Dialogues: Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov, Stories about Ourselves 9781978814950

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DIALOGUES

ILYA KABAKOV & VIKTOR PIVOVAROV Stories About Ourselves

DIALOGUES

ILYA KABAKOV & VIKTOR PIVOVAROV Stories About Ourselves

KSENIA NOURIL with contributions from TOMÁŠ GL ANC

ZIMMERLI ART MUSEUM  |  RUTGERS

RUTGERS UNIVERSIT Y PRESS NEW BRUNSWICK, CAMDEN, AND NEWARK, NEW JERSEY, AND LONDON

This book accompanies the exhibition Dialogues—Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov: Stories About Ourselves organized by the Zimmerli Art Museum Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 71 Hamilton Street New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1248 www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu The exhibition is organized by Ksenia Nouril, PhD, Jensen Bryan Curator, The Print Center, Philadelphia, with Julia Tulovsky, PhD, Curator of Russian and Soviet Nonconformist Art, and Jane A. Sharp, PhD, Research Curator of Soviet Nonconformist Art. The exhibition and publication are made possible by the Avenir Foundation Endowment Fund and the Dodge Charitable Trust–Nancy Ruyle Dodge, Trustee. Published by Rutgers University Press and the Zimmerli Art Museum ©2019 Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey Works by Ilya Kabakov © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn Works by Viktor Pivovarov © 2019 Viktor Pivovarov The Zimmerli’s operations, exhibitions, and programs are funded in part by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and income from the Avenir Foundation Endowment and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Endowment, among others. Additional support comes from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and donors, members, and friends of the museum.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945196 ISBN 978-1-9788-1492-9 (print) ISBN 978-1-9788-1493-6 (Epub) ISBN 978-1-9788-1494-3 (Mobi) ISBN 978-1-9788-1495-0 (Web PDF) General Editor: Ksenia Nouril Contributor: Tomáš Glanc Publication Manager: Stacy Smith Copy Editor: Carolyn Vaughan Designer: Laura Lindgren Set in Neue Haas Unica Printed and bound by Puritan Capital Front cover, left: Ilya Kabakov, detail from Shower—A Comedy, 1970s–1985 (p. 27) Front cover, right: Viktor Pivovarov, detail from Tears, 1975 (p. 103) Back cover: Viktor Pivovarov, detail from Tears, 1975 (p. 101) Frontispiece: Ilya Kabakov, detail from Shower—A Comedy, 1970s–1985 (p. 31) Unless otherwise noted, all photography is by Peter Jacobs.

Contents 7 Foreword

Thomas Sokolowski

9 Acknowledgments

Ksenia Nouril

11 Introduction

Jane A. Sharp

13 Between the Lines: The Intermediality of Ilya Kabakov’s Albums

Ksenia Nouril

21 Ilya Kabakov in Conversation with Ksenia Nouril 26 WORKS BY KABAKOV 75 The Beloved Agent in Love

Tomáš Glanc

81 Viktor Pivovarov in Conversation with Tomáš Glanc 86 WORKS BY PIVOVAROV 119 Catalogue of the Exhibition 122

Selected Bibliography

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Translations

128 About the Authors

Foreword In my first fifteen months at the helm of the Zimmerli Art Museum, I have been tossed headfirst into the turbulent waters that constitute Soviet nonconformist art. The experience has been both exhilarating and daunting. Yet, attempting to assess the art itself as well as the social and cultural context in which it was made has left me somewhat unsettled, and the answers I have found have not been totally conclusive. Something seemed to be missing. Although a seasoned art historian and curator, when it comes to Russia, I am distinctly more adept in the navigation of the literature of that immense land than I am in the explication of its twentieth-century visual output. The present exhibition, Dialogues—Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov: Stories About Ourselves, has given me the much-needed key to decode the context of the art, the artists, and their milieu. The album, an art form that sits somewhere between a drawing and a novel, is paramount to what both artists have stated was a “making do” modus operandi during the Soviet era. Not only did both artists bring their experience as book illustrators into the mix but both also used their respective albums as flip books or props in private performance-readings staged in their homes and studios. I feel that these events were akin to the first staged reading of a play by actors who are just beginning to inhabit roles that subsequently will be manipulated and honed before the first curtain goes up. In such an experiential way, they almost become a kind of kinesthetic learning experience for both the artists and their audience. The images contained within the albums never provide a clear meaning; there is no rebus, only hints. And like the preparatory drawings of painters of all centuries, they provide the first glimmer of the idea that, oftentimes, gets subsumed by grand-scale flourishes in the final piece. I hope that visitors to the exhibition will take some time to breathe in the shimmering delicacy of these album drawings. The intention is right there. Minuscule is often more powerful than her sister, majuscule! The curatorial team—Ksenia Nouril, guest curator and the catalogue’s general editor; Julia Tulovsky, curator of Russian and Soviet nonconformist art; and Jane A. Sharp, professor of art history at Rutgers and research curator of the Dodge Collection—has brought a new intensity to the study of these works, as have the catalogue’s authors. Although it is the first time in many years that the Dodge Collection has integrated a guest curator into its programming, on this occasion, Ksenia was an excellent and obvious choice: first as a former Dodge Avenir Fellow and also as

Viktor Pivovarov, detail, Tears, 1975 (p. 106)

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a scholar whose years of working with the Kabakovs yielded a dissertation chapter (Rutgers University, Department of Art History, 2018) under Professor Sharp’s supervision. I am grateful for their ingenuity and hard work as well as that of the entire staff of the Zimmerli Art Museum, who always endeavor to see projects through to the glorious end. Thomas Sokolowski Director, Zimmerli Art Museum

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Acknowledgments Both the exhibition and publication Dialogues—Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov: Stories About Ourselves were brought to fruition thanks to countless congenial dialogues among a number of colleagues. First and foremost, I am indebted to Julia Tulovsky, curator of Russian and Soviet nonconformist art, and Jane A. Sharp, research curator for Soviet nonconformist art and professor in the Department of Art History at Rutgers, who invited me to be guest curator and editor. I was honored to return to the Zimmerli, where I was a Dodge Avenir Fellow from 2011 to 2018, when I completed my PhD in art history at Rutgers. Working with the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union has been a formative experience, and I am grateful for the magnanimity of the late Norton Dodge and his wife, Nancy Ruyle Dodge, who carries his legacy with the help of Charles Fick, art collection manager for Norton and Nancy Dodge. Stacy Smith, manager of publications and communications at the Zimmerli, deftly oversaw the production of this catalogue and was always there to encourage me. Copy editor Carolyn Vaughan seamlessly brought together multiple unique voices into one coherent whole, which was enhanced visually by the design of Laura ­Lindgren. I extend my gratitude to Tomáš Glanc, whose essay illuminates the complexity of ­Viktor Pivovarov’s six-decade-long career. Bela Shayevich and Giuliano Vivaldi provided expert translations. For their unflagging cooperation at various stages of the exhibition and publication, I am thankful to the Zimmerli’s director, Thomas Sokolowski, and staff, including but not limited to Rebecca Brenowitz, manager of event services; Keith Bull, exhibitions coordinator; Roberto Delgado, preparator; Waylen Glass, assistant registrar, Dodge Collection; Leslie Kriff, registrar; Kiki Michael, associate registrar; Margaret Molnar, associate registrar; Amanda Potter, curator of education and interpretation; Whitney Prendergast, director of development; and Theresa Watson, communications coordinator. In addition, Irene Rybalsky, administrative assistant for Russian and Soviet nonconformist art, and Olena Martynyuk, assistant curator for Russian and Soviet nonconformist art, stepped up to provide support as I developed and executed the many facets of this project. The works of art generously loaned by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov and Dr. Viola Kanevsky enhance the argument for the album as an influential medium of ­expression

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in 1970s Moscow. Over the course of the last five years, Emilia has been an invaluable resource in my research on the period. Last but not least, nothing would be possible without the artists Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov. As exemplified by their works as well as their words in the interviews herein, Kabakov and Pivovarov are visionary thinkers and makers whose creativity knows no bounds. Ksenia Nouril Guest Curator

