DC -- Hirshhorn Museum -- Exhibit: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Utopian Projects:
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Description of Pictures: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Utopian Projects
September 7, 2017 – March 4, 2018
The exhibition, spanning 1985 through present day, features more than 20 of the Kabakovs’ maquettes, whimsical models, for projects realized and unrealized, including monuments, allegorical narratives, architectural structures and commissioned outdoor works. Opening nearly 30 years after the Hirshhorn hosted Ilya Kabakov’s first major U.S. exhibition, these intricate creations invite the viewer into their surreal world in miniature and offer a rare glimpse into the duo’s artistic process.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
UTOPIA_170929_001.JPG: The Utopian Projects
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
UTOPIA_170929_018.JPG: Considered the most important Russian artists to emerge in the late 20th century, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (b. Dnepropetrovsk, Soviet Union, 1933, 1945, respectively) have spent the past few decades exploring the themes and aesthetic of utopia. Working collaboratively since 1989, the Kabakovs have produced a wide range of artistic projects that exist within that imagined context, including architectural maquettes, painting, drawing, sculpture, and large-scale installations.
The models in this exhibition relate to large-scale public art projects, some of which were fully realized, while others were not. Though these models are meant to reveal the imaginative process through which the artists construct their full-scale installations, they all function independent of their larger counterparts, operating as miniature dreamscapes that conjure a shared idea of utopia. Incorporating aspects of literature, mythology, and history, these works speak to both the lived experience of a post-Stalinist Russia as well as an overarching understanding of the universal human experience. ...
UTOPIA_170929_027.JPG: The Pirate's Ship (The Devil's Rage)
Model date: 2012
Project realized: Atlantic City, NJ, 2012; Redwood City, CA, 2017
UTOPIA_170929_039.JPG: How to Meet an Angel
Model date: 1998
Project realized: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2009; Bielefeld, Germany, 2013; Linz, Austria, 2016
UTOPIA_170929_061.JPG: How Can One Change Oneself?
Model date: 1998
Project realized: London, England, 1998; Manchester, England, 1998; Madrid, Spain, 1998-1999; New York, NY, 2000
UTOPIA_170929_082.JPG: The Large House of Humanity (Washington, DC)
Model date: 1998
Project Not Realized
UTOPIA_170929_095.JPG: The Red Wagon
Model Date: 2007
Project Realized: Dusseldorf, Germany, 1991; Vienna, Austria, 1994; Wiesbaden, Germany, 1999-2001
UTOPIA_170929_115.JPG: The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment
Model Date: 20115
Project Realized: New York, NY, 1988; London, England, 1989; Washington, DC, 1990, New York, NY, 1995-1996; Paris, France, 1997; Stockholm, Sweden, 1998; Marseille, France, 1999; Montreal, Canada, 1999; Barcelona, Spain, 1999-2000; Venice, Italy, 2000
UTOPIA_170929_127.JPG: The Toilet
Model Date: 1992
Project Realized: Kassel, Germany, 1992; Ghent, Belgium, 1999
UTOPIA_170929_143.JPG: "There is no future will only repeat the past. Every time there is going to be an attempt by some generation to make a jump, each jump will carry with it something that has already happened."
-- Ilya Kabakov, 2015
UTOPIA_170929_151.JPG: The Road of Life
Model Date: 2005
Project Not Realized
UTOPIA_170929_165.JPG: The Five Steps of Life
Model Date: 2000
Project Realized: Munich, Germany, 2010
UTOPIA_170929_200.JPG: "One of the most fascinating endeavors and states is the following: to be alive, but yet to not really be living -- not to participate in all of life, in all of its upheavals, but rather to be living as though 'late' and to see this whole life of yours somehow from the sidelines, from some height and even, if possible, even as though it had already been lived, as if you were dead (a strange and desirable combination).
-- Ilya Kabakov, 2015
UTOPIA_170929_216.JPG: The Boat of My Life
Model Date; 2012
Project Realized: ... hell, everywhere!
UTOPIA_170929_232.JPG: Paintings on the Floor
Model Date: 1990
Project Not Realized
UTOPIA_170929_256.JPG: Toilet on the Mountain
Model Date: 1992
Project Realized: Vassiviere Island, France, 1996
UTOPIA_170929_269.JPG: The Old Bottle
Model Date: 1999
Project Realized: Jerusalem, Israel, 1999
UTOPIA_170929_285.JPG: The Fallen Sky
Model Date: 2010
Project Realized: Geneva, Switzerland, 1995; Niewpoort, Belgium, 2006; Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, 2016
UTOPIA_170929_304.JPG: The carpet moved in the display
UTOPIA_170929_326.JPG: The Children's Hospital
Extraordinary Pirouettes (Flying 'Figures')
An Earthquake in the Seraglio
The Old Staircase
Model Date: 1998
Project Realized: Dublin, Ireland, 1999-2000; Milan, Italy, 2000; Bern, Switzerland, 2000, 2002
UTOPIA_170929_335.JPG: "At some point in everyone's lives we all want to escape from reality anywhere, somewhere. Very often our character of the 'little man' is compared to Gogol's 'little man,' but in our case, it is not just about better clothes, or a better job, as all these 'little men' want tin the literary tradition, but an escape towards utopia, which is absolutely disconnected from reality."
-- Emilia Kabakov, 2015
UTOPIA_170929_350.JPG: The Largest Book in the World
Model Date: 2015
Project Not Realized
UTOPIA_170929_367.JPG: Looking Up, Reading the Words...
Model Date: 1997
Project Realized: Skulptur Projekte in Munster, Germany, 1997
UTOPIA_170929_386.JPG: Monument to Icarus
Model Date: 1999
Project Not Realized
UTOPIA_170929_407.JPG: The Project for the Preservation of Natural Resources
Model Date: 2012
Project Realized: Lake Baldeney, Essen, Germany, 2010
UTOPIA_170929_418.JPG: The Ship of Tolerance
Model Date: 2005
Project Realized: ... everywhere ...
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2017 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Trips this year:
Civil War Trust conferences in Pensacola, FL, Chattanooga, TN (via sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee) and Fredericksburg, VA,
a family reunion in The Dells, Wisconsin (via sites in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin),
New York City, and
my 12th consecutive San Diego Comic Con trip (including sites in Arizona).
For some reason, several of my photos have been published in physical books this year which is pretty cool. Ones that I know about:
"Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture" (David Lemmo),
"The Great Crusade: A Guide to World War I American Expeditionary Forces Battlefields and Sites" (Stephen T. Powers and Kevin Dennehy),
"The American Spirit" (David McCullough),
"Civil War Battlefields: Walking the Trails of History" (David T. Gilbert),
"The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 — Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia" (Marvin Kalb), and
"The Judge: 26 Machiavellian Lessons" (Ron Collins and David Skover).
Number of photos taken this year: just below 560,000.
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