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On Art
On Art
i l ya k a ba k ov
e d i t e d w i t h an i n t r o du c t i o n by
Matthew Jesse Jackson
t r an s l at e d by
Antonina W. Bouis an d Cynthia Martin
w i t h Matthew Jesse Jackson
t h e u n iv e r s i ty of c h icag o p r es s
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2018 Ilya and Emilia Kabakov
All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce individual texts or images by Ilya and
Emilia Kabakov must be sought directly from them.
Preface and Introduction © 2018 The University of Chicago
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever with-
out written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles
and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press,
1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2018
Printed in the United States of America
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 12345
isbn-13: 978-0-226-38456-6 (cloth)

isbn-13: 978-0-226-38473-3 (paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-226-38487-0 (e-book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226384870.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kabakov, Ilia Iosifovich, 1933 – author. | Jackson, Matthew Jesse, editor,
writer of introduction, translator. | Bouis, Antonina W., translator. | Martin,
Cynthia L. (Russian teacher), translator.
Title: On art / Ilya Kabakov ; edited with an introduction by Matthew Jesse Jackson ;
translated by Antonina W. Bouis and Cynthia Martin with Matthew Jesse Jackson.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2018031839 | isbn 9780226384566 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn
9780226384733 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226384870 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: Art. | Art, Russian. | Art, Modern—20th century. | Installations
(Art) | Conceptualism. | Art—Philosophy.
Classification: lcc n6999.k23 a35 2018 | ddc 709.47— dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018031839
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).
Contents
List of Figures vii

Preface xi
Introduction, by Matthew Jesse Jackson 1
Culture, “I,” “It,” and Favorsky’s Light (“Rhombus”) (1980) 10
Nozdrev and Pliushkin (1981) 24
. . . Everything Is in the Turning of the Pages (1981) 31
On Emptiness (1982) 35
The Creator Looks at His Work Twice (1982) 43
Dust, Dirt, and Garbage (Dust as an Object

of Contemplation) (1982) 45
Discourse on the Perception of the Three Layers, Three Levels,

into Which an Ordinary, Anonymous Written Product— Notices,
Slips, Menus, Bills, Tickets, etc.— May Be Broken Down (1982) 50
Epistemological Thirst (1982) 54
Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future (1983) 57
New Rhombus (1983) 60
Without Culture (1983) 63
Park of Culture (1984) 66
From The 1960s and the 1970s: Notes on Unofficial

Life in Moscow (1982 – 1984) 68
The Artist-Character (1985) 139
From An Apologia for Personalism in the Art of the 1960s:

An Impassioned Monologue on 23 June 1986 (1986) 155
vi contents
Conceptualism in Russia (1986) 203
Edge, Border, Crack (1986) 209
Art Has No Unloved Children (1987) 218
How I Became a Character Myself (1989) 226
A Story about a “Culturally Relocated” Individual (1994) 230
From On “Total” Installation (1995) 246
Text as the Foundation of Visual Expression (1995) 253
On Risk (1997) 255
On Cézannism (1997) 257
The Spirit of Music (1997) 260
Public Projects, or the Spirit of a Place (2001) 263
Why Was It Necessary to Use the “Character” Device for the

Exhibition Rather Than Signing My Own Name? (2004) 270
Nikolai Petrovich (Commentary) (2008) 273
From Catalog (2009) 276
Translation Credits 357

Bibliography 361
Index 363
Figures
All works by Ilya Kabakov, unless noted otherwise

1 Ten Characters, mixed media installation, New York, 1988, 6
2 The Shower, colored pencil and ink on paper, 1974, 76
3 Hand with a Broken Mirror, object, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1965, 78
4 Head with a Balloon, object, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1965, 79
5 The Boy, object, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1965, 80
6 Colored Cubes on Gray Board, a.k.a. Cubes, oil and enamel on wood, 1962, 81
7 Three Colored Ovals, oil and enamel on wood, 1963, 82
8 Conditional Reflex, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1965, 83
9 Walk (Bicyclists), a.k.a. Ride on a Bicycle, oil and enamel on Masonite,
1966, 83
10 Queen Fly, oil and enamel on Masonite and wood, 1965, 84
11 In the Room, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1966, 84
12 Arm and a Reproduction of a Ruysdael, object, wood, oil and enamel on
plywood, 1965, 87
13 In the Corner, enamel on Masonite, 1969, 88
14 Pipe, Stick, Ball, and Fly, objects, oil and enamel on plywood, 1966, 89
15 Couch-Painting, object, oil and enamel on canvas on plywood, 1967, 90
16 Machine Gun and Chicks, tempera and filler on Masonite, 1966, 90
17 Day and Night, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1966, 91
18 Whose Fly Is This? oil and enamel on Masonite, 1967, 91
viii figures
19 Who Wrote This Poem? a.k.a. This Line Was Written by the Poet Nekrasov, oil
and enamel on Masonite, 1966, 92
20 Bublik (The Bagel), oil and enamel on plywood, 1970, 97
21 Berdyansk Spit, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1970, 98
22 All about It, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1971, 99
23 Where Are They? oil and enamel on Masonite, 1971, 99
24 Flying, ink on paper, 1970, 100
25 Answers of the Experimental Group, objects, oil and enamel on Masonite,
1971, 101
26 This Is the Sea. This Is the Sky . . . , oil and enamel on Masonite, 1970, 102
27 Taking Out the Garbage Pail, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1980, 103
28 Sunday Evening, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1980, 103
29 List of Persons, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1982, 104
30 Chart of Hope and Fear, 1984, 115
31 Sitting in the Closet Primakov, album from Ten Characters cycle,
1972 – 1975, 126
32 The Joker Gorokhov, album from Ten Characters cycle, 1972 – 1975, 127
33 Looking Out the Window Arkhipov, album from Ten Characters cycle,
1972 – 1975, 128
34 Next Stop— Tarakanovo, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1979, 135
35 The Little Water Sprite, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1980, 145
36 Hello, Morning of Our Motherland! oil and enamel on Masonite, 1981, 146
37 Chambre de Luxe (Deluxe Room), oil and enamel on Masonite, 1981, 146
38 Gastronom (Grocery Store), oil and enamel on Masonite, 1981, 147
39 Tested! oil and enamel on Masonite, 1981, 147
40 The Beetle, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1982, 148
41 Abramtsevo House-Museum Estate, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1982, 149
42 The Mokushansky Family Schedule, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1983, 150
43 The Plan of My Life, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1983, 151
44 First Snow, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1983, 152
45 Nikolai Petrovich, oil and enamel on Masonite, 1980, 274
46 Labyrinth (Album of My Mother), mixed-media installation, 1990, 278
47 The Man Who Flew into Space from His Apartment, installation, Moscow,
1985, 307
figures ix
48 Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, The Palace of Projects, mixed-media installation,
1998, 325
49 The Toilet, mixed-media installation, Kassel, Germany, 1992, 346
50 Flying Paintings, oil on canvas, 2009, 348
Preface
This book encompasses a broad cross-section of Ilya Kabakov’s writings on