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Introduction The second exhibition in Dialogues, the Zimmerli’s series of dual career shows drawn from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection, pairs two key figures of the Moscow conceptualist circle: Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov. Although it may seem to viewers familiar with each artist’s oeuvre that they have been joined together frequently in previous exhibitions, they have not—at least not alone. Both artists are well represented in major museum collections, and both have been awarded numerous solo exhibitions, most recently in Moscow. Both have played major roles in defining and reshaping Moscow conceptualism for audiences since the 1980s, including at the Zimmerli in “Thinking Pictures”: Moscow Conceptual Art in the Dodge Collection (2016). The present exhibition redresses that oversight, bringing their work together “in dialogue.” The series Dialogues is designed to initiate and renew a more focused historical awareness of the aims and impact of unofficial art in the former Soviet Union by highlighting a particular aspect of it. Rather than combine essentially two retrospective exhibitions, instead, like the previous Dialogues exhibition (The Sixties Generation: Lydia Masterkova and Evgenii Rukhin, 2018), this one targets a wellknown concentration of creative energy that has come to define these artists’ legacy: the hand-drawn album. As the texts included here underscore, Kabakov and Pivovarov developed this specific genre at roughly the same time (the early 1970s) and did so through constant discussion and engagement with each other’s larger creative ambitions—historical motivation for an exhibition more grounded in actual dialogue than those planned for the future may be. The curators are sensitive, too, to the role played by wider viewer participation in the dialogue between artists. The albums, when viewed alone (as they were initially), were adapted to intimate and informed contemplation, as each artist presented the album sheets individually to an audience first made up of close acquaintances— often other artists. They were, to a degree, “stories about ourselves.” While this mode of display rarely may be accommodated in museums, it is hoped that viewers of this exhibition will experience the images as intended, in succession, and enter into a dialogue with them, across the Zimmerli Museum’s spaces. Jane A. Sharp, Professor, Department of Art History, and Research Curator of the Norton and Nancy Dodge ­Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union

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Between the Lines The Intermediality of Ilya Kabakov’s Albums Ksenia Nouril

In 1987, the photographer Lev Melikhov visited the artist Ilya Kabakov in his M ­ oscow studio. Melikhov’s photograph (opposite) captures Kabakov casually leaning against a wooden pillar surrounded by his artworks. While a couple of recognizable paintings languish in the background, Kabakov’s albums dominate the foreground. The albums comprise individual pages of ink, water­color, and colored pencil drawings and handwritten texts mounted on boards. Each album is displayed vertically in an accordion-style book. Unlike Kabakov, who looks weary and slightly hunchbacked, the albums stand tall, nearly engulfing the lower half of the artist’s body.1 This essay posits the album as the foundation of Kabakov’s artistic practice, which is now in its seventh decade, by exploring the medium’s intermediality within the context of unofficial art in Moscow during the 1970s. Under the conditions of that time, these humble works of art possessed great potential. Kabakov went on to parlay certain concepts and themes explored in his albums, such as his use of characters and his meditations on the routines of Soviet life, into large-scale, immersive installations, including Ten Characters. 2 While the complete installation of that work’s ten rooms was first exhibited in 1988 at Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York, one room—The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment— was fabricated in Kabakov’s studio in 1984. A room within a room, this installation provided the artist with another layer of distance between himself and the world outside his studio. The Ant (1983), while not an album, per se, is what the art historian Matthew Jesse Jackson calls a “mounted writing,” composed of a title page of a book published by Detskaya Literatura (Detgiz, the State Children’s Publishing House) in 1950 and five pages of typed text, recounting a story from Kabakov’s youth.3 Each page was sandwiched between Plexiglas and hung vertically on the wall. The Ant, along with Kabakov’s early in-­s tudio installations, exemplifies the fluidity of his movement between two and three dimensions. Although one of his primary media for approximately ten years, the album supposedly had already lost its relevance for Kabakov by the time Melikhov’s photograph

Lev Melikhov, Ilya Kabakov, 1987, gelatin silver print

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was taken. “In general, albums as a technique ceased for me almost entirely, it seems forever, in 1980,” says Kabakov, which “means there is an ‘end’ to all of this, and it is possible to examine it ‘from behind and from the side.’ ”4 This statement ascribes a historicity to the album, positioning it as a closed chapter within the artist’s larger autobiography. Why, then, would Kabakov be posed with his albums, when newer, more relevant paintings were at hand? It is also important to note that this clearly staged photograph was taken not long before the artist’s emigration from the Soviet Union. Why would Kabakov be intentionally portrayed alongside a passé medium at this pivotal point in his career?5 Attesting to the album’s continued importance, this photograph is not a farewell to Kabakov’s former life but an announcement of his first big step beyond the confines of his studio into the art world at large.6 In Melikhov’s photograph, the albums presented in the form of accordion-­style books are already quasi-­installations that proscribe the viewer’s navigation through a gallery space.7 Kabakov would further develop his ideas around installations, penning a treatise on what he calls the “total installation” in 1995.8 While living and working in Moscow throughout the 1970s, Kabakov explored the immense potential of the album as an innovative mode of expression. Albums such as Fruits and Vegetables (1979, pp.  62–69) and Shower—A Comedy (1970s–1985, pp. 26–31), partially visible in Melikhov’s photograph, were direct responses to the limitations of everyday Soviet life, namely the lack of materials, a functioning art market, and space for self-motivated, creative activities. Fruits and Vegetables proposes absurd juxtapositions between drawn images of produce and hand-rendered texts that dryly describe the trials and tribulations of the quotidian. For example, a single scallion sketched in a soft palette of green, yellow, and brown is paired on a sheet of green cardboard with what is presented as an excerpt from a story replete with ellipses: “. . . I pass the buttered bread, it slips out of my hand, and, as always in this kind of situation, it falls buttered side down, and not on the floor, but onto the dress of the woman next to me. . . .”9 The viewer or reader is left feeling sorry for this pitiful character, struggling to accomplish the most mundane tasks. Despite its jarringly absurdist pairings, Fruits and Vegetables strikes a balance between text and image, which serves to distract from its lack of logical progression. For Kabakov, the album was undoubtedly a unique genre—somewhere between a drawing and a novel, a sculpture and a piece of time-based media. While not exactly a book, it provided him with a compact and portable work of art. Yet, it was more than a two-dimensional work on paper. His albums were organized as portfolios with each set of loose sheets stored in a custom­-made, fabric-­encased box.

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In lieu of installing them as framed two-­dimensional objects in a gallery space (as they most often are today), Kabakov originally performed the albums for visitors to his studio. He would ceremoniously prop the album on an easel and read the texts aloud, demonstratively flipping its pages. Performances of the albums were both physical and temporal, as they required bodily engagement and lasted from fifteen minutes to several hours.10 In reflecting on the medium’s performativity, Kabakov says, “Thanks to the ‘leafing,’ ‘turning over’ [of the pages], this physical participation in it [the album] by our own hand, we feel time not only speculatively but with all our senses, visually and physically. With our hand, we are changing the future into the past.”11 In essence, a single performance was an act of making history. Whereas Kabakov had limited control over the conditions of his daily life under the Soviet system, he exerted full control over the album. It was a domain in which he could experiment more freely in devising alternative universes and personae that expressed his frustrations and desires. Division starkly marked the lives of Kabakov and his peers working in Moscow in the 1970s. By this time—a period in Soviet history known as the era of social, political, and economic stagnation (zastoi) under Leonid ­Brezhnev—Kabakov’s generation had come of age at the close of the Second World War, witnessed the denunciation of Joseph Stalin in 1956, and benefited from the short-­lived Thaw in cultural policies in the early 1960s.12 Kabakov, born in 1933 in the industrial Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), first developed an interest in art during the war while displaced in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.13 He continued his studies in Moscow, graduating from the department of Graphic Design and Book Illustration at the Surikov Art Institute in 1957. Thereafter, Kabakov was employed officially as an illustrator for Detgiz, but in the privacy of his studio, he produced works of art both abstract and conceptual for consumption by his closest friends and occasional foreign collectors. (Not long after his immigration to the United States in 1988, Kabakov’s work took a new direction, when he began his collaboration with Emilia Kanevsky, who would later become his wife. Today, they cosign their highly celebrated monumental installations and paintings as Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.) Kabakov’s Moscow studio, where he made more than fifty albums beginning in 1970, was a veritable node within the city’s larger artistic network. Located in the attic of an apartment building on Sretensky Boulevard, it was a popular gathering place throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s for artists, writers, and other members of the intelligentsia mediating between official and unofficial Soviet life. It was a convivial and relatively safe space for these interlocutors, who became

