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The past is, in many ways, impenetrable . Yet despite history's profound nature, there is something innately human about wanting to make sense of it, whether it is your culture's history, your own history, or an amalgamation of both. Ilya Kabakov's current MOCA installation is his attempt at coming to terms with and critiquing his artistic lineage, as well as Russian political and art history. He explores these histories through two fictitious artists, teacher Charles Rosenthal and student Ilya Kabakov.
The Kabakov who orchestrated the installation, The Teacher and the Student: Charles Rosenthal and Ilya Kabakov, is not fictitious; he is considered one of the most important Russian conceptual artists of his generation. He is known for creating installations that convey a sense of gloomy bureaucracy, while celebrating the resiliency of the human spirit. The paintings that carry his name in the MOCA exhibition are not singular works; instead, they are components of what Kabakov terms a “total installation.”
If this sounds like a confounding art experience, it is. It is also brilliantly complex, and visually and conceptually stunning. In fact, this exhibition makes many of MOCA's recent one-person shows seem like eye-candy in comparison. Don't expect to breeze through the Kabakov installation in an hour; take it in slowly, as it will be time well spent.
Once past the first part of the installation in the glass-walled area at the front, you will feel as if you are in another place altogether. Kabakov commandeered MOCA's interior, attempting to transform it into a Beaux-Arts architectural space. While the exposed ceiling, air ducts, and new, pristine wood floors remain visible, there are moments when the careful placement of benches, the shapes and diminutive sizes of the gallery spaces, and the warm gray or maroon walls make it seem as if you are at the Cleveland Museum of Art — a true Beaux-Arts structure. Kabakov's predilection for Beaux-Arts, with its historic forms, architectural details and French roots is significant, as avant-garde artistic ideas and movements often began in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Artists working outside France at that time were often influenced by the country's artists and trends. However, during World War I, Russia became a center for avant-garde art. The wall text components of the installation reference this shift, as in one passage Kabakov slyly critiques the notion of progress and modern artists' adherence to it. A “quote” by Rosenthal reads, “Gradually, I got sick of my imagination. I would like to return to the depiction of reality, to touch it, like [Gustave] Courbet did and especially, my ideal — [Theodore] Géricault.” This quote illustrates a modern creative dilemma. The “artist” (Rosenthal) is attempting to come to terms with his desire to paint in a representational manner, while Russian artists like Vassily Kandinsky and Kasimir Malevich and others were focused on abstraction or on pure color and form.
Kabakov's artist-characters are not just men of the world; they are also wholly Russian. Social Realism, advanced by Stalin as the official Soviet art form, pervades many of the paintings, with scenes of people working, along with images of trains, tanks and buildings. Often these scenes are adulterated by fields of white, or appear incomplete, with images roughly sketched out on a white surface. These fields of white, along with a few large, plain white canvases are references to Suprematism, the movement started by Russian artist Kasimir Malevich, which centered on what he called “a supremacy of pure feeling.”
Russian culture is enigmatic; but Kabakov broaches it through the lens of Russian art history. Through the visual culture that traversed and transgressed the authoritarian Stalin era, and the reformative but repressive era of Khrushchev, Kabakov sheds light on the past. His installation is so seamless, his concept so brilliant, that he not only illuminates his artistic heritage, he further cements his own place in what the future will call history.