Resurrections (Kabakov's Slippers)

Everything was arranged in such a way that it did not occur to any of us, not the heroes, not the witnesses, that our euthanasia had been agreed upon behind our backs. But why am I speaking such nonsense? Behind what back! All were asked and all agreed. And how could we not agree, indeed after the operation ( ... ), at the end of the tunnel, the heavenly kingdom was shining, the fulfilment of all our desires, our innermost dreams. You Igor, of course have already guessed what I am talking about. Yes, the Sotheby's auction on the seventh of July 1988. On that day, what we called art was buried forever.1 This was Victor Pivovarev's obituary for unofficial art, addressed to Igor Shelkovski, former editor of the Paris-based journal A-YA, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bombastic introduction of Moscow Conceptualism to the...

Art · Art history · Conceptualism · Epistemology · Nonsense · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European Cultural and National Identity · Philosophy