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known as the Moscow conceptualist circle, to share their work and debate the fate of culture under communism.14 The liminality of this semiprivate, semipublic space engendered a creativity that overcame the lack of alternative exhibition venues and nonpartisan art critics. It was an exercise in what the philosopher Michel de Certeau calls “making do.” De Certeau advises that, when challenged by delimiting dilemmas, one should proactively bricolage disparate things in order to “create for himself a space in which he can find ways of using the constraining order.” Within a closed system like the Soviet Union, the practice of “making do” enabled one to claim one’s own space and adapt without necessarily compromising one’s own morals. “Without leaving the place where he has no choice but to live and which lays down its law for him, he [who ‘makes do’] establishes within it a degree of plurality and creativity.”15 Kabakov’s “making do” extended from his studio into his work, specifically his albums, which compounded another coping mechanism: self-historicization. A strategy prevalent for artists faced with a lack or loss of representation, self-­historicization is especially salient today in Eastern Europe, where societies are still experiencing the effects of transition after the fall of communism.16 In the Soviet Union, official art had established networks of support, including art academies, artist unions, state museums, traveling exhibitions, and even art critics. Artists who chose to work in unofficial capacities were deprived not only of certain freedoms of expression but also of these coveted resources. As a result, artists like Kabakov and his contemporaries across the Eastern Bloc took on the responsibility of writing their own histories and building independent infrastructures for art, including apartment exhibitions, samizdat journals, and personal archives.17 They developed what the philosopher Michel Foucault calls “heterotopias” or “counter-sites” within the spaces of their everyday lives.18 Writing in the early 2000s, Kabakov described how these conditions produced “a unique genre of ‘self-description,’ ” in which the author would imitate, re-create that very same “outside” perspective of which he was deprived in actual reality. He became simultaneously an author and an observer. Deprived of a genuine viewer, critic, or historian, the author unwittingly became them himself, trying to guess what his works meant “objectively.” He attempted to “imagine” that very “History” in which he was functioning and which was “looking” at him. Obviously, this “History” existed only in his imagination and had its own image for each artist.19

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For unofficial artists circumnavigating established narratives, like Kabakov, art history was far from singularly defined. For some, it was the Italian Renaissance; for others, it was contemporary Euro-American art or the equally forbidden Soviet avant-garde. Kabakov looked to all of those references, meanwhile inventing his own history through the development of what he calls “artist-characters.” Kabakov first described the prevalence of this schizophrenic state in “Artist-­ Character,” a 1985 text addressing the split between authorship and subjectivity in unofficial art. 20 Operating at a double disadvantage—outside the parameters of both official Soviet and Western art—he describes how he and his peers were “yanked away” from “the normal artistic cycle (artist–painting–exhibition–viewer).” Left to their own devices, they imagined their life and work as a panorama of “isolated, immobile ‘painting-images’ . . . ripped out of their historical flow . . . all equally visible and equally radiant.”21 This panorama is the touchstone of the artist-­ character, who takes on a multiperspectival view as its maker, subject, and spectator. That is exactly how Kabakov functioned in his Moscow studio, where he was joined from time to time by fellow artist-characters—colleagues, who could provide external feedback on his process. Such a subdivision of self is reminiscent of Foucault’s mirror, which is a liminal, in-between space. “In the mirror, I see myself there where I am not, in an unreal, virtual space,” writes the philosopher. Like the mirror, the artist-character’s panorama is a “placeless place” that is “at once absolutely real . . . and absolutely unreal.”22 This figuratively parallels the unofficial artist’s mental conception of self as well as literally parallels his physical space, that is, his studio. The application of the artist-character within a work of art is seen in Kabakov’s album Mathematical Gorsky (1970–74, pp.  32–61), one of ten albums in the cycle Ten Characters, which tells the often unfortunate and sadistically humorous stories of fictional personages who develop strategies to escape the doldrums of everyday Soviet life. 23 Mathematical Gorsky centers on a trained and well-regarded mathematician, whose postulates rely completely on the appearance of mistakes within a series. This seemingly antithetical claim is exercised in sets of numbers and objects that build upon themselves. At first glance, they appear to be in a pattern, but upon a closer look, variations are subtly perceptible. Subtitled “sequence error” (oshibka riada), the album draws the viewer’s attention to the imperfect nature of humankind. Rendered delicately in colored pencil, the album’s images are supplemented by statements from Gorsky, as well as from his mother and his peers expressing shock and concern at Gorsky’s eventual demise. The ­commentary

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enhances the naturally narrative quality of the album, providing its visual components with some semblance of a backstory. As this essay elucidates, Kabakov’s albums are heavily dependent on their context. They were initially produced in the culturally specific climate of the semiprivate, semipublic spaces in the Soviet Union. Within and of themselves, they create alternative spaces populated by characters that make oblique reference to the artist and his milieu. Although Kabakov is no longer making new albums, the existing ones are still relevant, despite the changing circumstances of his life and career. They remain an integral part of his oeuvre—on a par with his paintings, installations, and drawings produced both in and outside the Soviet Union. Albums like Fruits and Vegetables and Mathematical Gorsky are testaments to the artist’s ability to overcome limitations by thinking big while still working small. Even though the composition of Melikhov’s photograph may have been circumstantial, its density foreshadows the great scale Kabakov’s works would eventually reach. NOTES 1. The staging of this photograph is reminiscent of Kabakov’s installation The Short Man (The Bookbinder) from the series of installations Ten Characters (c. 1980s). Although not addressed in this essay, The Short Man is part of the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union at the Zimmerli Art Museum. 2. Despite sharing a name, the later series of installations Ten Characters is not a mirror image of the album series Ten Characters, which will be highlighted later in this essay. Whereas the albums present a pantheon of diverse characters inspired by traditions in classical Russian art and culture, the installations present stereotypes of the Soviet communal apartment (kommunalka). 3. Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 220. 4. Maaretta Jaukkuri and Emilia Kabakov, eds., Ilya Kabakov: Five Albums, Vol. 2 (New York, NY: Ilya and Emila Kabakov, 1998), i. Kabakov reiterates this point in his interview with the author in this volume. 5. While the exact circumstances surrounding the staging of this specific photograph are unknown, it would have been natural for Kabakov to display his works to the photographer, as photographs could be reproduced and circulated widely. Thus, this photograph serves not only as a portrait but also as a document of Kabakov’s works and workspace. According to Emilia Kabakov, this photograph could be one of many taken during a session in Kabakov’s studio. Kabakov was also the subject of well-known photographs by Igor Palmin and Vladimir Sychev. Emilia Kabakov, email to author, April 13, 2019. I am indebted to Emilia Kabakov for her clarifications and elucidations about this photograph and many other points addressed in this essay. 6. Kabakov’s work was already garnering international attention prior to his emigration from the Soviet Union. On several occasions in the 1960s and 1970s, he participated in group exhibitions—primarily dedicated to “unofficial,” “nonconformist,” or “Russian” art “in exile” at museums and commercial galleries in England, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United

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7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

States. The Parisian gallerist Dina Vierny, who visited Moscow in 1973, and Paul Jolles, the Swiss diplomat who began visiting the artist in the 1980s and introduced Kabakov’s work to the world-renowned curator Jean-Hubert Martin, were especially instrumental in promoting the artist abroad. Kabakov obtained an exit visa in October 1987 to participate in a fellowship at the Grazer Kunstverein. See Katy Wan, “Chronology,” in Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future, ed. Juliet Bingham (London: Tate Publishing, 2017), 206–8. This manner of installation is common for Kabakov’s albums today. He was already exhibiting them as objects in the 1980s. For example, he presented them as book-installations at the 1988 Frankfurt Art Book Fair at Portikus. The cover of his catalogue for that exhibition features a drawing of an album in a box on an easel. Inside, additional drawings depict the albums displayed as accordion-style books on long plinths. The viewer could see the albums from both sides, making them sculptural objects. See Ilya Kabakov: Artist Books, 1958–2009: Catalogue Raisonné, ed. Matthias Haldemann (Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber, 2010), 145–47. See Ilya Kabakov, On the “Total” Installation (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 1995). In the original Russian, it reads: “. . . Ia peredaiu khleb s maslom, on vyryvaetsia iz ruk i, kak vsegda v takikh sluchaiakh, padaet maslom vniz tol’ko ne na pol, a na plat’e sosedki. . . .” It is a play on the Russian saying “Buterbrod vsegda padaet vniz,” a Russian version of Murphy’s Law. With his interest in idioms and vernacular culture, Kabakov often manipulates such rhetoric in his works. I am grateful to Olena Martynyuk for pointing out this connection. According to Emilia Kabakov, Ilya Kabakov could read between three and five albums per performance, which would last up to a few hours. Emilia Kabakov, email to author, April 13, 2019. Jaukkuri and Kabakov, Five Albums, 2: iv–v. Georgii Kizeval’ter, a chronicler of the time, calls the decade “strange.” See Georgii Kizeval’ter, ed. Eti strannye semidesiatye, ili Poteria nevinnosti (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010). See Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, On the Roof (Düsseldorf: Richter, 1997). For a description of this milieu, see Jackson, The Experimental Group. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 30. Italics in the original. See Zdenka Badovinac, “Interrupted Histories,” in Interrupted Histories (Ljubljana: Moderna galerija, 2006), np. See Margarita Tupitsyn, Victor Tupitsyn, and David Morris, eds., Anti-Shows: APTART, 1982–1984 (London: Afterall, 2017), and Juliane Furst and Josie McLellan, eds., Dropping Out of Socialism: The Creation of Alternative Spheres in the Soviet Bloc (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017). Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopia and Heterotopias,” trans. Jay Miskowiec, Architecture/Movement/Continuité (October 1984): 3, accessed April 10, 2019, http://web.mit.edu /allanmc/www/foucault1.pdf. Ilya Kabakov, “Foreword,” in Primary Documents: A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art Since the 1950s, eds. Laura Hoptman and Tomáš Pospiszyl (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002), 7–8. Kabakov explored a similar idea in an earlier text, “The Creator Looks at His Work Twice,” first published in 1982. See Ilya Kabakov, On Art, ed. Matthew Jesse Jackson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 43–44. Ilya Kabakov, “Artist-Character,” trans. Cynthia Martin, in Tupitsyn et al., Anti-Shows. Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 4. See note 2.

