Ilya Kabakov

Galerie Michael Kewenig, Cologne
Collection Harrie van der Moesdijk, the Netherlands

Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, The Teacher and the Student: Charles Rosenthal and Ilya Kabakov, 2004

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

Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, The Teacher and the Student: Charles Rosenthal and Ilya Kabakov, 2004, p.169 
Moscow, The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov: Retrospective, 2008, illustrated
Renate Petzinger (ed.), Ilya Kabakov: Catalogue Raisonne Paintings 1957-2008, Bielefeld, 2009, p.135 illustrated

Original canvas. Covered in a layer of surface dirt and varnish. Minor paint loss along the edges. Several very small scratch marks in the lower left corner. Inspection under UV light does not reveal any signs of restoration. Held in a simple wood strip frame. Unexamined out of frame.
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A central figure of Moscow Conceptualism of the 1970s, Ilya Kabakov masterfully combines formal techniques of painting, printmaking, drawing and Gesamkunstwerk installations to navigate spaces of historic nostalgia and bridge the gap between his own socialist past and capitalist present. Beginning his career as an illustrator, his works are rich with textual references and open-ended narratives. The deliberately fictitious structure permeating most of his works was a witty solution to avoiding censorship within the Soviet regime and continuous to evoke subliminal messages associated with both propaganda and advertising.

One of Kabakov’s fictional characters is the artist Charles Rosenthal, whose imaginary ouvre he laid out for the first time in a 1999 show entitled Life and Creativity of Charles Rosenthal. Constructing all aspects of his artistic life from early searches for his artistic identity to its development into mature output and finally his arrival at spiritual enlightenment. Throughout his career, Rosenthal attempts to re-establish the tradition of painting as a depiction of reality, highlighting Kabakov’s own continuous fascination with the medium. However, Rosenthal’s attempts to “make a painting whole” continuously fail causing the author much frustration which he further elaborates in his writings. Posing the problem as his own personal shortcoming, the artist seems unable to get rid of the white noise that permeates his canvases. Ultimately seen as light that exists as an antidote to experienced reality, it is formally shown as parts of untouched white canvas on seemingly unfinished paintings.

Even though Kabakov studied under Soviet schooling for almost 13 years, he often mentions the lack of a significant influence in the shaping of his artistic personality. Thus, the Charles Rosenthal project developed through the adoption of the latter as Kabakov’s imaginary teacher. However, as the teacher is effectively a fictional character, the artist creates his own alter-ego as a pupil of Charles Rosenthal. Keeping his own name for the character as an added complication, he develops an alternative history of his own ouvre inspired by Rosenthal. The intricate layering of fiction and reality is further subverted by the fact that Rosenthal’s imaginary year of death coincides with that of Kabakov’s actual birth, making it impossible for the two to meet in reality, thus making Rosenthal a teacher and inspiration to Kabakov only by way of the artworks he left behind and their reproductions in magazines.

The presented lot, Landscape with a Barge, 1972, playfully includes a date in its title thus attributing it to the fictional Kabakov’s most important period of 1971-72. Inspired as it is by Rosenthal’s legacy, the realistic depiction of the world remains the painting’s main objective. Nevertheless, here the serene landscape slides across the canvas exposing a dark background. Painted in murky palette it references an infinite gloom beyond our reality and stands as a direct opposite to the white light permeating earlier paintings of Rosenthal. Similarly highlighting the precarious balance between perceived reality and the chaos surrounding it, the stark contrast becomes evident when one considers Rosenthal’s utopian quests typical of the beginning of the 20^th century and Kabakov’s own disillusionment with the new status quo experienced a generation later. Playing on ideas of reproduction and spectacle in art, the present work raises questions as varied as the relevance of education proper in art, the validity of historical constructs, ambivalence of creative inspiration, as well as the problems associated with socio-political realities and the utopian visions they engender.