80 years old Ilya Kabakov

[Кирилл Сызранский]

80 years ago in the city of Dnepropetrovsk born artist Kabakov [/URL].

Anton Spout:
40 years ago, he became my stepfather. It was an interesting time : the Soviet government during the Brezhnev years, is still not ready to tolerate the existence in the country of other genres of art but of socialist realism , but the people endowed with the official status of "Soviet Artist" in every way she holila , nurtured and cajoled . In some other reality, this would lead to the existence of two disparate art communities: the official and the underground . But in those days , when the culture hero and became a symbol of an era SS Max Otto von Shtirlits [/URL], successfully combines impeccable service with the Fuhrer relentless struggle against German fascism, members of the underground art and officially recognized by the art elite , with a few exceptions , have time to exist in both statuses . This applied not only artists, but also writers, and directors, and even , strange to say , Soviet journalists . Before lunch they worked for quite officially astronomical fee to the state, and in the afternoon creating paintings and graphics, wrote lyrics and produced films " on the table " with no hope of ever submit their works to the Soviet viewer or reader , but with the risk of trouble to amass every time when about their work someone spoke approvingly abroad.
Ilya Kabakov's workshop in the attic of the house "Russia" Boulevard, Building 6/1 [/URL], now there Institute of Contemporary Art) in those years was the mecca of the informal Soviet art. Evenings in the living room under the lamp and sang Okujava Bachurin , read their texts Sapgir , Prigov Rubinstein , Sorokin and Lemons , arranged the underground (although it would be more accurate to say - Garret ) show banned in the USSR, painting and drawing. Frequent guests were foreign diplomats and journalists , writers, art critics and collectors of contemporary art. Naturally , the Committee of State Security does not have any " enters the flat " to his attention in the yard , taking turns on duty inconspicuous men in civilian clothes , telephones 24x7 obeyed , and all the letters come to our home address on the envelope had a red stamp " from abroad delivered in its damaged state . " Members gatherings regularly invited " to talk" in a large building opposite the " Children's World " , offered cooperation. However, one is not only not planted and exiled , but did not even lose their jobs . Ilya Kabakov, like many of his comrades in the shop , was the Union of Artists of the USSR , his studio in the house " Russia " was officially it is framed as a cooperative apartment in the "Fine Arts" . Publishing House " Children's Literature" huge numbers of books published , which he illustrated , and the fee for registration of a single page A5 in these books (watercolor, on which the artist took 3-4 hours ) exceeded the monthly salary of a Soviet engineer , a doctor or a teacher. For example , here is a reversal of this book "The Train of poems " cost " Detgiz " (as the old memory for a long time everyone called renamed publishing house ) of 240 rubles of 1974 :
For those who do not remember prices in 1974 , adding that the taxi fare was worth at that time 10 cents per landing and a further 10 per kilometer in the tram - 3 pennies in a trolley - 4 , in the subway, bus and water bus - 5 cents. A glass of fruit ice cream cost 7 cents, popsicle - 21 pound loaf of white bread - 18. A ticket to the cinema or to the stadium cost the same 10 cents as the kilometer by taxi. Kilowatt- hour of electricity costs about 2 pennies for owners of electric stoves and 4 cents for those who prepared on gas burners . The road was only vodka - from 3r62kop to 4r12kop for half-liter , but the vodka in our house for some reason did not drink .

Man , he was not at those times , it may seem that life in Stirlitz of creative workshops in the days of Brezhnev's stagnation was paradise : Mandelstam's fate and Babel, Pilnyak and Harms, Meyerhold and Michoels , no longer shining , hunger and poverty , they did not know they all had flat , workshop , summer house and car , for two months in a year to every member of the creative union provided free ticket to the house of creativity ( in the remaining 10 months of the same voucher worth 3 rubles per day), many even released a couple of weeks abroad for " exchange of experience " with colleagues from the Soviet bloc . But that 's how these strange , creative people that many of their cage or gold , the lack of freedom to them any more terrible poverty and disease. The attitude to his Kabakov to the legal status of the Soviet , it is easy to understand from the album, performing the strongest impression on me in the mid-1980s :
Critics , of course, see here a complex and universal message of kontseptualistichesky , with references to Bakhtin's Rabelais and culture, the opposition of the sacred and the profane , and on ad nauseam. But it is enough to compare this list of albums from the previous illustration to understand the extent to which personal and literal was the message addressed to bears and birds , the berries and mushrooms, which are drawing to a quarter of a century and was the main official website of creative disciplines .

Of course, as soon as his guard Soviet authorities allowed the 53 -year-old Ilya Kabakov first time in my life to go into the capitalist abroad - on a three-month scholarship in creative Austrian city of Graz, at the invitation of there the art school - the same day he gave up on all my machines , apartments, shops , a guaranteed income and official status , gathered their belongings and left the USSR in the dark , no looking back . In the sixth decade of successful member of the Moscow Union of Artists of the USSR , does not speak on any non-Russian language other than Yiddish children's remains , without a hint of regret became homeless vagabond , wandering through unfamiliar countries and continents, on official corners, a scholarship for a scholarship . This happened even before the fall of the Iron Curtain and for 10 years before the Special Part of the Criminal Code of the Russian vanished article [/URL], which states :

Treason , that is an act intentionally committed by a citizen of the USSR to the detriment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity or public safety and defense of the USSR [...] escape abroad or failure to return from abroad to the Soviet Union -
shall be punished by imprisonment for a term of ten to fifteen years with confiscation of property or the death penalty and confiscation of property .

I was then 20 years old, and must confess to you that my stepfather's life choices does not surprise me . As soon as he came out of oVIRa card with an invitation to pay a fee of 200 rubles and pick up a passport with an exit visa three months , I realized that now he would leave , and never come back . I did not understand only one thing: how could so lopuhnutsya Soviet power , leaving every half-century gilded cage door is not locked ...

Happy Birthday , Uncle Elijah . Do you long years of good health .