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Ilya Kabakov in Conversation with Ksenia Nouril Ksenia Nouril: With whom or with what were you in dialogue in the 1970s in Moscow? Ilya Kabakov: As is the case with many other people, friendship seems to be arranged in particular circles. There is a circle of friends already present early in your life and with whom you are connected through the memories and emotions of your early years. There is also that circle of friends brought together later in life by the problems, issues, and topics of the time—in my case, of the 1970s. People like Erik Bulatov and Oleg Vassiliev are part of the first group of people with whom I have been in much closer contact and have known since my schooldays. The second group, which came together in the 1970s, included, first and most importantly, Boris Groys, along with a large group of friends and like-minded acquaintances who became known as the Moscow conceptualist circle, including Andrei Monastyrski and other members of the Collective Actions group, Dmitri Prigov, and Lev Rubinshtein. KN: What was your relationship to Viktor Pivovarov at that time? IK: Viktor Pivovarov was my closest friend from the first generation, even though we didn’t study together. We shared common psychological circumstances. Both of us were brought up by single mothers. As we were embarking on the development of our artwork, we had almost daily discussions about our creative plans. KN: You often use text in your artworks, especially in those produced during the 1970s and even 1980s, for example, the painting The Answers of an Experimental Group (1971) or Inna Gavrilovna Korobeva: I tell him . . . (1981). Scholarship has highlighted the literary nature of Moscow conceptualism. What role does narrative play in your work, specifically in your albums? IK: Narrative, just like all the other elements in the album, plays an important but limited role. In the Soviet Union, the situation was such that visual culture was ­represented by official artists; it was often co-opted into official p ­ olitical

Ilya Kabakov, detail, Mathematical Gorsky, 1970–74 (p. 49)

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­ ropaganda and evoked a sense of repulsion and disgust among people of p my close circle. Classical art from both Russia and the rest of the world showcased in museums was not relevant to our lives, and we felt no real connection to it. Twentieth-­century modernism, due to the complete isolation of the Soviet Union, was unknown to us. The art of the Russian avant-garde was hidden in basements, and we were not shown it. For all these reasons, literature, whether contemporary underground literature or classic literature, proved to be of the greatest significance. The book—a literary text—was the only thing we possessed. KN: In your albums, who is the narrator, the storyteller? IK: As in any literary work, the narrator is a person who is close to the character, who is “in the know” about (has full knowledge of) the life details of that character. KN: Do you see yourself in the role of the storyteller? IK: Yes, to some extent, because it is the words, texts, commentaries that provoke a strong reaction in me. KN: Seriality—the sequencing of things—is evidently important to the organization of your albums. How does it act as a narrative device that both grounds and develops the story of a given work? IK: As a rule, the albums consist of three or four series of drawings, with the exclusion of the albums The Flying Komarov (1970–74) and Mathematical Gorsky (1970–74). The plot develops from series to series. Inside each series, the drawings represent variations on a single composition. KN: How would you describe the dialogue between image and text in your work, specifically in the albums of that period? IK: The images in albums are not purely decorative. The texts in albums are always veiled and targeted metaphors. But an image in an album also represents a “visual metaphor.” When the edges of both of these metaphors come into contact, they give us further and completely new interpretative potential.

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KN: In the albums, what came first—the image or the text? IK: In all the albums, the text and image had an equal weight. KN: What is the role of the viewer in relation to the album? IK: The role of the viewer is to listen, to look, and to understand (or to read, look, and understand). It is like the role of the reader—to look and to compare what he sees with what is in his mind. KN: In the Soviet context, how was this role fulfilled or unfilled? To what extent is the album a format for conveying ideas linked to the particular intellectual, social, and/or political situation of Moscow in the 1970s? IK: There was no common Soviet context. There was a small circle of close friends with like-minded ideas who fulfilled that role remarkably well. An artist like me does not deal with social, political, or other public issues but focuses his attention on general cultural themes. In the period of Soviet barbarism, the main problem for artists and for educated people in general was the preservation of culture. KN: What was the relationship between your official work as a children’s book illustrator and your unofficial work, which resulted in albums like Mathematical Gorsky? IK: There was no connection between my official work as an illustrator and my albums. The work of an illustrator was “for them,” while the work on albums was done “for oneself.” That’s at least how it seems to be, but maybe that’s not always the case. KN: Was this (lack of connection between your official and unofficial work) how you understood it at the time? Or today? How has that understanding changed? IK: No, it has not changed. KN: At that time, did you consider the album to be a new and innovative format that helped to satisfy certain expectations of an artist living under those conditions?

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IK: This question should be addressed not to the artist but to an art historian who has studied the Soviet period. KN: Let me rephrase the question: When you began making albums, did you consider the genre of the album to be a radically new means of expression for you and your circle? What new possibilities of expression did this genre open up to you as an artist in the social, economic, and political context of the USSR? IK: I was never interested in the idea of the “new.” The album genre is a very conservative one. KN: Is the album still a useful format today? IK: For me, the genre has exhausted its worth. KN: What do you think is the album’s place within the history of Soviet nonconformist art? Art history, in general? IK: This is also a question for art historians, like yourself. Art historians do not need to be guided. An artist guiding an art historian is like a passenger telling a chauffeur how he should drive a car. January 3, 2019

This interview, which was translated from the Russian by Giuliano Vivaldi, has been edited.

Kabakov in his studio in Moscow, 1977. Photo by Norton Dodge

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PAGES 26–31:

Shower—A Comedy, 1970s–1985. Linoleum cut on paper, watercolor, and colored pencil on paper

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Mathematical Gorsky, 1970–74. Colored pencil and ink on paper

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Fruits and Vegetables, 1979. Ink and colored pencil on paper

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ABOVE:

Inna Gavrilovna Korobeva: I tell him . . . , 1981. Oil on fiberboard

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ABOVE:

The Shovel, 1984. Enamel, shovel, metal brackets, typed text on paper, and Plexiglas on fiberboard

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The Beloved Agent in Love Tomáš Glanc

Viktor Pivovarov, who was born in Moscow in 1937, is not just one of the most significant representatives of the renowned circle of Moscow conceptualism, a term coined retrospectively in the early 1980s when its works were already widely known among an intimate group of artists and connoisseurs of nonofficial Soviet art. He is also one of the most popular contemporary Russian artists, among critics and audiences alike. This sentiment is corroborated by the enthusiastic response to his exhibitions over the past ten to fifteen years. Since the 2000s, there has also been a growing awareness in the press of his prominence. His presence in prestigious collections and museums, such as Tate Modern in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and many others, underscores his canonical status. But being beloved is not enough for the demands of the art world today. Artists are expected to be provocative, to break taboos, and to respond creatively to the intellectual, political, and social issues of the day—a position that affirms the relevance of contemporary art. Pivovarov’s art does none of those things. Despite the fact that any type of artistic populism is antithetical to him and his works could never be labeled cute or kitsch, Pivovarov is not an artist who undermines the existing world order or its values. Within the world, his work finds its place through introverted, witty, and mysterious representations and exudes an uneasy comfort and a lyrical absurdity. Although he is aware of current events and debates in the modern world, he does not belong among those artists who directly react to them. Pivovarov is beloved thanks to his distance from the existing (and, for many, exasperating) varieties of fads and trends in art. Mikhail Allenov, a professor of art history at Moscow State University, wrote that Pivovarov has the “ability to stimulate the imagination of an art critic who does not specialize in contemporary art to work in a mode of disinterested judgment.”1 The aesthetic world of Pivovarov is complex and engrossing, and it constantly delivers surprises—both formal (from abstraction to figuration and even hyperrealist portraits) and thematic.

