Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment (Afterall Books / One Work) Paperback – May 5, 2006

A fascinating study of an art project and, through this project, of various aspects of Soviet utopian culture, something that was not discussed much in the West. The illustrations are magical, the text lucid and engaging. I'm very glad that I took a chance on buying this.

Interesting

perfect service. wonderful book

Great book, great edition, great service! Highly recommendedI'll definitely be comming back for more !!!!Thanks again !!!Rgds

This is a punchy short book bristling with ideas about Ilya Kabakov's installation art piece, "The Man who Flew into Space from his Apartment." This piece is now at the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers, College Avenue campus, New Brunswick, NJ. I've seen it many times and it is interesting how few people take the time to really look at it. It is a conceptual work of art that requires some background to understand and Groys does an excellent job of providing that.Groys writes, "If you want to escape a set of fictional circumstances you have no choice other than to sign up to a different fiction, invent more narratives and tell others about these, just as Kabakov does in his installations." (p. 33This is particularly interesting, given that I recently reviewed Platonov's Foundation Pit. Joseph Brodsky, in the introduction to that work, notes that the people in the USSR fell into a grammatical dependency on the new language used by the Soviets. Kabakov is someone who breaks that dependency by introducing his own grammar.The focus of the work is on the connections between Kabakov's work and Nikolai Fedorov, a strange visionary who called for the general resurrection of the dead as a necessary precondition for an equal society. Groys traces the influences of Fedorov on the Soviet space program, particularly through Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Both they, and the absent body in Kabakov's installation piece, believed in currents that ran through the universe and could be used to ascend to the heavens.In Kabakov's piece, a man has ascended from his room, which is covered with Soviet posters on space flight and his own drawings, into the heavens (or at least through the ceiling) via a catapult. No body is left. Fedorov also planned for the creation of museums centered around the material left by the resurrected dead, who would be present as exhibits too. Groys notes that Kabakov catapulted himself into the West soon after this piece was finished.Groys does an excellent job following the space flight story, which is clearly a big part of the influence on Kabakov. However, when I was looking at figure 3 of Kabakov's sketch for the installation, I was struck by how similar it was to the icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God. In this icon, Christ comes down to take up the soul of his mother (represented as a doll sized version of her) as she lies on her deathbed. The sketch takes the same elements of the icon, even her narrow bed, which becomes the cot, and transfigures them into a Soviet story.Those interested in Soviet art and history should take a look at this book and at the Zimmerli Museum too.

-perfectly conceived and perfectly executed. -a good read and a very well-made hardcover book. The same is true of the whole series: (One Work) by Afterall Books.