Retrospective international celebrity, classic Moscow conceptualism Ilya Kabakov and his wife-collaborator Emilia, opens in mid-September, immediately to the three sites - in the Pushkin Museum to them. Pushkin, the new center «garage» under the direction of Daria Zhukova and «Winery», remains the most discussed topic of the art world (see the «Kommersant», dated 16 August). His word has finally decided to say something, and the artists themselves. The first interview in Moscow, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov have a correspondent of the newspaper «Kommersant», Kommersant Irina Kulik.

«Kommersant»: How do you select products for your first retrospective in Moscow?

Emilia Kabakov: We wanted to show that the previously never seen in Russia. It was important to destroy the notion that Kabakov - is always on the communal kitchen and nothing more. Cross-cutting theme of this retrospective - an alternative history of art (which deals with same name in the installation «garage»), as well as the eternal Russian issues «who is to blame?», «What to do?», Etc., ask that you can only take the form of metaphors.

«Kommersant»: and «alternative history of art» in the «garage», and «Gate» Pushkin Museum in them. Pushkin and «Life flies» to «Winery» - this is the installation of the museum. As for you, once the unofficial artist, hardly calculated to take place in the museum exhibition, is a museum now?

Ilya Kabakov: Even as a child when I lived in a boarding school at the art school, a museum was for me the only place that could save lives. This island, where you can escape from reality. The museum embodies the concept of culture. After all, there is two concepts - art and culture. Art - this is what is inside the culture. A culture - is something that we embrace, where we were born, and so we exist, этакое feminine bosom. And in the bosom of the art is located. All that goes to the museum should be in accordance with the notion of culture. And with the destruction of the museum, we completely lose this culture.

«Kommersant»: of your installation, there are museums devoted to Soviet life and Soviet debris, such as installation «Toilet», which will be shown on the «Winery». By the way, wonder where you refuse to take the Soviet works that are created in the West?

IK: Rubbish uniform. No features of Soviet or, say, garbage is not German. As to etnografizma, it occurs only in the perception of foreigners. This triggered a colonial mentality: they are there - savage, as we have here - civilized people. But in fact intellectually sophisticated people understand that this is not an ethnography, but a metaphor.

EK: Why do you think «Toilet» - this is about the Russians? Just because that's what makes Russian artist?

«Kommersant»: You think that now in Russia, the installation will be perceived differently than in the early 1990's in the West?

IK: We do not know.

EK: Older people instantly understand the metaphor: Yes, all around - the city. but everything is very bad and hard. But inside it, in our apartment, at home, we have a live well, we settled, despite the fact that this toilet. Young people react differently: on, a toilet! And it is true? They think it is - cool.

IK: This is, again, all the same problem with the museum. When the toilet is built on «Winery», there is a very interesting question: whether «Winery» museum, the island culture, or is it a normal everyday factory yard, a commercial institution or этакий mezhdusoboychik, rag, young Piglet? This is a serious issue. Art can only exist on the island culture. In the museum it looks artistic metaphor, and beyond the art of turning into ethnography.

«Kommersant»: Why are you required to put in a museum known «forgery», fictional works of artists presented in the «Alternative History of Art»?

IK: This is not a news story. It is such a complex, multi-building, and the artist does not need to explain it.

EK: The idea was to imagine what it would be Russian art, if it had not gone through the Malevitch and Kandinsky , if a purely formal idea of the avant-garde could be connected to something more understandable to people everyday. It is also a museum in a museum, art made specifically for the museum and thus perebroshennoe from past to future. A very important role in this project and played a garage Melnikova. It was important to create a bridge between the utopian 1920's and our time, using a fictitious artists with their own dreams and utopia.

«Kommersant»: Is the official socialist realism was not thus the art of Malevich and Kandinsky without?

EK: Our «Alternative History of Art» - this is still not entirely without the avant-garde art. Here is one of the characters, Charles Rosenthal, was a student, even Malevich.

IK: This is not a negation of the avant-garde. But the avant-garde revolutionary movement was established and in peak times, and modern art to it, that is realism. We would submit that it would be without this radical rejection of tradition from the past, if the development has addressed the achievement of the avant-garde art, but would not abandon those pleasant and wonderful things that have been in the XIX century. This is not revolutionary, but evolutionary model of development of culture.

«Kommersant»: And how would you rate the Soviet period? What do you think the outcome of all this social, political, cultural experiment?

IK: So the question is raised by many, but it is difficult to answer now. This utopian project, which is elusive, but at the same time it was, over time may cause a desire to hold another such experience. And the failure will be perceived not as a tragedy, but as a failed scientific experiment. And if the first experiment took place, it can be done and the second and third. Utopia has always been a domain of fairy tales, vnepolozhnym other world. It was only the twentieth century tried to transform utopias into reality, the deletion of fantasy into reality. And this is one of the most horrible, dangerous, and at the same time, interesting things - all the time would be tempted to do it again and again.

«Kommersant»: One of the characters «Alternative History of Art» - this is an «artist 90 years Spivak». What do you consider to be typical of Russian Art 1990?

IK: It is difficult to say. We know the local situation poorly, so you must be very careful.

EK: This character is important not so much an art context, but merely worldly, human - memory, nostalgia. It has nothing to do with the real artists.

IK: I can only say the following. Unofficial art of the Soviet era was Introvert, it made people loaded into itself, causing the internal worlds, with perhaps a very weak linkages with the outside world. And after the end of Soviet power, the art was ekstravertnym - this position is to participate in the set of external situations - life, public. This is a totally different type of consciousness, a different type of people, and we do not know how to treat them.

«Kommersant»: Is it for you in modern art - Russian or international - which is totally unacceptable things?

IK: A huge amount. But we will not talk about it.

Source: kommersant.ru