visual art, focusing on those originally produced for a reading public. The
texts, presented in chronological order, date from 1980 to 2009, during which
time the character of Kabakov’s imagined public changed drastically. Most
pre-1987 texts were not initially published but circulated as booklets among
the artist’s friends in Moscow. Often written to spur conversation or to exam-
ine relatively idiosyncratic, local themes, they were not addressed to a large-
scale Soviet or Russian readership, much less an audience unfamiliar with late
Soviet civilization. By contrast, practically all of the texts that follow 1987’s
“Art Has No Unloved Children” were created with a broader readership in
mind, a public that was not even imagined as Soviet or Russian.
Twenty-first-century readers wishing to understand the context of the
early texts might do well to allow Kabakov himself to introduce the atmo-
sphere that surrounded his art and writing in Moscow. In particular, the auto-
biographical texts The 1960s and the 1970s: Notes on Unofficial Life in Moscow
(1982 – 1984) and An Apologia for Personalism in the Art of the 1960s: An Impas-
sioned Monologue on 23 June 1986 (1986) offer riveting portraits of this bygone
world. For a guide to the radical shifts in style, subject matter, and points
of reference in the later period, they might turn to this collection’s conclud-
ing text, a spirited dialogue between Kabakov and his longtime friend, the
cultural theorist Mikhail Epstein. Kabakov viewed these conversations as an
opportunity to review his ongoing relationship to visual art and the role of art
in contemporary life. This multifarious discussion serves as a striking coda
to the texts that precede it and a fascinating bookend to the artist’s earlier
autobiographical ruminations.
xii p r e fac e
*
The present translations reproduce most of the texts in their entirety, pre-
serving all repetitions and reiterations. (Where passages have been omit-
ted due to spatial constraints, the excisions are indicated by bracketed
ellipses—[ . . . ]— within the text.) It has been my goal as editor to allow
readers to focus on the texts themselves, with minimal framing or exegesis.
In my experience, Kabakov’s art is powerfully alienating and strange, full of
not-easily-digested otherness, and the fascination it generates has much to do
with the frequent requirement that one engage, through a great deal of close
looking and close reading, with sometimes bafflingly unfamiliar materials. I
have also noticed over the years that the most effective curators of Kabakov’s
art allow the art to speak for itself. I have endeavored to follow their lead.
Introduction
matthew jesse jackson
Ilya Kabakov came of age in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the
aftermath of the Second World War. Although born into a working-class
Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, in the Ukrainian provinces, thanks to a
dizzying string of fortuitous events, Kabakov eventually attended the most
prestigious art school in the USSR, Moscow’s Surikov Institute. He went on
to earn a comfortable living as a children’s book illustrator, though over time,
alongside this “official” labor, he began to create artworks “for himself ”—
paintings, drawings, and sculptural objects— that strayed from the ideologi-
cally approved artistic method of Socialist Realism.
Over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Kabakov became a galvanizing
figure for Moscow’s underground art community, gaining prominence inter-
nationally in the 1980s as the perceived leader of a band of artists known as
the Moscow Conceptual Circle. He acquired this status thanks, in no small
part, to his skills as a conversationalist and theorist. In his memoirs, the
underground artist Anatoly Brussilovsky recalls how Kabakov, “like the wise
man of the shtetl,” had a knack for inventing playful, exotic interpretations
that accounted for nearly all features of a given artwork.1 This skill, his ability
to function improvisationally as a historian, critic, illustrator, or artist as the
occasion demanded, would propel countless marathon discussions in Kaba-
kov’s large attic studio in central Moscow.
Ilya Kabakov notes that his generation of “unofficial” artists, with no ac-
cess to galleries or museums, placed the utmost emphasis on the cultivation
1. Anatoly Brussilovsky, Vremia khudozhnikov (Moscow: Magazin iskusstva, 1999), 119 – 20.
2 introduction
of a conversational atmosphere around its art.2 Over time, themes and obser-
vations from these conversations began to appear in typed texts that Kabakov
distributed among his friends. A predilection for contemplating contradic-
tions and paradoxes aligned with his growing interest in ever more expansive
artistic forms. As he recounts, he first made “drawings, then ‘series of draw-
ings,’ then ‘albums,’ then paintings, then boxes, then crates,” which finally
led him on to “installations.”3 By the late 1990s his art (produced from 1997
on in collaboration with his wife, Emilia Kabakov) frequently featured hun-
dreds of pages of narrative and theoretical texts.
*
Following his landmark visit to Moscow in the winter of 1926 – 1927, Wal-
ter Benjamin wrote that life in the Soviet Union was bound to “endure
experimentation to the point of exhaustion.”4 And certainly the following
generations lived in a society in which everyday experience itself began to
seem fundamentally inhuman. Stern and anonymous, devoid of irony or
self-parody, official Soviet culture inspired few sincere admirers. Without
a domestic art market, only the decrees of a bureaucratic culture-machine,
there was no sense that anyone in the USSR actually wanted any of the art
officially on offer, which made living in Soviet Moscow akin to subsistence
among the idols and rites of a religious cult in terminal decline. Kabakov
writes, “If it were possible to define in a single word the chief characteristic
of this place in which we live, it would be wholeness [tselostnost’]. A link-
ing to, an interpenetration of, one thing by another turns up in every sit-
uation, on every level, from the most exalted to the most mundane.”5 In
Soviet Moscow, Kabakov argued, everything, everywhere was connected.
In such a space, every transaction, great or small, involved a complex in-
terweaving of incorporation and alienation, friendliness and hostility, truth
and falsehood.
Within this slippery universe of daily double-think, the Word assumed
disproportionate significance. As Slavoj Ž iž ek writes:
2. Kabakov describes conceptualism as “a phenomenon that was at its heart, discursive,