Viktor Pivovarov, detail, Tears, 1975 (p. 105)

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Living and working in the unofficial milieu of Soviet art, where Pivovarov was formed as an artist, turned out to be useful for him. The disadvantages of that situation are common knowledge: the inability to freely exhibit, travel, or coexist with an international cultural environment. But the advantages were, in his case, far more important. Pivovarov began to work in a number of genres based on interpersonal communication, which, in the Soviet era, was the only means of social interaction. Primarily, this work took the form of the album, a cycle of works possessing a narrative dimension and, as a rule, combining image with text. Works in this genre initially were presented in separate parts, intended for a narrow circle of friends and acquaintances. The albums’ reception—in the forms of discussions and audience reactions—was fundamentally important and would even become a part of their eventual production. Today, these albums are featured in catalogues and exhibited in museums, but initially, they were intended to be part of a performance, in which the artist would flip through the pages, explaining, gathering viewers’ remarks, and collectively reflecting on these unique visual-textual stories. By the seventies, nonofficial culture from the Soviet Union was increasingly in demand internationally. While it became attractive for collectors, art critics, and institutions, that culture was inherently a closed one—closed within its circle of kindred spirits, sympathizers, friends, and colleagues—and mysterious in its own way. Pivovarov was able to transform that self-contained existence into an aesthetic quality. His artworks rarely address the Soviet myth and its ideology. In a 2003 article, the cultural historian Vaclav Glotser wrote of Pivovarov, “The pathos and poetry of his paintings and albums lie precisely in the fact that he, as it were, pulls away the totalitarian Iron Curtain, finding behind it the private existential foundation of any human life, which is indestructible in any regime.”2 This “any human life” is one that, nonetheless, is often bound to Moscow. For Pivovarov, Moscow is the root of an origin myth, and even when he still lived there and almost never left, Moscow was also like a ghost, a mental and spiritual topos. That feeling only grew more intense after 1982, when he married the Czech art historian Milena Slavická and relocated to Prague, traveling to Moscow only rarely and for brief periods. (Pivovarov is also known and admired in the Czech Republic, where he has been adopted, according to his own definition, as “our [very] own stranger.”) Still, Moscow has remained his focal point, influencing even those works in which nothing from the city is visible or recognizable. As a rule, Pivovarov’s work is full of life in the form of concrete or abstract characters who have a direct relation to the author himself and his milieu as well as to

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the era he creates and re-creates in his works. But he is not interested in the recognizability of specific phenomena but rather in the coordinates of people’s worlds: the subjects (often animals), places, or situations that are located behind the façade of empirical reality, in the space created by fragments of everyday existence and reinterpreted through the inner lives of his characters and their melancholy, imagination, reveries, erotic fantasies, dreams, exclamations, and declarations of love. Daily life in the paintings of Pivovarov is neither descriptive nor concrete, though he often presents it in detail, particularly in his favored genre of still life, in which he has worked since the late 1960s. What he depicts is an ideal version of everyday life (byt in Russian), which is comprehensible and appealing to everyone: Moscow apartments and landscapes, studios of unofficial artists, fragments of communal kitchens, naked young women and men wrapped up in their thoughts, ducks, mice, ladders, cups of tea with lemon and snacks, grandmothers. All of these have a similar effect on viewers—even those unaware of or distant from the circumstances of the works’ creation, that is, everyday Soviet life—because these subjects are part of the universal human experience. Another important feature of Pivovarov’s work is that it is in deep conversation with the history of art, saturated with cultural allusions and associations, not just with individual artists or specific sources of artistic inspiration but with the history of art as a whole. In the 1990s, Pivovarov wrote a poem in which he formulated his answer to the oft-repeated question about which artists influenced his work. In this witty verse, he rhymes the names of dozens of artists “of all time.” In it are names from the entire Russian canon, the Italian Renaissance, classical art, romanticism, realism, the avant-garde, and so on. A provocation, it also has its share of truth. P ­ ivovarov, an artist remarkably erudite about the history of art, combines countless references to the motifs and devices of artists of the past with an individual, personal, and inimitable signature. The pleasure of recognizing the great variety of references in his work is part of its charm and attraction for viewers. Pivovarov rarely composes poetry, but his intense relationship to words, language, and spoken discourse constitutes another foundation of his artistic practice. The album genre in this context is a kind of manifesto—a mystical marriage of the word and the image and their fruitful copulation. But albums are not the only case in which an image “listens to” fragments of phrases, to remarks voiced in everyday conversations, to the voices of self-­proclaimed philosophers, or simply to ideas or combinations of concepts. Several paintings create their own semiotic systems, worlds of unique meanings. Sometimes, for ­example

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in Daily Regime of a Lonely Man (1975, p. 87), one painting in the series Projects for a Lonely Man, the words that are part of the compositions and diagrams squeeze out or simply replace the picture. Sometimes the texts acquire their identity along with the pictures, as in Tears (1975, pp. 97–109), one of Pivovarov’s first albums. Sometimes these texts are descriptions and explanations modeled on scientific illustrations or textbooks, such as in Sacralizators (1979, pp. 111–18). In other cases (for example, in Plan for the Dream of a Lonely Man from the Lonely Man cycle of paintings), the picture and text coexist and supplement each other. Pivovarov demonstrated his purely verbal skills in two books, the nature of which is not so simple to define. Agent in Love (2001, with an updated second edition 2017) and Grey Notebooks (2002) are not memoirs, tales, novels, or even descriptions of his own works (although aspects of all these forms can be found in them); instead, they take the form of a narrative and lyrical canvas, a complementary component of the visual works and, at the same time, their semantic extension. The intensity of these texts lies precisely in the tension between, on the one hand, documentation of one’s own life and creativity and reflections on everything that surrounds one, and, on the other, fictional stories—such as “Filimon, or Notes from the Underground,” the diary of the imaginary mouse Filimon, who lives in the artist’s studio and narrates from the first-person perspective his impressions and observations. Like all great artists, Pivovarov cannot fully explain what, why, or how he chooses to portray what he does. Even the authorial commentaries in his books leave a large space for subjective interpretation, mystery, and the possibility of stimulating the viewer’s own inspiration and wonder. Despite his semantic openness in relation to genres, series, or the inner logic of the devices used, Pivovarov is an extremely disciplined and reflective artist. This may have to do with his many years of experience illustrating children’s books. That work undoubtedly required great attention to the text as well as to the visual requirements of Soviet publishers. At the same time, the realm of childhood, the “depths of culture” as Pivovarov puts it, opens up the ability to display vast creative freedom and fantasy. His illustrations for Ole Lukøje by Hans Christian Andersen; The ­Little Black Hen (a Russian classic from the beginning of the nineteenth century by ­Antony Pogorelsky); works by the master of children’s literature Korney Chukovsky; the verse of the Yiddish poet Ovsei (Shike) Driz; and many other significant works of children’s literature not only led to Pivovarov’s national popularity but also underpin the aesthetic of his independent artistic oeuvre.

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Pivovarov observes the popular trends of modern art from a distance, as he does the aesthetics of the Renaissance, the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers), or Malevich’s suprematism. But in his observations, there exists a keen sense of the most substantial dramas of artistic practice. This is the “sense of the exhaustion of the visual” with which he explains his interest in the album genre. The album is an opportunity to convey with the expressive means of drawing, painting, and words the emotional and intellectual cataclysms, quests, crises, euphorias, and melancholic conditions of people (for example, one work is called The Notebook of Soulful Delights); of foxes (they represent the evacuation to Tatarstan during World War II3 and allude to the animality in all of us); of eidos (a transcendental model of the human); and all sorts of fantastical figures in which human consciousness and the unconscious mind are steeped. Pivovarov is an artist free from all conventions, although he does not break taboos in the ways that are expected of contemporary artists. Whether words or images, people or animals, mythical or empirical, the subjects of his works evolve naturally. He treats them as if they were all sitting around the kitchen table in his Moscow apartment. As a result, his work is lively, exciting, and topical, making P ­ ivovarov a truly timeless and beloved artist. NOTES 1. Mikhail Allenov, “Viktor Pivovarov: 1960–e: Mezdhu vremenem i vremenem” (“Viktor ­Pivovarov and the 1960s: Between Time and Time”) Artguide, March 15, 2016, http://artguide .com/posts/991. 2. Vaclav Glotser, Viktor Pivovarov: Svidetel’stva sovremennikov (The Testimony of the Contemporary) (Prague: Gema Art and Sefer, 2013), 8. 3. After the German invasion of 1941, there was a mass migration of Soviet citizens to Tatarstan. As a child, Pivovarov lived there, in the Volga District, with his mother.

