabakov, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1996, p. 156

Ilya Kabakov is one of the most influential artists to have emerged from the former Soviet Union. A leader of the Moscow Conceptualist school in the Soviet unofficial art movement, Kabakov often explored Soviet communal apartment life in his series of albums, paintings, and multimedia installations. At the same time, Kabakov intended his work as a broader challenge to the rules concerning what art should be, both conceptually and visually. The idea that art and life are inextricably linked—and could somehow merge—was an important concept underpinning his oeuvre. Seeking to escape the stifling conventions of Socialist Realism, Kabakov incorporated banal objects of everyday use into his works, a practice that calls into question the divergent notions of painting as commodity or sacred image.

This painting comes from a series focused on the Soviet communal kitchen, the most important part of the communal apartment during the Soviet era. In Kabakov’s words: “All life occurs in it, here is where all the themes intersect, all the intrigues are played out, where all the problems are discussed, where all the arguments are settled by both peaceful and violent means.” In the centre of the piece, Kabakov affixed a well-worn mug, an ordinary object that any member of Soviet society could have purchased. Its prosaic inadequacy exemplifies some of the bleakness and dreariness of Soviet life, provoking an endless complex of associations and commenting on the Soviet citizen’s experience of communal living. The essence of the painting is also contained in the “Russian-Soviet” drab green colour of the board, which is very close to the typical colour of the walls of Soviet communal interiors.

Ordinary phrases spoken by the inhabitants of one such communal apartment have been recorded in the corners of the board, which resembles an instruction manual and signifies a type of communal space in which these voices are heard. Unlike Western Conceptual artists, who primarily employed mechanical methods of text reproduction, Kabakov usually wrote his texts by hand. This was not, however, a personalised handwriting; rather, it was a parody of the stylised handwriting found on the official Soviet documents that exerted a fatal control over the life of every Soviet person. Kabakov’s interest in combining word and image in his paintings, albums, and installations was the result of his many years of experience as an illustrator of children’s books.

By making the mundane a major subject of his work, Kabakov questions the notion that art has to reflect the sublime. Creating a composite image of collectivised life and its distorting pressures, Kabakov addresses the social conditions of life in the Soviet Union and meditates on the failed utopia of the Soviet state.