dialogic.” Ilya Kabakov and Boris Groys, “Beseda o Nome,” in Kabakov, NOMA, ili, Moskovskii
kontseptual’nyi krug, exh. cat. (Ostfildern, Germany: Cantz, 1993), 19.
3. Ilya Kabakov, The Boat of My Life (Urbana-Champaign, IL: Krannert Art Museum, 1998),
160 – 62.
4. Walter Benjamin, “Moscow,” trans. Edmund Jephcott, in Benjamin, Selected Writings,
trans. Rodney Livingstone et al., ed. Michael W. Jennings et al. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 1999), 2:28 – 29.
5. Ilya Kabakov, “Epistemological Thirst” (1982), translated in this volume.
introduction 3
Perhaps the key feature of the symbolic economy of the late ‘real’ socialism
was . . . the almost paranoiac belief in the power of the Word— the state and
the ruling party reacted with utmost nervousness and panic at the slightest
public criticism, as if some vague critical hints in an obscure poem published
in a low-circulation literary journal, or an essay in an academic philosophical
journal, possessed the potential capacity to trigger the explosion of the entire
socialist system. . . . This, perhaps, was why it was possible to undermine ‘real
Socialism’ by means of peaceful civil society movements that operated at the
level of the Word— belief in the power of the Word was the system’s Achil-
les heel.6
Presuming the success of its constant exhortative demands, the Soviet Union
unwittingly orchestrated its own rapid demise at the hands of a much more
subtly enticing exhortative entity, the Global Market.7 In tandem with this
veneration of the Word, everyday life in the precomputerized Soviet Union
depended on mountains of forms and documents. It is estimated that by the
early 1980s, “800 billion scraps of official paperwork were in circulation, al-
most 3000 documents for every Soviet citizen.”8 According to Kabakov, this
pervasiveness of paper engendered a specific “technology of thinking,” a dis-
tinctive mixture of the creative and the administrative.9 Trapped within an
avalanche of bureaucratese, it seems only natural that Kabakov began produc-
ing his own documents, self-publishing a wide range of writings dedicated to
making sense of his circumstances. Offering a perverse artistic intermingling
of official and unofficial mentalities, as well as reportage and criticism from
within the underground artworld, these texts attempted to map the social
architecture of “alternative” Moscow. Devoted to themes as disparate as the
“cosmism” of pre-revolutionary Russian modernism and the philosophical
implications of Moscow’s garbage, Kabakov’s handmade booklets were typed,
then stapled or sewn together using rough butcher’s paper for their covers.
Among these texts are faux– Socialist Realist verses (“Park of Culture”),
6. Slavoj Ž iž ek, introduction to Mapping Ideology, ed. Ž iž ek (London: Verso, 1994), 18 – 19.
7. As Fredric Jameson argues, “The Soviet Union ‘became’ inefficient and collapsed when
it attempted to integrate itself into a world system that was passing from its modernizing to its
postmodern age, a system that by its new rules of operation was therefore running at an incom-
parably higher rate of ‘productivity’ than anything inside the Soviet sphere.” Jameson, “Five
Theses on Actually Existing Marxism,” in The Jameson Reader, ed. Michael Hardt and Kathi
Weeks (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 169.
8. Mark Beissinger, Scientific Management, Socialist Discipline, and Soviet Power (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 255 – 56.
9. Kabakov elaborates in “Discourse on the Perception of the Three Layers, Three Levels,
into Which an Ordinary, Anonymous Written Product— Notices, Slips, Menus, Bills, Tickets,
etc.— May Be Broken Down,” translated in this volume.
4 introduction
theoretical explorations (“Without Culture,” “Dust, Dirt, and Garbage”), art
historical analyses of unofficial art (The 1960s and the 1970s: Notes on Un-
official Life in Moscow), and transcripts of dialogues with cultural theorist
Mikhail Epstein.10 There were as well texts incorporated into installations in
the 1980s and 1990s and, following Kabakov’s emigration in 1987, lectures and
texts presented in Western contexts. Set against the backdrop of the German
Romantic conception of “the world as book,” the appearance of this eclec-
tic hodgepodge of memoir, urban folk wisdom, and philosophically inclined
criticism marked the culmination of Kabakov’s visual-textual art experiments
of the 1970s.
*
In the 1980s Western curatorial and critical ambassadors began to arrive
in unofficial Moscow, and the feature of Moscow’s environment that once
seemed most backward— its lack of local collectors, curators and critics—
began to be understood as having spurred artistic innovation and the devel-
opment of idiosyncratic forms of aesthetic wisdom. With “no art market,
no spectators from outside,” Boris Groys remarks, “these artists made their
works for their colleagues— for other artists, writers, or intellectuals involved
in the unofficial art scene.”11 Kabakov describes the result: “A curious thing
took place; during the process of its continuous discourse, all of [the Moscow
Conceptual Circle’s] participants ‘observed’ at the very same moment that
this discourse— the way that it was made, its structure and manipulation—
presented in itself an entirely sufficiently developed artistic construction
from an aesthetic point of view.”12 Making a virtue of necessity, Kabakov
and his friends positioned art not as a professional pastime but as something
more akin to a shared hobby pursued with existential seriousness.
Glasnost and perestroika complicated the lives of Moscow’s artists. New
freedoms arrived, as did new forms of intimidation. In August 1985, Kabakov’s
first solo show opened for a three-month run at the Kunstmuseum Bern. He
was, however, not allowed to travel to install his works, and he was later at-
tacked by name in the Soviet press for involvement with “anti-Soviet” art.13
10. Pavel Pepperstein emphasizes the sickly quality of this literary production, the ways the
booklets evoke entries in adolescent diaries and prison memoirs, in “Depressiia i literatura,”
Dekorativnoe iskusstvo 7 (1991): 30.
11. Boris Groys and Anton Vidokle, “Art beyond the Art Market,” in East Art Map: Contem-
porary Art and Eastern Europe, ed. IRWIN (London: Afterall, 2006), 403.
12. Kabakov and Groys, “Beseda o Nome,” 22.
13. See “Putushestvie ot ‘A’ do ‘Ia’ ili ot ‘neofitsial’nogo iskusstva do antisovetchiny,’” Mos-
kovskaia pravda, 20 April 1986.
introduction 5
Fed up with neglect of his work and baseless public denunciations, Kabakov
finally took the bold step of submitting an essay, “Art Has No Unloved Chil-
dren,” to an official publication in the summer of 1987. Lamenting Russia’s
habitual neglect of its cultural patrimony, Kabakov pleaded for public recog-
nition of the unofficial artists and sought to ameliorate their circumstances.
He later claimed he had written the article “out of weakness,” assessing it as
the yelp of a dog, too often kicked, that wanted its head patted instead.14
Hailing from the far edges of metropolitan European culture — a
Ukrainian-born artist working in Moscow— Kabakov was preoccupied with
questions of “provincial creativity.” In Notes on Unofficial Life, he explains
that the provincial artist has two options when he arrives “in the capital”: try
to replicate what is done in the metropolis, or ignore the capital’s standards
and hope that individual genius will carry the day.15 Neither option made
much sense to Kabakov. By design, his art and writings never settle into an
easily mapped formula; rather, they migrate continually from one position
to another. Above all, Kabakov treats “superfluous things” and “superfluous
people,” an idea straight out of nineteenth-century Russian literature.16 Shot
through with the small-scale imagination of the child, everything takes place
in Kabakov’s art as if it were apprehended “from the side,” as if the art-maker
himself had only partial control over the art object’s construction and no
particular grasp of its significance. Most often, the point of view projected in
his art, as well as in his writing, is that of a person who plays no active, con-
structive role in society— an observer, not an actor.
In 1988 Ilya Kabakov was transformed, almost overnight, from obscure
Soviet illustrator into a hot commodity in an emerging sector of the inter-
national art market. Sotheby’s had initiated an unprecedented auction of
Soviet contemporary art, and after much negotiation, the event was finally
scheduled. Foreshadowing the drastic disorientations that were soon to shake
the Soviet Union, three of Kabakov’s works left the country to be perused
by potential Western buyers. Kabakov also met Ronald Feldman (gallerist to
the formerly unofficial artists Vitaly Komar and Aleksandr Melamid), who
offered him a solo exhibition in New York. Kabakov assumed it would be
impossible to install this exhibition personally, but thanks to a series of ser-
endipitous events and his long-standing connections to the Artists’ Union,
14. See Kabakov’s remarks in Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov,
Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-Gardes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 228.
15. Ilya Kabakov, 60-e– 70-e . . . Zapiski o neofitsial’noi zhizni v Moskve (Moscow: NLO,
2008), 46 – 48.
16. The Superfluous Man is a stock figure in the nineteenth-century Russian novel, from
Aleksandr Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin to Ivan Goncharov’s Oblomov.
6 introduction
he secured a visa to visit the United States.17 Then, after much worry and
labor, Kabakov unveiled the imposing installation Ten Characters on 30 April
1988 (fig. 1).
“Kabakov is a great artist. He is a harbinger of phoenix-like glories in
liberated Russian culture. If you miss this show, you’ll feel obliged in the fu-
ture to lie and say you saw it,” wrote the art critic Peter Schjeldahl.18 Kaba-
kov’s art racked up similarly ecstatic praise across Europe and North Amer-
ica. A few months later, the Sotheby’s auction took place. “The attention of
the world, the galleries and collectors, makes it easier for artists to establish
themselves in the Soviet Union,” Kabakov told the New York Times prior to
the event. “The government starts to understand the importance and the
price of the work. The ministry of culture starts to look at the work not only
as some kind of trash, but as something that’s important and economic too.”19
Unfortunately, Sotheby’s foreign buyers knew little about unofficial art and
