Ilya Kabakov: paintings and their description. Artist Kabakov Ilya Iosifovich

It's good to be an art critic in the era of the Internet and abstract nicknames - no one will know the real name, you can not restrain yourself, because everything is so clear and understandable - they are all tricksters and hackers! Here, for example, the conceptualist Ilya Kabakov. Pictures, graphics, installations - some things do not look like anything in the world, but millions cost, - everything is clear!

But some connoisseurs should calm their breaking voice, and it is better to get to the exhibition of this master. And if you look really open-eyed, you can see an amazing, inexhaustible world, then full of humor and irony, then ringing with pain for people living and living in this incomprehensible country ...

14 years of study

But first there was a long study of the profession. Kabakov Ilya Iosifovich was born in 1933 in Dnepropetrovsk, in the family of a locksmith and accountant. During the war, they were with their mother in Samarkand, where the Repin Institute was evacuated from Leningrad. In the children's art school, Ilya began to study at this institute. After the war, Kabakov was transferred to the Moscow Secondary Art School, which he graduated in 1951 and entered the best art college of the country - the Surikov Institute, in the graphic department. He chose a specialization in the art of the book from Professor Dekhterev.

In today's memories of the master, full of self-irony and mystifications, one can meet his frivolous attitude to his studies in the design of children's books, which he began after graduating in 1957. He calls them only a way of extracting the means of subsistence, to which he devoted a small part of the time and effort. Printed products for children were particularly imbued with ideological cliches and dogmas, and it was allegedly impossible to do something interesting in it.

This seems like a slight cunning: the quality of the books of the publishing house "Children's Literature", the magazines "Murzilka", "Merry Pictures" is remembered by many with rapture, not only because of age-old nostalgia. Ilya Kabakov is an artist who created illustrations for Marshak's poems, Charles Perrot's fairy tales, and stories about Peter Pen. In these obviously non-academic works, freedom, novelty and imagination are clearly visible. It is very interesting to design scientific and educational children's books: "Wonders from the Tree" (1960), "Clay and Hands" (1963), "The Ocean begins with a drop" (1966) E. Mara, "The Tale of Gas" E. Permyaka (1960). ), "Cunning point" (1966).

Workshop under the roof of "Russia"

Since the late 60-ies in Moscow formed a society of nonconformist artists called "Sretensky Boulevard." It included Ilya Kabakov. The paintings of the artists of this friendly association were very different from the officially approved painting.

The opportunity to gather together appeared largely thanks to Kabakov. Work for publishers brought good money, and the artist had his own workshop. He calls the mystical story of how he found a place under the roof of the former "Russia" income house on Sretensky Boulevard and agreed with the authorities equipment there studios.

The works of Ilya Kabakov, Yulo Sooster, Eric Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev and others were exhibited at unofficial exhibitions in Moscow and abroad, embodying the alternative art of the USSR from the thaw era. But a brutal reaction to abstract art from the main "art critics" of the country led to the triumph of socialist realism alone.

Before the appearance of their own studio "work for themselves" were graphic sheets in the style of abstract expressionism and albums of a small format. Later, picturesque canvases of a larger format began to appear: "Head with a ball" (1965), "Tube, stick, ball and fly" (1966), "Automatic and chicken" (1966).

Text as a pictorial medium

Ilya Kabakov, whose paintings began to contain more and more philosophical overtones, became one of the leaders of conceptualists. A series of "white" paintings of a huge size - "Berdyansk sleeps" (1970), "A Man and Small House" (1970) - evoked thoughts about the terms of perception of the new painting, the interaction between the viewer and the artist. Movement in this direction is the artist's experiments with the introduction of the picture space text. The first such works - "Where are they?" (1970), "All about it" (1970), "The answers of the experimental group" (1970) - represent various subjects from the real life of Moscow communal homes with text commentaries, often pseudo-significant parodies of official instructions Or ads.

The text is also used later by Ilya Kabakov. "Suite number" (1981) - a picture that is a kind of hotel room with an image of advertising imposed on the image of the Black Sea resorts.

Conceptual works are the albums invented by Kabakov, which became the forerunner of installations. Such albums - the fusion of sculpture, illustration, literature, theater - are built around one theme or the experience of the character, expressed in visual and textual means. Observation of the stringing of significant or meaningless events on each other is fascinating. It is impressive or completeness, or openness in any direction of time and space.

Ilya Kabakov - graphic artist, illustrator, font. In such albums, the essence of his activity is most accurately traced. The most famous album is "Ten Characters" (1970-74).

War and Peace Communal

Social conditions of the Soviet era - the main object of research for creativity Kabakov. The oppressive influence of the domination of one ideology found expression in such works as "Verified!" (1981) and "Supermarket" (1981). The wars of neighbors in communal areas for air and additional space - the theme of "zhakovskih" tracks "Garbage removal" (1980), "Sunday Evening" (1980). In the "Kitchen series" of the same period, the usual objects of kitchen utensils are endowed with a certain high artistic value, a cultural meaning, often separated from functionality.

This sense is filled with ordinary household garbage in the subsequent installation "A Man Who Never Threw Nothing" (1985). In it one can see global arguments about the meaning of human activity, the habit of recklessly storing the necessary and unnecessary or, conversely, the revision of history with the adjustment of the past to the needs of modern politics.

Total Installations

In 1987 Kabakov Ilya Iosifovich emigrated to the West. Here he gets access to large exhibition spaces. "Total installations" - that's what Ilya Kabakov calls paintings and objects that occupy large spaces and are united by a common global idea.

The most famous was the installation "A Man Flown Into Space from His Apartment", largely symbolic for the fate of the artist himself. In the center of a small room with walls covered with Soviet posters, something similar to a slingshot was strengthened. A break in the ceiling, comments and a description of the room as the scene - everything proves the reality of an extraordinary event: an inventor using a clever catapult, breaking through the ceiling with his body, stepped out into the near-earth space - the body was not found ...

To see in such an object only the banter and mockery of the formation is wrong. Just like in the installation of "Toilet" (1992), to find only the evil analogy of the public toilet as the usual living conditions in the whole country. This art object struck a particularly Western viewer, who considers the privacy of living space as a natural need of a normal person.

"Red Wagon" (1991), Most (1991), Life of the Flies (1992), "We Live Here" (1995) - total installations that brought Kabakov fame. They are exhibited in the museums of the United States and Europe, and united in the exhibition "Palace of Projects" (1998, London) and "50 installations" (2000, Bern) represent Kabakov's work as a phenomenon of world culture.

Wife and co-author

Kabakov loves to color life with hoaxes. Such inventions were inclined to periodically appearing artists Charles Rosenthal, Igor Spivak, Stepan Koshelev. With them Kabakov entered into a creative collaboration, about them he even wrote articles in the style of boring art historians.

Since 1989, the artist has acquired this co-author - Emilia Leka. She becomes his wife and takes on the decision of many organizational and financial issues, leaving the master more time for creativity. And such questions become more and more, because the interest in Kabakov's work is growing. An example of this is the auction of Phillips de Pury & Company. In 2007 there was exhibited lot "Ilya Kabakov. "Suite". The picture was bought for 2 million pounds sterling, and Kabakov becomes the most expensive modern Russian painter.

In 2008, this is confirmed by regular bidding at the same auction. Another lot - "Ilya Kabakov," Beetle "(1982)", and another record - 2.93 million £.

Ability to be amazed

Counting dollars and pounds is necessary - this is the present world. But I want it to survive this banal idea that money is not happiness. It is in the existence of such artists, in their work and talent. Humanity will consist of people, not animals, as long as it is able to be surprised and enjoy the art.