Ilya Kabakov

Collection KNIGA, Paris
Galerie de France, Paris
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1989

Paris, Galerie de France, Art Contemporain Sovietique, 1988, ill. in colour p. 26
Bonn, Bonner Kunstverein, Erik Bulatov - Ilya Kabakov, 1988
Bern, Kunstmuseum Bern, I Live - I see: Artists of teh Eighties in Moscow, 1988, illustrated
Paris, Galerie de France, Who Are These Little Men?, 1989, illustrated
Toronto, The Power Plant, Ilya Kabakov / John Scott, 1991, ill. in colour p. 26
Basel, Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Ilya Kabakov. A Sea of Voices. A New Acquisition from Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation and Works from 1965 to 1993 in Swiss Collections, 1995, ill. in colour pp. 112-117
East Hampton, Guild Hall Museum, The Reading Room, 1997, ill. in colour p. 17

Collection KNIGA, Art Contemporain Sovietique. Selection d'Oeuvres de la Collection KNIGA, Paris, 1988, ill. p. 27
Wallach, Amei, Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away, New York, 1996, ill. in colour p. 168
Iwona Blazwick, Boris Groys and David A. Ross, Eds., Ilya Kabakov, London, 1998, ill. in colour p. 53
Ilya Kabakov, Paintings: 1957 - 2008, Catalogue Raisonnée, Munich, 2008, ill. in colour pl. 120

This work is in very good overall condition. Some wear and colour loss to "candy wrappers" visible over time. There is a very minor separation to the upper left corner of the artist frame. The work is displayed in a plexiglass box.
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Born in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in 1933, Ilya Kabakov was one of the founding members of the Moscow Conceptualist circle in the late 60s and is one of the most important Russian artists of his generation. Kabakov started his artistic career as a children’s book illustrator practicing painting on the side. His work was instrumental at introducing Soviet realities to the Western public as the artist started exhibiting internationally from the late eighties. Combining text and imagery with the masterful technique of an illustrator during the late 1980s he created a diverse body of work comprising drawings, paintings, prints and large-scale installations, which explore the dichotomies between the public and private sphere of Soviet life. His sharp sense of humour and poignant aesthetics have made his art accessible and understandable to both local and international audiences, creating a truly universal visual language that is distinctly his own.

The Holidays paintings, of which the presented lot is one, are among Kabakov’s best-known works. In the series, the artist paints beautiful pictures of soviet life in a true Socialist-Realist spirit. Family life, festivities and agricultural, industrial and architectural achievements are portrayed as if on a commission from an institutional body, such as a Kolkhoz (collective farm) or a Science Academy. In a conceptual twist characteristic of his entire practice, Kabakov adopts the identity of an imaginary artist who abandoned these paintings having become disillusioned with the results of this official commission[1]. In an attempt to reinvigorate the works, this imaginary artist, whose identity overlaps with Kabakov’s own self, collects bright and shiny candy wrappers and sticks them onto the canvas. Reminiscent of the Soviet concept of “cosmetic repairs”, this superficial polishing of the work acts as a thin disguise for its inadequacy and presents it in a new, shiny light.

Such post-modernist layering is indicative of Kabakov’s search for new meanings in the late eighties- during perestroika.  The candy, itself the only abundantly available consumer product in Soviet Russia, acts as a signifier of fabricated joy masking the dull reality underneath. The Socialist-Realist project was seen by Kabakov and his Sretensky Boulevard circle largely as a fake construct, so these works add fabrication upon fabrication. Their real irony gets purposefully concealed in the process making the paintings acceptable to authorities and pleasing to all eyes. The title, Holidays, adds yet another dimension by evoking an escape from reality, re-affirmed through the compulsory smiles and tans of holiday goers. This further twist preserves the works’ relevance beyond the Soviet realities, where they originated, by posing a witty critique of our globalised world today with its own particular dichotomies.

The presented lot is a very important, early work from the series of twelve paintings. Titled here as Holidays No. 6, it has been previously also numbered No. 3 elsewhere. Its correct numbering has been confirmed by the artist.

[1] From the artist’s conversation with Pavel Pepperstein, accessed on Saatchi Online, 12th October 2013