exhibited scant curiosity to find out more. Described in Art in America as an
17. Amei Wallach provides a firsthand account of this period in Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who
Never Threw Anything Away (New York: Abrams, 1996).
18. Peter Schjeldahl, “Ilya Kabakov,” in The 7 Days Art Columns, 1988 – 1990 (Great Bar-
rington, MA: The Figures, 1990), 28.
19. Ilya Kabakov, quoted in Douglas C. McGill, “Western Dealers Rush to Sign Soviet Art-
ists,” New York Times, 19 May 1988, C23.
introduction 7
“art safari” undertaken by “wealthy foreigners,” the auction introduced the
unofficial artists firsthand to the most problematic, colonializing tendencies
within the contemporary art world.20 As the unofficial artist Viktor Pivovarov
later wrote:
Death came about in a very festive place. 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 speak-
ing such nonsense? Behind what back! All were asked and all agreed. And
how could one not agree . . . at the end of the tunnel, the heavenly kingdom
was shining, the fulfillment of all our desires, our innermost dreams. You, of
course, have already guessed what I am talking about. Yes, the Sotheby’s auc-
tion on the seventh of July 1988. On that day what we called art was buried
forever.21
*
In the three decades since the auction, many of the unofficial artists have
emigrated to far-flung locales. Kabakov, for one, has settled permanently on
Long Island, seventy miles outside New York City. Although he created his
first such work at the age of fifty-one, he is now perhaps the most famous
installation artist of the later twentieth century. Soon after arriving in the
West, Kabakov took to describing his installations as a new type of art alto-
gether, what he came to describe as “total installation.”22 For Kabakov, post-
Renaissance painting had too often been segregated from its surroundings,
made over into academicized hackwork or trivial commodities. In Kabakov’s
installations, paintings never entirely disappeared, they just ended up quite
often on or near the floor, rather than hanging on the wall, as if the artist were
daring the viewer to elevate them, both figuratively and literally. Nonetheless,
in more recent years, Kabakov has largely abandoned installation art to en-
gage in an ongoing “return to painting.”23
With his self-imposed exile in the West, Kabakov confronted a funda-
20. Jamey Gambrell, “Perestroika Shock,” Art in America 77, no. 2 (February 1989): 126. In
the publicity surrounding the event, Kabakov is even described as the “leader of a tribe.”
21. Viktor Pivovarov, “Iz pis’ma izdatel’iu zhurnala A-Ia Igoriu Shelkovskomu,” in Pivova-
rov, Shagi mekhanika (Moscow: Tretiakov, 2004), 48.
22. He formalized this conception of the medium in 1992 – 1993 in a series of lectures for art
students at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt. They were published
in Russian with German and English translations in Über die “totale” Installation (On “Total”
Installation) (Ostfildern, Germany: Cantz, 1995).
23. See Ilya Kabakov, Ilya Kabakov: Eine Rückkehr Zur Malerei, 1961– 2011/A Return to Paint-
ing, 1961– 2011. Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber, 2012.
8 introduction
mental dilemma: how could he convert his art into gestures that would make
sense within the larger arena of world art history? Which meant, practically,
how could he reframe his art for critics, historians, collectors, and curators
from Asia, Western Europe, and North America? On this score, Kabakov ap-
proached the international art community much as he had treated the official
Soviet art bureaucracy before it: he ascertained what was expected of him
and then attempted to provide “it,” as he explains in his 1994 text “A Story
about a ‘Culturally Relocated’ Person.”24 Kabakov quickly realized that the
typical Western art institution had little use for a Soviet conceptual artist who
produced enigmatic objects and Russian-language texts of a theoretical and
philosophical character. Better, he concluded, to conform to the art world’s
ethnographic expectations of a contemporary Russian artist: the “Western”
Kabakov thus assumed the role of an extravagant Russian storyteller who
portrayed “communal Soviet life,” but in a sensorily overwhelming medium
that evoked the mix of sentiment and philosophy found in the classics of
nineteenth-century Russian literature, as well as the cosmic ambitions of the
historical Soviet avant-garde. Though no longer obligated to work as an of-
ficial illustrator and unofficial artist, he continued to deploy both personas in
his art and writing. In the end, Kabakov self-consciously translated his ideas
into what he deemed generically “Russian/Soviet” forms so that an interna-
tional public could consume his art without great difficulty; this public could
rely on what it already knew, because he doubted that it would be interested
in learning much more. For some artists, such self-censorship would be in-
tolerable, but Kabakov took it for granted that attaining access to Western art
institutions would not be that different from working within the Union of
Soviet Artists. Thus, Kabakov the Russian storyteller– installation artist was
born, while Kabakov the exiled Soviet conceptual artist embarked on what
might someday be described as an elaborate work of performance art within
the global circuit of contemporary art institutions.
Today, Kabakov’s art has been exhibited at hundreds of venues globally
and featured in the most prestigious sites for contemporary art, from the
Venice Biennale to Documenta. Ilya Kabakov is thus an artist who in many
ways embodies the prototypical subjectivity of the twenty-first-century inter-
national, multidisciplinary artist. Where constructions of national identity,
medium-specificity, and site-specificity were once the key terms for the con-
temporary artist and contemporary art history, it could now be argued that
most often it is the dialogue between mediums, between national traditions,
24. Delivered as a speech at the IAAC /AICA Congress in Stockholm, 22 September 1994.
introduction 9
and between art contexts that catalyzes the crucial drama of art-making. In
this sense, Kabakov’s writings are particularly illuminating, as they engage
critically with such transformations in the symbolic construction of “global
art.” Ilya Kabakov has referred to himself frequently as an “author,” and this
collection aims to allow the artist’s distinctive authorial voice to appear in all
of its wide-ranging, ever challenging heterogeneity.
Culture, “I,” “It,” and Favorsky’s
Light (“Rhombus”)
1980
In the early 1980s Kabakov began taking stock of Moscow’s unofficial art community,
its deficits and achievements. This self-investigatory project arose partly in response
to his perception that there was an absence of insightful critical writing on unofficial
art, but also as an effort to define more precisely how local art related to its surround-
ing atmosphere. More concretely, this text seeks to diagram the psychic and aesthetic
landscape of unofficial art by describing and interpreting the practices of several cel-
ebrated local artists (Kabakov among them). Originally intended to be shared within
Kabakov’s extended circle of friends, this essay was not published until after the fall
of the Soviet Union.
It is difficult to define the theme of this essay, but let us let it emerge in its
current disconnected, muddled rendering. Over the course of many years of
twists and turns, conversations and imaginings about all sorts of different
things, a few centers, a few nests of concepts have accumulated and concen-
trated in themselves significant questions. These centers can be separated into
four groups, four heaps. Each group has formed its own images and its own
distinctive concepts.
Here are the four groups:
1. The first group could be called “I,” as it includes all possible problems and
issues connected to the meaning of “I”: What specifically can the “I” do?
What is it capable of ? How does it solve its problems? How does it evalu-
ate itself ? An entire series of questions emanates from this “I.” How do
these questions present themselves to this “I”? What are the tasks of this
“I”? In general, this group includes endeavors that focus on phenomena
in relation to their being devoured by and reflected within this “I,” and
on the reaction of this “I.” As a general rule, it includes everything that is
referred to by this wonderful word “I.”
2. The second nest is related to the concept of culture. The endless circula-
tion around this word begins with the purely theoretical and ends with
all kinds of complex intricacies connected to the following question: Is a
given phenomenon connected to culture, or is the phenomenon not cul-
tural? Is it established by culture? Is it located in the light of culture? These
c u l t u r e , “ i , ” “ i t , ” a n d fav o r s k y ’ s l i g h t 11
endless maneuverings indicate that the word “culture” is no less capacious
than the others, that it is one of the most important among these energy
centers, nests of concepts.
3. The third concept is the concept of “it.” “It” is everything that possesses
energy and pressure; from it emanates and flows incredible power, ambi-
guity, and connectedness, i.e., everything that is connected to unbelievable
force and at the same time remains impossible to name: it can only be per-
ceived and cannot be defined insofar as it is terribly diffuse, vague, pres-
ent everywhere and nowhere. It has the quality of being the foundation,
soil, a kind of backdrop that stands behind everything. It is a tormenting
demand that requires a response, a definition, a description of itself— in
general, “it” involves everything that is connected with the unconscious,
with that which we feel but which remains impossible to define. The con-
cept of place belongs here too in that it can be perceived as “it” as well, as
a demand for a definition of itself in this place, etc.
4. The fourth nest, the fourth center around which everything revolves, mov-
ing endlessly nearer and further away, is the concept of Favorsky’s light.1
This is what we call the concept that includes the metaphysical: it is the
concept of something higher, the concept of the absolute, the concept of
the idea, of the spirit, and of all possible strata that are understood as el-
evated, ideal; we have to aspire toward it, toward that which soars, shines,
and dominates.
It is these four centers that, in one way or another, in various distillations, in