Translated from Russian by Giuliano Vivaldi

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Viktor Pivovarov in Conversation with Tomáš Glanc Tomáš Glanc: How did the juxtaposition of text and image—one of the foundations of the album genre—arise in your work? Viktor Pivovarov: Besides the fact that one could say this idea “hung in the air” at the end of the 1960s, the appearance of text—text and not just separate words in the picture—had already emerged in some form among our Moscow predecessors who painted before conceptualism, like Oskar Rabin and Mikhail Roginsky. We knew their work well. In this sense, we were less significantly affected by similar experiments, such as those of Joseph Kosuth, which we had heard about from Western journals. That was just something remaining on the surface of our consciousness but not really affecting it deep down. TG: Can you describe the story and nature of your relationship with Ilya Kabakov in the 1970s? VP: We used to meet almost every day back then. It was a very close, very friendly, very warm relationship. Kabakov’s first album, The Flying Komarov (1970–74), arose initially as a series of drawings. Only a little later did the idea arise of accompanying them with captions and thinking up the narrating character. It was clearly obvious what possibilities lay in the coupling of image and text. My first album combining text and image was Tears (1975). There was already a first-­person narrative in it. For me, the intimate nature of an authorial character’s address to the spectator was important. Before that there was the album The Stairway of the Spheres (1975); there was also a story in it, but it was a tale in pictures without texts. TG: Who else in Moscow back then belonged to your narrow circle of friends? VP: There was Eduard Shteinberg, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vassiliev, Ivan Chuikov, Mikhail Shvartsman, to name just a few. A little later there was ­Dmitri Prigov, Andrei Monastyrski, Irina Nakhova, Eduard Gorokhovsky. But there were not only artists. I also was very close to the poets and writers, like Igor Kholin, Genrikh Sapgir, Yuri Mamleev, Eduard Limonov.

Viktor Pivovarov, detail, Tears, 1975 (p. 108)

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TG: Who, exactly, is the narrator in the albums? VP: In my case, it happened in different ways. As a rule, in the early albums it was a character as author, namely a stand-alone narrator who almost merges with the author. There is a certain distance between the narrator and the author, but it is quite insignificant. In the later albums, the narrator distances himself from the author, becoming the undefined voice of an anonymous, unknown character. TG: What do you think of the narrative dimension of the album? What associations does this narrative strategy have? What roles does it fulfill? VP: The narrative strategy of the album is closest of all to the cinematic voice-over where the visual imagery and the “text” run parallel. This textual “imagery” performs a different role each time depending on the idea and the character of the album. There is another cinematic association, with the silent film. In a silent film, visual scenes are interrupted by frames in which text is written. This is very similar to the structure of my album Eros (1976), for example, where the text is not located under the picture but on a separate sheet. That is, sheets with imagery alternate with textual sheets. I used this device in another of my albums, Jokes of the Elderly (2009). TG: To what extent is the album, as it developed within your practice, linked with the particular situation of Moscow in the 1970s? VP: Of all the graphic arts, the album genre is the most communicative. Thanks to its synthetic nature, the fact that it works not only with material visual structures but also includes elements of theatrical performance, performance art, literature, cinema, and even music, this genre is much more intelligible and able to express the thoughts of an artist more fully than a single painting or drawing. Hence, the album primarily addresses itself to the understanding of the viewer. I want to emphasize this word “understanding.” That is, the viewer’s reception passes through a common emotional, aesthetic perception and vision, but first of all through understanding. The substantive side of the albums (Kabakov’s, mine, and other authors’ who embraced this genre after us) was born from the feverish cultural atmosphere of Muscovite intellectual life of the 1970s. One can discover many connections with the philosophy, literature, poetry, cinema of that time.

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Besides, in the 1970s, when exhibitions that did not get past the ideological censors were impossible, the display of albums in the studio was ideal for exhibiting the work. TG: It’s a well-known fact that the albums were presented during nonofficial exhibitions and discussions, and that the first viewers of the albums were friends and colleagues. What role and what significance did you attribute to those spectators in connection with the specific genre of the album? VP: Few people raise questions about the significance of a viewer, even though this is not only an interesting but also an important question. Indeed, the first viewers of the albums were close friends and colleagues of the artists. Then the subsequent audiences were very different types of people. Of course, it was that cultural stratum that always interests itself in art—writers, doctors, engineers, scientists. These people were hungry, not in a physical sense but in a cultural sense. This intellectual and cultural hunger created the unforgettable atmosphere of Moscow in the 1970s—a particular energy field in which we were all located. It was impossible not to react to it, not to be nourished by its energy. One can say, then, that the authors of the albums were not only the artists but the viewers, too. TG: Did you consider the album as something new in artistic practice at the time? VP: I think that a fuller awareness of the specific innovative nature of this genre came a little later. Nonetheless, from the very beginning we reflected very intensely on the special characteristics of the album genre. For example, in Kabakov’s studio, discussions about album art took place often among friends, and friends of friends. TG: How did you reflect on the relationship between your work as an official artist producing illustrations for children’s books and your work as an unofficial artist creating albums at home or in your studio for your friends? VP: Apart from being aware that, if I had not been an illustrator, it’s highly unlikely that I would have made albums, I did not find any other link between my work in the realm of children’s books and my own artistic practice. At least that was true then. Later, considering general issues around childhood—­childhood as a phenomenon, and its connections with artistic creation—I discovered these links.

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TG: What appeared first in your albums: text or illustration? VP: Sometimes the text, sometimes the illustration. For example, the basis for my 2010 album They Are Back was a poem written before the emergence of the drawings. Conversely, the inspiration for the album Foxes and Holidays (2005) was a group or series of drawings for which I later thought up the album script. Sometimes, as in the case of the Yellow album (2001) both the text and the images came about at the same time. TG: Is the album genre for you still vital and relevant from today’s perspective? VP: It is difficult to say. I finished my last album in 2011. I’m not saying I will never return to that genre. To the question as to whether the genre is still vital and relevant, I can only say that it may become so at any moment. This type of artistic and personal testimony is universal and applicable for any time and in any place. TG: If one were to look at this genre as a whole from a distance, how would you describe its role in the history of unofficial art in Russia? VP: This is not really a question for me; art historians and theorists are best positioned to answer this. Nonetheless, I would not want to avoid this question, though the subjective nature of my answer should not be overlooked. An album, as a genre, has its predecessors in art history. The most vivid examples of album-books are those by William Blake and the albums of Hokusai and other Japanese and Chinese masters. I have no doubt that similar methods of artistic expression will arise after us. The album genre opens up so many possibilities to an artist. Russian twentieth-­century art, it seems to me, strived to maintain a connection with crucial aspects uniting the art of different countries and different epochs through substantive rather than formal connections. The fundamental questions of consciousness and human existence remained of supreme importance. The Moscow albums of the 1970s in this sense became the voice not only of its era but also of its place. It is not a very loud voice, but it is a voice that is very serious and very human. February 3, 2019

This interview, which was translated from Russian by Giuliano Vivaldi, has been edited.

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Pivovarov in his studio or apartment in Moscow, 1977. Photo by Norton Dodge

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Daily Regime of a Lonely Man, 1975. Enamel on fiberboard

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Plan for the Everyday Objects of a Lonely Man, 1975. Enamel on fiberboard

Project for the Living Space of a Lonely Man, 1975. Enamel on fiberboard

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PAGES 90–95:

Stairway of the Spheres, 1975. Gouache and ink on paper

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Tears, 1975. Ink on paper

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Sacralizators, 1979. Graphite with watercolor on paper

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Sacralizator for Listening to Lectures and Reports

Sacralizator for a Night at the Symphony

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Sacralizator for Government Workers

Sacralizator for Cleaning the Premises

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Sacralizator for Rainy Weather

Sacralizator for Standing in Line

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Sacralizator for Defending a Dissertation

Catalogue of the Exhibition Unless otherwise noted, all works are from the Zimmerli’s Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. Not all works are illustrated.

