(born in 1933 Dnjepropetrovsk, Ukraine; lives and works in New York)
Nikolai Petrovich, on the reverse signed, dated I. Kabakov 2004, and inscribed (Cyrillic), oil on canvas, 258.2 x 184.7 cm, on stretcher

2nd version of Catalogue Raisonné-no. 59
Nikolai Petrovich is part of Kabakov’s “The Bridge” installation from 2004.

Exhibitions:
St. Petersburg, Eremitage, Incident in the Museum and Other Installations, organised by the Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, New York, 23 June - 29 August 2004

Literature:
Renate Petzinger and Emilia Kabakov (Ed.), Ilya Kabakov, Paintings/Gemälde 1957–2008, Catalogue Raisonné, Vol. II, Museum Wiesbaden, published by Kerber, 2008, p. 230, no. 493 with ill.

Many times I have made works that simultaneously contain, usually one under the other, an image and a text. In meaning they often contradict one another and in this game each participant receives a new meaning and significance.
In the painting “Nikolai Petrovich”, the relationship between the image and the text is tautological. The text can be understood as an explanation for what is depicted. Wherein lies the intrigue, what purpose was there in creating a literal situation where the painting and the inscription directly correlate to one another? In order to understand what follows, it makes sense to include here the text written on the board, at least the beginning of it: “It was a quiet gray, cold autumn day. The horse was harnessed, but Nikolai Petrovich kept stalling and could not bring himself to go out for anything. The trip did not frighten him. In fact, he was totally indifferent to the new journey, and he was not thinking about the cold night, the mud, the bumpiness, or any of the usual discomforts. “So, are we going?” asked his travelling companion, in a local agronomist, also called Nikolai, in a slightly hoarse voice after the cold night. Nikolai Petrovich didn´t feel all that well either. “It´s getting cold already, and I left the house in only a short and a jacket.” And so on. The entire text moves along in this spirit, right to the very end, and it is impossible to find either an unexpected turn, or some “other“ meaning either in the phrases or in the plot itself that quickly bring to mind hundreds of similar ones. Everything – the text, going on and on monotonously like chewing gum stuck in one’s mouth, or the subject of painting that has also been familiar since the time immemorial and therefore we are sick of it, the view of some Siberian river – all of this doesn´t have any internal development, everything is tautological and equal only to itself.
Everything taken together does not focus attention on itself and is perceived not as an independent isolated whole, but rather a fragment of something. But the entire matter rests precisely in this fragmentariness.
The painting as a whole presents itself as a fragment of something located somewhere beyond the boundaries of this “part”. The entire written text is the exact same kind of fragment. It begins with a truncated half of a word,… us´ and breaks off also mid-word. We don’t know the continuation, the end of the story.
It would seem to be logical to make a few paintings before this one proposed for the exhibit, and a few after it in order to complete, to perfect the narrative chain, to connect the beginning and the end. But with a glance at the painting hanging before us we see that on the wall there is a boring, totally unattractive banality, a banality that was discussed above. And it is not difficult to propose that no matter how many works there might be “before“ and “after” this one, they would be exactly the same, and most likely, it would be impossible during such a viewing to discover the “FIRST” painting an the, “VERY LAST” painting. Banality has neither beginning nor end, it covers over any reality with a fine layer, reducing everything to a common denominator, to a single surface. Banality is always equal to itself in all of its manifestations, in it any part is equal to its whole and therefore any fragment of such banality does not appear to be something deficient, but rather quite the contrary, a full-valued representation of all the rest.
Both the materials and the technique used in making, “Nikolai Petrovich” speak about the banal.
It is drawn on masonite, the material which was used to make virtually all stands, posters, propagandistic slogans in the Soviet Union during 1960’s and 1970’s , and such was the standard style of painting of the anonymous “executor” and such was the standard script of a handwritten text. In a word, there is nothing more to discuss here: the painting does not hold our attention, and one feels like walking away.
But still it seems that you could take one more look at the painting before stepping away. The nature of a fragment is paradoxical precisely because it is a fragment. And the nature of our consciousness is such that seeing the fragment, we cannot help but activate our imagination, our memory. The banality of the fragment evokes an entirely non-banal reaction to recreate the missing components, to recreate the context, ultimately, to recreate the reasons why this particular fragment was chosen by the author. It becomes unexpectedly an unsolvable, almost detective – like mystery and it turns out to be quite difficult to explain why the fragment appears to be banal, and this turns out to affect the deep layers of consciousness even more, and the problem to which there is no answer turns out to be all the more strange and mysterious.
It is curious that a fragment that is really a valuable piece of an ancient vase or sculpture does not evoke such a strange and vague tension as the scrap or shard of something that is familiar to everyone lying about under foot.
Moreover, it is probably necessary to hang this work neatly on the wall, preferably of a museum, and to supply an appropriate commentary.
Ilya Kabakov Paintings 1957-2008 Catalogue Raisonné Vol.1, Essays by Robert Storr & Boris Groys, Museum Wiesbaden, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, 2008; Pages 119, 406