all kinds of combinations, serve as the constant subject of our endless con-
versations. In turn, these centers can be arranged in a kind of quadrangle,
which is actually what I want to discuss here. We shall try to arrange these
four centers in a rhombus— not a square— a rhombus that stands on one
edge or, more accurately, that stands on one of its points. This point we will
call south, using a geographic term, and at this lowest point we shall place the
term “it.” “It” will be at the bottom of the rhombus. Directly above it will be
Favorsky’s light, in its natural position, above and most exalted, our topologi-
cal north. Naturally, we will place culture in the west, i.e., to the left, if we are
facing north. That is its place, as one would naturally presume. “I” will be in
the east, and that’s how it should be since it continually rises and everything
begins with it, and everything, of course, ends in the west.
Now, having defined this rhombus topologically, let us outline the north-
1. The term refers to Vladimir Favorsky (1886 – 1964), a Moscow-born painter and graphic
artist who studied in Western Europe before the Revolution and was later associated with the
Soviet avant-garde; one of the key exemplars of “formalist” tendencies in post-revolutionary
Soviet culture.
12 c u l t u r e , “ i , ” “ i t , ” a n d fav o r s k y ’ s l i g h t
south and east-west axes. What we immediately end up with is a cross; we
discover that in our circle— and this is no secret to anyone— there exist two
main characters, two organically emerging, active ideologues who in a way
represent the two axes of our rhombus, our quadrangle placed on its point.
They are Shiffers and Groys, our two spiritual ideologues, our two thinkers.2
In our schema they are perpendicular to one another. Shiffers will be located,
as should be anticipated, along the vertical, north-south axis, that is, he will
run from “it”— from the impersonal, foundational, profoundly ontological
root— upward toward spiritual radiance and enlightenment, whereas Groys
will lie along the horizontal plane, setting up this perpendicular structure,
maneuvering from culture to “I” and back again. Arranging everything this
way and discussing it rather ironically, you nonetheless discover a certain cu-
rious naturalness, a sort of predeterminedness to such a situation. Shiffers’s
field of activity really does ignore the problem of “I,” as well as the cultural
problematic, as though passing right by it (of course, he knows about it, but
he considers it an inessential element when related to the more important
axis, the one that is ontological and spiritual), whereas Groys is located on
the plane of culture and the relations between personality and culture; for
him, the activation of “it,” as well as Favorsky’s light, serve as extraneous
relationships.
Now we will turn to the four identified points and look to see whether we
can find any figures who personify them. Quickly enough, we discover four
such personages. There is nothing objective here, so I will accept the risk of
naming names. Steinberg will represent Favorsky’s light. Below him, “it” will
be represented by Yankilevsky. Bulatov will represent the cultural structure,
and perhaps the point going by the name of “I” might be arrogantly repre-
sented by Kabakov.3 Now I will say a few words about why these person-
ages were chosen, why they, perhaps, have reason to be represented by these
points.
Least subject to any doubt is the place of Steinberg. It is well known and
widely recognized that Favorsky’s light and its presence is the main actor and
2. Evgeny Shiffers (1934 – 1997), a Moscow-based writer, philosopher, theologian, theater