Lev Melikhov (b. 1951 in Volokolamsk) Ilya Kabakov, 1987 Gelatin silver print 2115/16 × 217/8 in. (55.8 × 55.6 cm) D20347 p. 12

Ilya Kabakov Anna Petrovna Has a Dream, 1970–74, 1996 * Offset prints mounted on cardboard, in a c. 1970s box, edition 94/199 Each of 32 pages: 20 × 133/4 in. (50.8 × 34.9 cm) 2019.005.005.001–033

Mikhail Belomlinsky (b. 1934 in Leningrad [now Saint Petersburg]) Portrait of Ilya Kabakov, 1980 Charcoal, pastel 247/16 × 1615/16 in. (62 × 43 cm) D11619

Ilya Kabakov Mathematical Gorsky, 1970–74 * Colored pencil and ink on paper Each of 37 pages: 12 × 81/4 in. (30.5 × 21 cm) 1997.0579.001–037 pp. 32–61

Ilya Kabakov (b. 1933 in Dnipropetrovsk [now Dnipro, Ukraine]) Peter Pan and Wendy, 1968 Photomechanical print on paper Overall (closed): 81/8 × 513/16 × 3/8 in. (20.7 × 14.7 × 1 cm) Overall (open): 81/8 × 119/16 in. (20.7 × 29.3 cm) D25388

Ilya Kabakov Shower—A Comedy, 1970s–1985 Linoleum cut on paper, watercolor, and colored pencil on paper 6 from a 39-part series Each image: approx. 83/4 × 61/4 in. (22.2 × 15.8 cm) Overall: 201/4 × 1313/16 in. (51.5 × 35.1 cm) 1991.0884.001, 002, 004, 006, 010, 012 pp. 26–31

Ilya Kabakov The Flying Komarov, 1970–74, 1994 * Offset prints mounted on cardboard, in a c. 1970s box, edition 47/200 Each of 32 pages: 20 × 13 in. (50.8 × 33 cm) 2019.006.006.001–033 Ilya Kabakov Adventures of Gugudze, 1972 Photomechanical print on paper Overall (closed): 89/16 × 611/16 × 1/2 in. (21.7 × 17 × 1.2 cm) Overall (open): 89/16 × 1215/16 in. (21.7 × 32.8 cm) D25387

Ilya Kabakov Between Summer and Winter, 1976 Photomechanical print on paper Overall (closed): 81/8 × 57/8 × 3/8 in. (20.7 × 14.9 × 1 cm) Overall (open): 81/8 × 113/16 in. (20.7 × 28.4 cm) D25389

* Although Ilya Kabakov began thinking about and even working on certain albums earlier than the 1970s, these albums are dated according to the artist’s catalogue raisonné, cited in the bibliography, along with additional information provided by Emilia Kabakov to the author on June 21, 2019. See also Jackson, pp. 120–21.

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Ilya Kabakov Fruits and Vegetables, 1979 Ink and colored pencil on paper Each of 16 pages: 117/16 × 141/8 in. (29 × 35.8 cm) Mounted in pairs on cardboard: 22 × 28 in. (55.8 × 71 cm) 1999.0707.001–016 pp. 62–69 Ilya Kabakov The Ship Sails for a Visit, 1979 Photomechanical print on paper Overall (closed): 101/4 × 77/8 in. (26 × 20 cm) Overall (open): 101/4 × 155/8 in. (26 × 39.7 cm) D25396 Ilya Kabakov Where Did the Street Come From?, 1980 Photomechanical print on paper Overall (closed): 103/8 × 81/8 × 3/8 in. (26.4 × 20.6 × 1 cm) Overall (open): 103/8 × 1513/16 in. (26.4 × 40.2 cm) D25397 Ilya Kabakov Inna Gavrilovna Korobeva: I tell him . . . , 1981 Oil on fiberboard 441/2 × 803/16 in. (113 × 203.6 cm) 1997.0596 pp. 70–71 Ilya Kabakov . . . There Is Another Woman Behind Me, 1982 Oil and enamel on Masonite 453/8 × 865/8 in. (110 × 220 cm) Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Ilya Kabakov Where Are You Throwing the Peels?, 1982 Oil and enamel on Masonite 453/8 × 865/8 in. (110 × 220 cm) Collection of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov Ilya Kabakov The Shovel, 1984 Enamel, shovel, metal brackets, typed text on paper, and Plexiglas on fiberboard 519/16 × 753/16 × 315/16 in. (131 × 191 × 10 cm) 1999.0925 pp. 72–73

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Ilya Kabakov Elena Petrovna Gaj: Whose Milk Can Is This?, 1996 Object (metal), oil on plywood 283/8 × 401/8 × 43/4 in. (72 × 102 × 12 cm) Courtesy of Dr. Viola Kanevsky Lev Melikhov Viktor Pivovarov, undated Gelatin silver print 113/4 × 75/8 in. (29.8 × 19.3 cm) D15180 Eduard Gorokhovsky (1929 Vinnytsia [now Ukraine]–2004 Offenbach, Germany) Portrait of Viktor Pivovarov, 1977 Colored pencil on paper 24 × 167/16 in. (61 × 41.8 cm) 1995.0793 Viktor Pivovarov (b. 1937 in Moscow) Illustrations for Green Carriage by Ovsei Driz, 1973 Photomechanical reproduction on paper Overall (closed): 1013/16 × 83/8 × 1/8 in. (27.4 × 21.2 × 0.3 cm) Overall (open): 1013/16 × 165/8 in. (27.4 × 42.2 cm) 2003.0659 Viktor Pivovarov Daily Regime of a Lonely Man, 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 675/16 × 513/16 × 19/16 in. (171 × 130 × 4 cm) 1991.0895 p. 87 Viktor Pivovarov Plan for the Biography of a Lonely Man, 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 675/16 × 513/16 × 19/16 in. (171 × 130 × 4 cm) 2013.016.088 Viktor Pivovarov Plan for the Dream of a Lonely Man, 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 675/16 × 513/16 × 19/16 in. (171 × 130 × 4 cm) 2013.016.086

Viktor Pivovarov Plan for the Everyday Objects of a Lonely Man, 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 675/16 × 513/16 × 19/16 in. (171 × 130 × 4 cm) 2013.016.085 p. 88 Viktor Pivovarov Plan for the Sky for a Lonely Man, 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 675/16 × 513/16 in. (171 × 130 cm) 2013.016.087 Viktor Pivovarov Project for the Living Space of a Lonely Man, 1975 Enamel on fiberboard Panel: 675/16 × 513/16 in. (171 × 130 cm) 2013.016.089 p. 89 Viktor Pivovarov Supplement to Projects for a Lonely Man: Picture for the Lonely Man, No. 1 (Van Eyck), 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 339/16 × 439/16 in. (85.2 × 110.6 cm) 2013.016.082 Viktor Pivovarov Supplement to Projects for a Lonely Man: Picture for a Lonely Man, No. 4 (Klee), 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 339/16 × 439/16 in. (85.2 × 110.6 cm) 2013.016.081 Viktor Pivovarov Supplement to Projects for a Lonely Man: Pictures for a Lonely Man No. 5 (Morandi), 1975 Enamel on fiberboard 373/8 × 431/2 in. (95 × 110.5 cm) 2013.016.067 Viktor Pivovarov Stairway of the Spheres, 1975 Gouache and ink on paper Each of 11 pages: approx. 217/16 × 1515/16 in. (54.4 × 40.5 cm) D05589.01–011 pp. 90–95

Viktor Pivovarov Tears, 1975 Ink on paper Each of 34 pages: approx. 161/4 × 117/16 in. (41.3 × 29.1 cm) D06706.001–034 pp. 97–109 Viktor Pivovarov The Boy and the Tree, 1976 Photomechanical reproduction on paper Overall (closed): 1013/16 × 83/8 × 1/8 in. (27.4 × 21.3 × 0.3 cm) Overall (open): 1013/16 × 165/8 in. (27.4 × 42.2 cm) D25401 Viktor Pivovarov Old Women with Their Umbrellas, 1976 Photomechanical reproduction on paper Overall (closed): 1011/16 × 83/8 × 1/8 in. (27.1 × 21.3 cm × 0.3 cm) Overall (open): 1011/16 × 163/4 in. (27.1 × 42.5 cm) D25408 Viktor Pivovarov Composition, 1978 Enamel on fiberboard 431/2 × 337/16 in. (110.5 × 85 cm) D05026 Viktor Pivovarov The Pocket Mosquito, 1978 Photomechanical reproduction on paper Overall (closed): 1013/16 × 83/8 × 1/8 in. (27.4 × 21.2 × 0.3 cm) Overall (open): 1013/16 × 1611/16 in. (27.4 × 42.4 cm) D25398, D25407 Viktor Pivovarov Sacralizators, 1979 Graphite with watercolor on paper Each of 19 pages: 113/4 × 97/16 in. (29.8 × 24 cm) D06816.001–019 pp. 111–18

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Selected Bibliography Bingham, Juliet, ed. Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, exh. cat. London: Tate Publishing, 2017. Groys, Boris. History Becomes Form: Moscow Conceptualism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010. —. Stat’i ob Il’e Kabakove. Moscow: Ad Marginem, 2016. Jackson, Matthew Jesse. The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Jaukkuri, Maaretta, Emilia Kabakov, and Karin Helladsjø, eds. Ilya Kabakov: Five Albums. Vol. 1. Helsinki: National Museum of ­Contemporary Art, 1994. Jaukkuri, Maaretta, and Emilia Kabakov, eds. Ilya Kabakov: Five Albums. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, 1998.

