Parkett Vol. 34 - 1992
Ilya Kabakov, Richard Prince

Browse Selected Texts and more on the Collaboration Artists

Artist Insert

Editorial

Naturally everyone immediately thinks in terms of contrast: Russian Ilya Kabakov versus American Richard Prince. But on closer inspection the two artists share common ground of explosive impact. They both consciously refer in their work to the systems and structures that have marked their lives, be it the omnipresence of the media in the Western world or the intricate ramifications of manipulating consciousness; they share the artistic strategy of locating reality through literary form; and they both have a penchant for collecting and classifying information. However, their ways part radically when it comes to their experience of public and private, collective and individual worlds. Although Ilya Kabakov now lives in the West, he is still “carrying Russia on his back,” as he says in his interview with Boris Groys. In past decades he invented his own medium—the Albums—for going public. In “his” kitchen in Moscow, he would slowly turn page after page for an audience alerted only by word of mouth. Now, as Robert Storr observes, he uses the art institutions of the West to similiar purpose, stil playing host and not guest. He gently leads us into what he calls his “total installations,” there allowing us to become insiders instead of outsiders.

By contrast, in Richard Prince’s pictorial and literary universe, we find ourselves gazing, as if from the outside, at what has been unwittingly etched upon our innermost being. Prince’s treatment of these images has incisively nourished the much vaunted crisis of authorship. In juxtaposing Prince and Kabakov, unexpected aspects of the flowing boundaries between the private self and the collective have been illuminated and defined.

The Insert is by Tatsuo Miyajima.

Table of Content

On Asta Gröting by Gudrun Inboden

Gary Hill: “Who am I but a figure of speech ?” by Lynne Cooke

Ilya Kabakov
With Russia on your Back a Conversation with Ilya Kabakov and Boris Groys
The Architect of Emptiness by Robert Storr
On Lies and Other Truths by Jan-Thorn Prikker
Kabakov’s Twinkle by Claudia Jolles

Richard Prince
Bad Jokes by Edmund White
To Know, Know, Know Him by Susan Tallman
Richard Prince, Realist by Daniela Salvioni
Red Wings: Concerning Richard Prince’s Spiritual America by Kathy Acker

Tatsuo Miyajima, Insert

Abstract Monsters by Patrick McGrath

Who’s “We” White Man ?, Les Infos du Paradis by Jo Anna Isaak

Artists in Pursuit of the Teen Spirit, Cumulus from America by Hunter Drohojowska

A Conversation About The Rhetoric of The Body: On Body Language in Art, Cumulus from Europe by Elenora Louis and Christoph Geissmar