director, and mystic; Boris Groys (b. 1947), an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher who
went on to emigrate to Germany and the United States.
3. Eduard Steinberg (1937– 2012), an unofficial artist whose abstract paintings often feature
primarily white surfaces dotted with colorful abstract forms; Vladimir Yankilevsky (1938 –
2018), an unofficial artist who typically produced surreal and grotesque canvases; Erik Bulatov
(b. 1933), one of the foremost artist-practitioners of Sots-Art, an unofficial idiom grounded in a
loosely satirical doubling of official Socialist Realist representation.
genuine content not only of the figure of Steinberg himself but of his art.
Everything, strictly speaking, is built on this. Favorsky’s light comprises the
main subject, the main origin that is present in his art; it shapes it, arranges
and conditions all of the other elements, all of the other categories in his art.
His painting is built on the presupposition that Favorsky’s light shines behind
everything as a significant, primordial element that must be reckoned with
and anticipated.
Why has Yankilevsky been chosen as an antipode, below Steinberg, yet
located on the same vertical line? Why does he personify “it”? Only because
that indivisible, thick, unbelievably all-encompassing force that swallows up
all elements, dissolving them in some extraordinarily viscous, suggestive,
compressed, yet living plasma— this force that doesn’t have any name— is
the foundation, the primary image, the overwhelming impression, as well as
the major effect, brought about by his art. We cannot say exactly what his art,
his images, or his word might speak about— these all appear to be of little
significance. Yes, there are conceptual structures, signs, and images there, but
everyone understands perfectly well that all of these are dissolved into some-
thing much more holistic and that they are basically insignificant and unim-
portant in relation to the whole. They are like clumps in your cream of wheat
[kasha] that when you start mixing them, dissolve into something more uni-
form, into something that, in essence, cannot have a name, but that in terms
of its mass, power, and energy is perceived and experienced by everyone.
The feeling of “it” that has no name— in which all elements dissolve— is
overwhelmingly present in Yankilevsky’s art. For this reason, I want to place
Yankilevsky in the location labeled “it” at the bottom of the quadrangle.
Why does Bulatov personify the point of culture? It is not only because
there is in his work a complete absence of everything mystical, irrational, and
impersonal, as well as an absence of any layers that might activate a super-
consciousness or the unconscious. It is not only because he is extraordinarily
clear but also because, if we understand culture as an extraordinarily com-
plex yet extraordinarily distinct sign structure, a structure that may boldly
be called a language, in which each element signifies something and in this
sense is understood not only as a sign but also as a network of familiar, well-
elucidated concepts standing behind that sign, then the operating of these
sign structures, this calculation in terms of meaning and content of each sign,
makes it possible to consider Bulatov as a personage who personifies the very
essence of culture. Bulatov also relates to culture because these interactions
of concepts and sign structures are so significant, so self-sufficient that they
ignore both the impersonal layers and any layers associated with psychology,
with personal acts that might muddy things, etc. That is to say, elements are
presented here in their blunt, clear and self-sufficient potency and in their
mutual relationships with each another.
Why can Kabakov occupy the point called “I”? Because the main impulse
in his endeavors and maneuverings is connected primarily with the impulse
emanating from “I.” Here all phenomena, everything that is done, have their
origins in subjectivity, in the subjectivity of the “I.” Beginning with arbitrari-
ness, games, nonsense, or simply with a gesture— which is particularly char-
acteristic of the “I”— all phenomena at their base are understood, both in
their initial stirrings and in their final analysis, through psychology, and a
certain psychologism becomes the basis for everything, which is the truest
sign that everything occurring is evaluated through the “I.” All contempla-
tion begins with analysis from inside the “I,” and ends with the “I” as well.
“I” is the first and last stage in the contemplation of everything. It is as if it has
both centripetal and centrifugal origins: everything begins and ends with “I.”
With these four items roughly sketched out, let us move on to a curi-
ous question analyzed in an article by Lotman in which he argues that our
ordinary language is distinguished by the fusion of two other languages.4
Lotman precisely differentiates and names these languages. The first is con-
nected to mythological consciousness. Here one is dealing with a childlike,
mythological, holistic, and undifferentiated consciousness, and with a lan-
guage that is, above all, undifferentiated, whose foundation is a primordial,
indivisible wholeness, a certain visual representation that in principle cannot
be analyzed except holistically. Wholeness and unity, the total incarnation of
any material, is the basis of this language. It is ancient and primal, but as it de-
velops it transforms into its opposite— a language that is discrete, where the
sign is of a form that no longer signifies itself but instead signifies something
else. The sign functions in this language as a signifier of another concept.
This language serves in a subordinate position, subordinate in relation to the
first language. It acquires different qualities: discreteness, pieces of distinct
expressiveness, parts, elements, an extraordinarily high degree of signedness,
wherein each sign very emphatically signifies something. A temporal aspect
appears, whereas in the first language time does not exist, only eternity exists.
An age-related structure exists as well: if the first language is likened to the
forms of a child’s consciousness, then the second one is akin to a more ma-
ture one. The first is prehistoric, the second, historical. Thus, the language in
4. Yuri Lotman (1922 – 1993) was a pioneer in Soviet semiotic theory; see the essays col-
lected in Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, trans. Ann Shukman (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990).
which we interact with one another consists of two languages— discrete and
mythological— that exist in superimposition and struggle, one functioning
against the backdrop of the other.
If we pay attention to this idea, then, returning to our rhombus, we dis-
cover the following feature: in an unexpected way, the four separate struc-
tures at its corners function in the same way as the two languages discussed
by Lotman. Forming a kind of integral whole, they embody these two origins,
these two languages. It is not difficult to understand that the north-south
vertical, belonging theoretically to Shiffers and personally to the work of
Steinberg and Yankilevsky, represents the area of ontology and mythologi-
cal consciousness, a mythological understanding of the world and of reality.
Here are regions that are nonreflective, nonsigned, noncultural, nonsecond-
ary, regions that belong to an intensely integrated, primordial whole, distin-
guished by its power and unity. This language, without a doubt, relates to the
second language in our rhombus, the language of culture and individuality,
as to something extraordinarily insignificant and nonnecessary, and quite
naturally swallows it up as something random and unimportant. We see this
in Shiffers’s attitude toward the problem of personality and culture. Recog-
nizing these categories formally, he nonetheless perceives them as a kind of
interference, as an exception, as something insignificant against the backdrop
of the important ontological, spiritual axis. In all likelihood, the same could
be said about the art of these two artists: its holistic and all-consuming qual-
ity is so great that, in this structure, such phenomena as ideas, signs, personal
origin, culture, etc. are either not perceived at all or are perceived as second-
ary and insignificant.
If, on the contrary, we examine the horizontal, east-west axis that Groys
represents, what becomes clear is that sign-meaning functions as the back-
drop or the chief active component, while signless mythological structure
serves only to muddy the water, and so may be left out of our analysis alto-
gether. What we have here are the regions of consciousness, the regions of
culture, the regions in which the personage himself functions inside culture.
The primary, mythological axis is no longer in focus insofar as it has been
surmounted; the secondary stage, newer in terms of time, cannot return to
the first. If for mythology, culture is a nuisance, and at the same time an ex-
hausting element, then for the axis of culture/ “I,” the mythological element
is a stage that has already been traversed. It is better now not to perceive
it at all.
One might think that we are dealing here with a classical structure, a model
of human existence that is also, in part, a model of artistic activity. In essence,
artistic activity consists of movement between these two poles— between
mythology and particularity, between a proto-language and the language of
culture— but this is only in the ideal; what exists in reality is either a tendency
that we have called mythological, or one that is cultural-personalized. Is a
balanced center possible, an ideal calm spot in this whirlwind, in the midst
of these incomprehensible twists and turns? Could there be someone— the
question is posed purely theoretically— who might stand at the intersection
of the Shiffers and Groys axes, who successfully integrates these four separate
points of the rhombus within himself ? There is in fact such a personage,
located precisely at the center of these painful, polemicizing debates. Perhaps
it would be sufficient for me to somewhat arbitrarily cite the name Pivovarov
as one who stands at the very center of this entire topology, topography and
geography.5 It remains only to prove that this location is ideal or successfully
resolves these lacerating conflicts. We really do discover in the personality of
Pivovarov all four points of origin; it is as though his image stands directly
at their intersection, binding them all together. In him is combined both the
personalized and the cultural point of view and an enormous, latently power-
ful “it” origin, as well as a very spiritualized, enlightened element. Can we
consider all of these tensions to have been resolved in this personage? Here
appears a very curious circumstance, which consists in the fact that in order
to perceive anything one must apparently back up. What we see has to be in
focus, but we can focus only from a certain distance. What results is a curious
situation wherein we can only make out origins that are diluted with addi-
tions of some kind, while it is possible that the actual crosshairs, the integrat-
ing locus itself, might not be perceived by us at all.
This schema is extraordinarily capacious, and once it is recognized, the
following becomes clear: from a distanced perspective, these diverse direc-
tions represent a unity, perhaps even a complementarity, even if in real life,
in the cauldron of everyday interactions, they embody incompatible origins,
juxtaposed most often in hostile confrontation with one another. Perhaps
with historical perspective they will come together like a couple tenderly and
courteously supporting each other over a puddle, but at the moment they
are still perceived as polarized. I want to emphasize this subjective moment:
our current point of view is not art historical, where one pets both the ram
and the goat; these poles perceive each other in terms of contrast, in terms of
repulsion. This disposition toward polarities that has emerged, in a histori-
cal sense, may form a kind of stable structure, or at least a frame on which to
5. Viktor Pivovarov (b.1937) is an unofficial artist who has worked primarily in the medi-
ums of drawing and painting. His production tends toward a vocabulary that is both represen-
tational and absurd.
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friend was one of her three brothers, probably Manetto Portinari, to
whom a sonnet of Guido’s may have been addressed. Casella the
musician, and Lapo Gianni the poet, are mentioned with affection in
the Purgatorio (Canto ii.), and in one of Dante’s sonnets respectively;
Lippo de’ Bardi, evidently like Casella a musician, and a certain
Meuccio likewise appear as friends in other of his earliest lyrics. Cino
da Pistoia, like Cavalcanti, seems to have answered Dante’s dream;
their friendship was perhaps at present mainly confined to
exchanging poems. Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola speak of an
early visit of Dante’s to the universities of Bologna and Padua, and
there is some evidence for thinking that he was at Bologna some
time not later than 1287. He may possibly have served in some
cavalry expedition to check the harrying parties of Aretines in 1288;
for, when the great battle of the following year was fought, it found
Dante “no novice in arms,” as a fragment of one of his lost letters
puts it, non fanciullo nell’ armi.
Popular Government.—Twenty years had now passed since the
victory of Colle di Valdelsa in 1269. Great changes had taken place
in the meanwhile. The estrangement between Charles of Anjou and
the Popes, Gregory X. and Nicholas III., the attempts of these latter
to weaken the king’s power by reconciling the Florentine Guelfs with
the Ghibelline exiles, and the dissensions among the Guelf
magnates themselves within the city, had led, in 1280, to the peace
arranged by Cardinal Latino Frangipani. A government was set up of
fourteen buonuomini, magnates and popolani, eight Guelfs and six
Ghibellines. But the city remained strenuously Guelf. Nicholas III.
had deprived King Charles of the offices of Senator of Rome and
Vicar Imperial and had allowed Rudolph of Hapsburg to establish a
vicar in Tuscany (Inf. xix. 99). In 1282 came the Vespers of Palermo
(Par. viii. 75). The Sicilians rose, massacred Charles’s adherents,
and received as their king Peter of Aragon, the husband of Manfred’s
daughter Constance (Purg. iii. 143). The hitherto united kingdom of
Sicily, which had been the heritage of the imperial Suabians from the
Norman heroes of the house of Hauteville, was thus divided between
a French and a Spanish line of kings (Par. xx. 63); the former at
Naples as kings of “Sicily and Jerusalem,” the latter in the island as
kings of “Trinacria.” Charles was henceforth too much occupied in
war with the Sicilians and Aragonese to interfere in the internal
affairs of Tuscany. In the June of this year a peaceful revolution took
place in Florence. Instead of the fourteen buonuomini, the
government was put into the hands of the Priors of the Arts or
Guilds, who, associated with the Captain, were henceforth
recognised as the chief magistrates of the Republic, composing the
Signoria, during the two months for which they were elected to hold
office. Their number, originally three, was raised to six; both grandi
and popolani were at first eligible, provided the former left their order
by enrolling themselves in one of the Guilds. A thorough organisation
of these Guilds, the Arti maggiori (which were mainly engaged in
wholesale commerce, exportation and importation, and the
mercantile relations of Florence with foreign countries) and Arti
minori (which carried on the retail traffic and internal trade of the
city), secured the administration in the hands of the trading classes.
Thus was established the democratic constitution of the state in
which Dante was afterwards to play his part. There was the central
administration of the six Priors, one for each sesto of the city, with
the council of a hundred “good men of the people without whose
deliberation no great thing or expenditure could be done” (Villani, vii.
16). The executive was composed of the Captain of the People and
the Podestà, both Italian nobles from other states, holding office for
six months, each with his two councils, a special and a general
council, the general council of the Podestà being the general council
of the Commune. The great Guilds had their own council (Consiglio
delle Capitudini delle Arti), and their consuls or rectors, while
specially associated with the two councils of the Captain, were
sometimes admitted to those of the Podestà; the nobles were
excluded from all these councils, excepting the special council of the
Podestà and the general council of the Commune. But, while the
central government of the Republic was thus entirely popular, the
magnates still retained control over the captains of the Guelf Society,
with their two councils, and exerted considerable influence upon the
Podestà, always one of their own order and an alien, in whose
councils they still sat. The Podestà, however, was now little more
than a chief justice; “the Priors, with the Captain of the People, had
to determine the great and weighty matters of the commonwealth,
and to summon and conduct councils and make regulations”
(Villani).
Battle of Campaldino.—A period of prosperity and victory
followed for Florence. The crushing defeat inflicted upon Pisa by
Genoa at the great naval battle of Meloria in 1284 was much to her
advantage; as was also, perhaps, the decline of the Angevin power
after the victory of Peter of Aragon’s fleet (Purg. xx. 79). Charles II.,
the “cripple of Jerusalem,” who succeeded his father as king of
Naples, was a less formidable suzerain. On June 11th, 1289, the
Tuscan Ghibellines were utterly defeated by the Florentines and their
allies at the battle of Campaldino. According to Leonardo Bruni—and
there seems no adequate reason for rejecting his testimony—Dante
was present, “fighting valiantly on horseback in the front rank,”
apparently among the 150 who volunteered or were chosen as
feditori, amongst whom was Vieri de’ Cerchi, who was later to
acquire a more dubious reputation in politics. Bruni states that in a
letter Dante draws a plan of the fight; and he quotes what seems to
be a fragment of another letter, written later, where Dante speaks of
“the battle of Campaldino, in which the Ghibelline party was almost
utterly destroyed and undone; where I found myself no novice in
arms, and where I had much fear, and in the end very great
gladness, by reason of the varying chances of that battle.”
Dante probably took part in the subsequent events of the
campaign; the wasting of the Aretine territory, the unsuccessful
attack upon Arezzo, the surrender of the Pisan fortress of Caprona.
“Thus once I saw the footmen, who marched out under treaty from
Caprona, fear at seeing themselves among so many enemies” (Inf.
xxi. 94-96). There appears to be a direct reference to his personal
experiences of the campaign in the opening of Inferno xxii.: “I have
seen ere now horsemen moving camp and beginning the assault,
and holding their muster, and at times retiring to escape; coursers
have I seen upon your land, O Aretines! and seen the march of
foragers, the shock of tournaments and race of jousts, now with
trumpets and now with bells, with drums and castle signals.” He has
sung of Campaldino in peculiarly pathetic strains in Canto V. of the
Purgatorio. On the lower slopes of the Mountain of Purgation
wanders the soul of Buonconte da Montefeltro, who led the Aretine
cavalry, and whose body was never found; mortally wounded and
forsaken by all, he had died gasping out the name of Mary, and his
Giovanna had forgotten even to pray for his soul.
Death of Beatrice.—In the following year, 1290, Beatrice died:
“The Lord of justice called this most gentle one to glory under the
banner of that blessed queen Mary virgin, whose name was in very
great reverence in the words of this blessed Beatrice” (V. N. xxix.).
Although Dante complicates the date by a reference to “the usage of
Arabia,” she appears to have died on the evening of June 8th;[1] and
the poet lifts up his voice with the prophet: “How doth the city sit
solitary that was full of people! How is she become as a widow, she
that was great among the nations!”
3. After the Death of Beatrice