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Kabakov, Ilya. On Art. Edited by Matthew Jesse Jackson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. Kizeval’ter, Georgii, ed. Eti strannye ­semidesiatye, ili Poteria nevinnosti. ­Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010. —. Perelomnye vos’midesiatye v ­neofitsial’nom iskusstve SSSR. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014. Lazareva, Ekaterina. Viktor Pivovarov: ­Traektoriia poletov. Moscow: Breus, 2017. Pivovarov, Viktor. Serye tetradi. Moscow: Artguide Editions, 2017. —. Vliublennyi agent. Moscow: Artguide Editions, 2016. Sharp, Jane Ashton, ed. “Thinking Pictures”: The Visual Field of Moscow Conceptualism, exh. cat. New Brunswick: Zimmerli Art Museum, 2016.

Translations Kabakov, Shower—A Comedy p. 26. A One-Man Play in Pictures Shower—A Comedy Kabakov, Mathematical Gorsky

p. 35. Gorsky’s first (and only) album: Sequence error. “Leave the sequence!” An order. p. 60. General commentary.

p. 32. Mathematical Gorsky p. 33: He states: Stirem 46: 1. The emergence of a second, third, etc., sequence is possible given the appearance of special (sigvert) errors in the first, “primary,” sequence. 2. The field over the “primary” sequence is increased (lengthened) in measure with the increase of the sequence itself due to the potential possibility of the emergence of a second, third, etc., sequence within it, and with the approach of the “primary” sequence toward infinity, it, likewise, tends toward infinity: S à ∞ when L à ∞ We will examine eight instances with “primary” sequences consisting of 5, 7, 10, 11, and 15 figures. p. 34. Gorsky: Sequence error. The sequence is reassuring. From conversations.

p. 61. Kogan’s Commentary: As far as I can understand it, this is a bold attempt to uncover and describe the mechanism of “heuristicism.” For Gorsky personally, this problem was evidently most closely related to the question of his talent—it’s no accident that many elements of his work are clearly personal in nature. As far as I can tell, the idea he proposes can be summarized as following: If any element in a sequence qualitatively opposes the entire series and cannot be assimilated, this tension leads to the sudden (heuristic) appearance of a new sequence. Kabakov, Fruits and Vegetables p. 63.  . . . Volodya, he’s achieved the sought-after goal, the thing that everyone wants to accomplish, he moves forward without losing anything from behind . . . p. 65. If I’m the one who breaks the rack, I almost always win.

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p. 67.  . . . I pass the buttered bread, it slips out of my hand, and, as always in this kind of situation, it falls buttered side down, and not on the floor, but onto the dress of the woman next to me . . . p. 69. I can’t make it to Anya’s at this point, she’s definitely on her lunch break . . . Kabakov, Inna Gavrilovna Korobova, I tell him . . . p. 70. Inna Gavrilovna Korobova: “I tell him, ‘If you want to live with me, at least behave yourself, like other people, don’t get strange . . .’ ” p. 71. Viktor Sergeevich Kotris: “Bring it in, bring it in from the left, you don’t need to tip it, it’ll fit. And put it up close against the wall.” Kabakov, The Shovel pp. 72–73. A summary of the texts in the painting: The Shovel is a painting comprising eight sheets of typewritten paper and a shovel attached to a khaki-­green bulletin board. During Soviet times, such a board was used to convey announcements in public places, like schools and housing complexes.

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Kabakov adapts this mode of communication to convey eight autobiographical stories connected by their mention of a shovel. The first episode describes the terrible disappointment experienced by the artist and his mother when their garden failed to produce potatoes. The second addresses another moment of great hunger during the Second World War, when the artist and his friends innocently stumbled upon a food reserve. The third chronicles the artist after the war, struggling to survive while in art school. In the fourth story, the artist’s use of the shovel is secondary to a classmate’s incident of artistic indiscretion that represents the great rift between official and unofficial art in the Soviet Union. The fifth story is a humorous account of a prank played by the artist and his friends, including Erik Bulatov, while relaxing in the country­ side. For the sixth story, the artist reminisces about building his studio in what was formerly a dark and dusty attic. The penultimate story recalls how the fire brigade, upon inspecting his studio, interpreted the artist’s painting with two shovels not as art but as fire prevention tools. The final story is self-referential, detailing the artist’s desperate search for the very wooden pole that appears in this painting.

Pivovarov, Daily Regime of a Lonely Man

Pivovarov, Plan for the Everyday Objects of a Lonely Man

p. 87. Daily Regime of a Lonely Man 7:00 Wake up.

p. 88. Plan for the Everyday Objects of a Lonely Man

Morning wash 7:00–7:30 Breakfast 7:30–8:00 Work 8:00–11:00 11:00 Lonely walk with free contemplation 11–11:45 Work 11:45– 4:00 14:00 Lunch 14:00–15:00 Work 15:00–18:00 18:00 Grocery shopping 18:00–18:45 Cooking dinner 18:45–19:00 19:00 Dinner 19:00-19:30 Meetings and conversations with other lonely people 19:30–21:00 21:00 Tea 21:00–21:30 Contemplation of nature through the evening window 21:30–22:00 2:00 Listening to the latest news on the radio 22:00–23:00 23:30–24:00 Reading a book 24:00 Sleep 0:00–7:00

Painting* *See Appendix Glass of water For thirst For drinking down headache pills Headache pills Book A book can be: read leafed through looked at stroked lent to another lonely person Chair For sitting at the table For replacing a burnt-out light blub Table At the table you can: read write eat just sit and look out the window

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Apple For decoration For satisfying hunger A present for another lonely person Table lamp For reading a book For cozy lighting For studying one’s own reflection in an evening window Pivovarov, Project for the Living Space of a Lonely Man p. 89. Project for the Living Space of a Lonely Man View of the sky Balcony/enclosed porch Kitchen Electric stove, sink Toilet Bathroom Entry Entryway Total area 32 sq. m. Main room 1. Main room 2. View from the window 3. Kitchen 4. Toilet/bathroom

Pivovarov, Tears p. 97. Tears p. 98. In the morning, I was surprised to find my pillow wet with tears. But I could neither recall my dream nor the reason behind my tears. p. 100. She was sitting on the edge of a chair and quietly crying p. 101. Not I I p. 102. These quarrels often ended in tears. p. 103. DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP p. 104. The kitten, meowing pitifully, ran after everyone through the hallways. Its eyes were full of tears; it was sick, and everyone said that its eyes ought to be rinsed with sweet tea. But nobody ever ended up doing that. p. 106. Evening. Time to go home. p. 107. A raindrop slides down the window. p. 108. I should put some tea on . . . p. 109. don’t cry . . .

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Pivovarov, Sacralizators p. 111. Graphic Diagrams of ­Sacralizators for Various Occasions p. 112. Sacralizator for Listening to ­ ectures and Reports L 1. Paper weight 2. Pot top 3. Toothbrush p. 113. Sacralizator for a Night at the Symphony 1. Teacup 2. Plate with cake 3. Saucer 4. Second saucer for the left ear (not visible in profile view illustrated) p. 114. Sacralizator for Gov. Workers 1. Shoe 2. Electric cord 3. Light bulb 4. Electric plug

p. 115. Sacralizator for Cleaning the Premises 1. Ballpoint pen 2. Kitchen knife 3. Mask p. 116. Sacralizator for Rainy Weather 1. Glove 2. Pencils 3–4. Bus tickets p. 117. Sacralizator for Standing in Line 1. Button 2. Clothespin 3. Ornament p. 118. Sacralizator for Defending a Dissertation 1. Colander 2. Men’s sock 3. “Belochka” candy 4. Needle and thread Translations by Bela Shayevich

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About the Authors Ksenia Nouril, PhD, is an art historian, curator, and writer specializing in global modern and contemporary art. She holds an MA and PhD in art history from Rutgers University, where she completed her dissertation, “The Afterlives of Communism: The Historical Turn in Contemporary Art from Eastern Europe,” in 2018. She has worked at the Zimmerli Art Museum; the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she co-edited and contributed to the book Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and Eastern Europe: A Critical Anthology (2018). Currently, she is the Jensen Bryan Curator at the Print Center, a nonprofit institution in Philadelphia devoted to the growth and understanding of photography and printmaking as vital contemporary arts.

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Tomáš Glanc, PhD, born in Prague, is a senior fellow at Zurich University. Topics of his research include performance in Eastern Europe, samizdat and unofficial culture, Russian and Czech modernism, Slavic ideology, and contemporary Russian art and literature. He has organized numerous exhibitions, including Poetry & Performance: The Eastern European Perspective (with Sabine Hängsen) and exhibitions on Irina Korina, Pavel Pepperstein, and Viktor Pivovarov. He has also been a visiting professor at Humboldt University, Berlin; visiting professor at Basel University; senior fellow at Bremen University; director of the Czech Cultural Center in Moscow; and director of the Institute of Slavic and East European Studies, Charles University, Prague.