Philosophic Refuge.—It is not easy to get a very definite idea of
Dante’s private life during the next ten years. With the completion of
the Vita Nuova, shortly after Beatrice’s death, an epoch closes in his
life, as in his work. From the Convivio it would appear that in his
sorrow Dante took refuge in the study of the De Consolatione
Philosophiae of Boëthius and Cicero’s De Amicitia; that he
frequented “the schools of the religious and the disputations of
philosophers,” where he became deeply enamoured of Philosophy.
Cino da Pistoia addressed to him an exceedingly beautiful canzone,
consoling him for the loss of Beatrice, bidding him take comfort in the
contemplation of her glory among the saints and angels of Paradise,
where she is praying to God for her lover’s peace. This poem is
quoted years later by Dante himself in the second book of the De
Vulgari Eloquentia (ii. 6), where he couples it with his own canzone
—
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,

“Love that in my mind discourses to me,” with which Casella
consoles the penitent spirits upon the shore of Purgatory: “The
amorous chant which was wont to quiet all my desires.”
Aberrations.—It would seem, however, that neither the memory
of Beatrice nor his philosophical devotion kept Dante from falling into
what he afterwards came to regard as a morally unworthy life. Tanto
giù cadde, “so low he fell” (Purg. xxx. 136). It is almost impossible to
hold, as Witte and Scartazzini would have us do, that the poignant
reproaches which Beatrice addresses to Dante, when he meets her
on Lethe’s banks, are connected mainly with intellectual errors, with
culpable neglect of Theology or speculative wanderings from
revealed truth, for there are but scanty, if any, traces of this in the
poet’s writings at any period of his career. The dark wood in which
he wandered, led by the world and the flesh, was that of sensual
passion and moral aberration for a while from the light of reason and
the virtue which is the “ordering of love.”
Friendship with Forese Donati.—Dante was evidently intimate
with the great Donati family, whose houses were in the same district
of the city. Corso di Simone Donati, a turbulent and ambitious spirit,
had done heroically at Campaldino, and was now intent upon having
his own way in the state. A close and familiar friendship united Dante
with Corso’s brother Forese, a sensual man of pleasure. Six sonnets
interchanged between these two friends, though now only in part
intelligible, do little credit to either. “If thou recall to mind,” Dante says
to Forese in the sixth terrace of Purgatory, “what thou wast with me
and I was with thee, the present memory will still be grievous” (Purg.
xxiii, 115). Forese died in July 1296; the author of the Ottimo
Commento, who wrote about 1334, and professes to have known the
divine poet, tells us that Dante induced his friend when on his death-
bed to repent and receive the last sacraments. Another sonnet of
Dante’s shows him in friendly correspondence with Brunetto (Betto)
Brunelleschi, a noble who later played a sinister part in the factions
and, like Corso Donati, met a violent death.
Loves, Marriage, and Debts.—Several very striking canzoni,
written for a lady whom Dante represents under various stony
images, and whose name may possibly have been Pietra, are
frequently assigned to this period of the poet’s life, but may perhaps
have been written in the early days of his exile. From other lyrics and
sonnets we dimly discern that several women may have crossed
Dante’s life now and later, of whom nothing can be known. Dante
married Gemma di Manetto Donati, a distant kinswoman of Corso
and Forese. In the Paradiso (xvi. 119) he refers with complacency to
his wife’s ancestor, Ubertino Donati, Manetto’s great-grandfather,
whose family pride scorned any alliance with the Adimari. According
to Boccaccio, the marriage took place some time after the death of
Beatrice, and it was certainly not later than 1297; but there is
documentary evidence that Gemma’s dowry was settled in 1277,
which points to an early betrothal. The union has generally been
supposed—on somewhat inadequate grounds—to have been an
unhappy one. Gemma bore Dante two sons, Jacopo and Pietro, and
either one or two daughters. Boccaccio’s statement, that she did not
share the poet’s exile, is usually accepted; she was living in Florence
after his death, and died there after 1332.[2] During the following
years, between 1297 and 1300, Dante was contracting debts
(Durante di Scolaio degli Abati and Manetto Donati being among his
sureties), which altogether amounted to a very large sum, but which
were cleared off from the poet’s estate after his death.
4. Dante’s Political Life

Election of Boniface VIII.—Upon the abdication of Celestine V.,
Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani was made Pope on Christmas Eve
1294, under the title of Boniface VIII. (Inf. xix. 52-57), an event
ominous for Florence and for Dante. Although canonised by the
Church, there is little doubt that St. Celestine is the first soul met by
Dante in the vestibule of Hell: Colui che fece per viltà il gran rifiuto
(Inf. iii. 58-60), “He who made from cowardice the great
renunciation.”
Giano della Bella.—Florence had just confirmed the democratic
character of her constitution by the reforms of Giano della Bella, a
noble who had identified himself with the popular cause (Par. xvi.
132). By the Ordinances of Justice in 1293 stringent provisions were
enacted against the nobles, who since Campaldino had grown
increasingly aggressive towards the people and factious against
each other. They were henceforth more rigorously excluded from the
Priorate and Council of the Hundred, as also from the councils of the
Captain and Capitudini; severe penalties were exacted for offences
against popolani; and, in order that these ordinances should be
carried out, a new magistrate, the Gonfaloniere di Guistizia or
Standard-bearer of Justice, was added to the Signoria to hold office
like the Priors for two months in rotation from the different districts of
the city. Thus was completed the secondo popolo, the second
democratic constitution of Florence. The third of these standard-
bearers was Dino Compagni, the chronicler. Giano della Bella was
meditating the continuation of his work by depriving the captains of
the Guelf Society of their power and resources, when a riot, in which
Corso Donati played a prominent part, caused his overthrow in
March 1295. By his fall the government remained in the hands of the
rich burghers, being practically an oligarchy of merchants and
bankers.
First Steps in Political Life.—In this same year 1295, the first
year of the pontificate of Boniface VIII., Dante entered political life.
Although of noble descent, the Alighieri do not seem to have ranked
as magnates. By a modification in the Ordinances of Justice in July
1295, citizens, without actually exercising an “art,” were admitted to
office provided they had matriculated and were not knights, if not
more than two persons in their family had held knighthood within the
last twenty years. Dante now (or perhaps a little later) enrolled his
name in the matricola of the Art of Physicians and Apothecaries,
which included painters and booksellers. For the six months from
November 1st, 1295, to April 30th, 1296, he was a member of the
Special Council of the Captain. On December 14th, as one of the
savi or specially summoned counsellors, he gave his opinion
(consuluit) in the Council of the Capitudini of the Arts on the
procedure to be adopted for the election of the new Signoria. On
January 23rd, 1296, the Pope inaugurated his aggressive policy
towards the Republic by addressing a bull to the Podestà, Captain,
Ancients, Priors and Rectors of the Arts, to the Council and the
Commune of Florence (purposely ignoring the new office of
Gonfaloniere). After denouncing in unmeasured terms the
wickedness of that “rock of scandal,” Giano della Bella, and extolling
the prudence of the Florentines in expelling him, the Pope, hearing
that certain persons are striving to obtain his recall, utterly forbids
anything of the kind without special licence from the Holy See, under
penalty of excommunication and interdict. The Pope further protests
his great and special affection for Florence, amongst the cities
devoted to God and the Apostolic See. “I love France so well,” says
Shakespeare’s King Henry, “that I will not part with a village of it; I
will have it all mine.”
Although Boccaccio, and others in his steps, have somewhat
exaggerated Dante’s influence in the politics of the Republic, there
can be no doubt that he soon came to take a decided attitude in
direct opposition to all lawlessness, and in resistance to any external
interference in Florentine matters, whether from Rome, Naples, or
France. The eldest son of Charles II., Carlo Martello, whom Dante
had “loved much and with good cause” (Par. viii. 55) during his visit
to Florence in the spring of 1294, had died in the following year; and
his father was harassing the Florentines for money to carry on the
Sicilian war. Dante, on leaving the Council of the Captain, had been
elected to the Council of the Hundred, in which, on June 5th, 1296,
he spoke in support of various proposals, including one on the
embellishment of the cathedral and baptistery by the removal of the
old hospital, and another undertaking not to receive men under ban
of the Commune of Pistoia in the city and contado of Florence. In the
previous May, in consequence of internal factions, Pistoia had given
Florence control of the city, with power to send a podestà and a
captain every six months. After this we do not hear of Dante again
until May 7th, 1300, when he acted as ambassador to San
Gemignano to announce that a parliament was to be held for the
purpose of electing a captain for the Guelf League of Tuscany, and
to invite the Commune to send representatives. But already the
storm cloud which loomed on the horizon had burst upon the city on
May Day 1300.
Blacks and Whites.—The new division of parties in Florence
became associated with the feud between two noble families, the
Donati and the Cerchi, headed respectively by two of the heroes of
Campaldino, Corso Donati and Vieri de’ Cerchi. The names Neri and
Bianchi, Black Guelfs and White Guelfs, by which the two factions
became known, seem to have been derived from a similar division in
Pistoia, the ringleaders of which, being banished to Florence,
embittered the quarrels already in progress in the ruling city. But the
roots of the trouble went deeper and were political, connected with
the discontent of both magnates and popolo minuto under the
hegemony of the Greater Arts. The Bianchi were opposed to a costly
policy of expansion; the Neri, who had wider international and
mercantile connections, looked beyond the affairs of the Commune,
and favoured intimate relations with the Angevin sovereigns of
Naples and the Pope. To the Bianchi adhered those nobles who had
matriculated in the Arts, the more moderate spirits among the
burghers, the remains of the party of Giano della Bella who
supported the Ordinances of Justice in a modified form. While the
Bianchi drew closer to the constitutional government, the strength of
the Neri lay in the councils of the Guelf Society and the influence of
the aristocratic bankers. Guido Cavalcanti (who, even after the
modification of the Ordinances, would have been excluded from
office) was allied with the Cerchi, but probably less influenced by
political considerations than by his personal hostility towards Messer
Corso, who was in high favour with the Pope. Florence was now
indeed “disposed for woeful ruin” (Purg. xxiv. 81), but there had been
a “long contention” (Inf. vi. 64) before the parties came to bloodshed.
The Jubilee.—On February 22nd, 1300, Pope Boniface issued
the bull proclaiming the first papal jubilee. It began with the previous
Christmas Day and lasted through the year 1300. Amongst the
throngs of pilgrims from all parts of the world to Rome were Giovanni
Villani and, probably, Dante (Inf. xviii. 29). This visit to Rome inspired
Villani to undertake his great chronicle; and it is the epoch to which
Dante assigns the vision which is the subject of the Divina
Commedia (Purg. ii. 98). The Pope, however, had his eyes on
Florence, and had apparently resolved to make Tuscany a part of
the Papal States. Possibly he had already opened negotiations with
the Neri through his agents and bankers, the Spini. A plot against the
state on the part of three Florentines in the service of the Pope was
discovered to the Signoria, and sentence passed against the
offenders on April 18th.[3] Boniface wrote to the Bishop of Florence,
on April 24th, 1300, demanding from the Commune that the
sentences should be annulled and the accusers sent to him. The
Priors having refused compliance and denied his jurisdiction in the
matter, the Pope issued a second bull, declaring that he had no
intention of derogating from the jurisdiction or liberty of Florence,
which he intended to increase; but asserting the absolute supremacy
of the Roman Pontiff both in spiritual and temporal things over all
peoples and kingdoms, and demanding again, with threats of
vengeance spiritual and temporal, that the sentences against his
adherents should be annulled, that the three accusers with six of the
most violent against his authority should appear before him, and that
the officers of the Republic should send representatives to answer
for their conduct. This was on May 15th, but, two days earlier, the
Pope had written to the Duke of Saxony, and sent the Bishop of
Ancona to Germany, to demand from Albert of Austria the
renunciation absolutely to the Holy See of all rights claimed by the
Emperors in Tuscany.
Dante’s Priorate.—But in the meantime bloodshed had taken
place in Florence. On May 1st the two factions came to blows in the
Piazza di Santa Trinita; and on May 4th full powers had been given
to the Priors to defend the liberty of the Commune and People of
Florence against dangers from within and without (which had
evidently irritated the Pope). The whole city was now divided;
magnates and burghers alike became bitter partisans of one or other
faction. The Pope, who had previously made a vain attempt to
reconcile Vieri de’ Cerchi with the Donati, sent the Franciscan
Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta as legate and peacemaker to
Florence, in the interests of the captains of the Guelf Society and the
Neri, who accused the Signoria of Ghibelline tendencies. The
Cardinal arrived in June. From June 15th to August 14th Dante was
one of the six Priors by election. “All my misfortunes,” he says in the
letter quoted by Leonardo Bruni, “had their cause and origin in my ill-
omened election to the Priorate; of which Priorate, though by
prudence I was not worthy, still by faith and age I was not unworthy.”
We know too little of the facts to be able to comment upon this
cryptic utterance. On the first day of office (June 15th), the sentence
passed in the previous April against the three Florentines in the
papal service was formally consigned to Dante and his colleagues—
Lapo Gianni (probably the same person as his poet friend of that
name) acting as notary. There were disturbances in the city. On St.
John’s Eve an assault was made upon the Consuls of the Arts by
certain magnates of the Neri, and their opponents threatened to take
up arms. The Priors, perhaps on Dante’s motion, exiled (or, more
accurately, put under bounds outside the territory of the Republic)
some prominent members of both factions, including Corso Donati
and Guido Cavalcanti. The Neri attempted to resist, expecting aid
from the Cardinal and from Lucca; the Bianchi obeyed. Negotiations
continued between the Signoria and the Cardinal, Dante and his
colleagues resisting the papal demands without coming to a formal
rupture.
The Bianchi in Power.—The succeeding Signoria was less
prudent. The banished Bianchi were allowed to return just after
Dante had left office (as he himself states in a lost letter seen by
Leonardo Bruni), on the plea of the illness of Guido Cavalcanti, who
had contracted malaria at Sarzana, and died at Florence in the last
days of August. At the end of September a complete rupture ensued
with Cardinal Matteo d’Acquasparta, who broke off negotiations and
retired to Bologna, leaving the city under an interdict. Corso Donati
had broken bounds and gone to the Pope, who, towards the close of
1300, nominated Charles of Valois, brother of Philip the Fair, captain-
general of the papal states, and summoned him to Italy to aid
Charles of Naples against Frederick of Aragon in Sicily and reduce
the “rebels” of Tuscany to submission.
We meet the name of Dante on several occasions among the
consulte of the Florentine Republic during 1301. It is probable that
he was one of the savi called to council on March 15th, and that he
opposed the granting of a subsidy in money which the King of
Naples had demanded for the Sicilian war and which was made by
the Council of the Hundred.[4] On April 14th he was among the savi
in the Council of the Capitudini for the election of the new Signoria,
of which Palmieri Altoviti was the leading spirit. On April 28th Dante
was appointed officialis et superestans, in connection with the works
in the street of San Procolo, possibly with the object of more readily
bringing up troops from the country. During the priorate of Palmieri
Altoviti (April 15th to June 14th), a conspiracy was discovered,
hatched at a meeting of the Neri in the church of S. Trinita, to
overthrow the government and invite the Pope to send Charles of
Valois to Florence. In consequence a number of Neri were banished
and their possessions confiscated, a fresh sentence being passed
against Corso Donati. The Bianchi were all potent in Florence; and,
in May 1301, they procured the expulsion of the Neri from Pistoia
(ruthlessly carried out by the Florentine captain, Andrea Gherardini),
which was the beginning of the end (Inf. xxiv. 143): “Pistoia first is
thinned of Neri; then Florence renovates folk and rule.”
The Coming of Charles of Valois.—The government still
shrank from directly opposing the Pope, who, by letter from Cardinal
Matteo d’Acquasparta, demanded the continuation of the service of a
hundred horsemen. On June 19th, 1301, in a united meeting of the
Councils of the Hundred, of the Captain, and of the Capitudini, and
again in the Council of the Hundred apart, Dante spoke against
compliance, urging “quod de servitio faciendo domini Papae nihil
fiat”—with the result that the matter was postponed. In the united
Councils of the Hundred, the Captain, the Podestà, and the
Capitudini, on September 13th, he pleaded for the preservation of
the Ordinances of Justice (a sign that the State was regarded as in
peril). On this occasion all the twenty-one arts were represented,
which we may connect with Leonardo Bruni’s statement that Dante
had advised the Priors to strengthen themselves with the support of
the “moltitudine del popolo.” On September 20th, in the Council of
the Captain, he supported a request of the ambassadors of the
Commune of Bologna (then allied with the Bianchi) for free passage
for their importation of grain. On September 28th, again in the
Council of the Captain, he defended a certain Neri di Gherardino
Diedati (whose father was destined to share the poet’s fate) from an
injust charge. This is the last recorded time that Dantes Alagherii
consuluit in Florence. Already Charles of Valois was on his way,
preparing to “joust with the lance of Judas” (Purg. xx. 70-78). On
November 1st, after giving solemn pledges to the Signoria (Dino
Compagni being one of the Priors), Charles with 1200 horsemen
entered Florence without opposition.
Leonardo Bruni asserts that Dante was absent at Rome on an
embassy to the Pope when the latter’s “peacemaker” entered
Florence. It would appear that the Florentine government had
requested the allied Commune of Bologna to send an embassy to
Boniface, simultaneously with an embassy from Siena with which
were associated three ambassadors from Florence: Maso di
Ruggierino Minerbetti, Corazza da Signa, and Dante Alighieri. Their
purpose was to make their own terms with the Pontiff in order to
avert the intervention of Charles. The mission set out at the
beginning of October; but one of the Bolognese ambassadors,
Ubaldino Malavolti, having business of his own with the Florentine
government, delayed the others so long that they did not arrive in
time.[5] Boccaccio asserts that, when the Bianchi proposed to send
Dante on such an embassy, he answered somewhat arrogantly: “If I
go, who stays? and if I stay, who goes?” According to Dino
Compagni, Boniface sent two of the Florentines—Maso Minerbetti
and Corazza da Signa—back to Florence to demand submission to
his will, but detained Dante at his court. The fact of Dante taking part
in such an embassy is confirmed by the author of the Ottimo
Commento, as also by an anonymous commentator on the canzone
of the Tre donne, and, though seriously questioned by many Dante
scholars, it is now generally accepted as historical. The other two
ambassadors returned almost simultaneously with the arrival of the
French prince. Yielding to necessity and trusting to his solemn oath,
the Signoria, in a parliament held in S. Maria Novella, gave Charles
authority to pacify the city; which he set about doing by restoring the
Neri to power. Corso Donati with his allies entered Florence in arms,
to plunder and massacre at their pleasure, the last Signoria of the
Bianchi being compelled to resign on November 7th (cf. Purg. vi.
143, 144). A second effort by the Cardinal Matteo from the Pope to
reconcile the two factions was resisted by Charles and the Neri; and
the work of proscription began. The new Podestà, Cante de’ Gabrielli
da Gubbio, passed sentence after sentence against the ruined
Bianchi. Finally, at the beginning of April, their chiefs were betrayed
into a real or pretended conspiracy against Charles, and driven out
with their followers and adherents, both nobles and burghers, six
hundred in number; their houses were destroyed, and their goods
confiscated, themselves sentenced as rebels. On April 4th, 1302,
Charles left Florence, covered with disgrace and full of plunder,
leaving the government entirely in the hands of the Neri. “Having
cast forth the greatest part of the flowers from thy bosom, O
Florence,” writes Dante in the De Vulgari Eloquentia, “the second
Totila went fruitlessly to Sicily” (V. E. ii. 6).
Sentences against Dante.—The first sentence against Dante is
dated January 27th, 1302, and includes four other names.
Gherardino Diedati, formerly Prior, is accused of taking bribes for the
release of a prisoner, and has not appeared when summoned.
Palmieri Altoviti (who had taken the lead in putting down the
conspiracy hatched in Santa Trinita), Dante Alighieri, Lippo Becchi
(one of the denouncers of Boniface’s agents in 1300), and
Orlanduccio Orlandi are accused of “barratry,” fraud and corrupt
practices, unlawful gains and extortions and the like, in office and out
of office; of having corruptly and fraudulently used the money and
resources of the Commune against the Supreme Pontiff, and to
resist the coming of Messer Carlo, or against the pacific state of
Florence and the Guelf Party; of having caused the expulsion of the
Neri from Pistoia, and severed that city from Florence and the
Church. Since they have contumaciously absented themselves,
when summoned to appear before the Podestà’s court, they are held
to have confessed their guilt, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine and
restore what they have extorted. If not paid in three days, all their
goods shall be confiscated; even if they pay, they are exiled for two
years and perpetually excluded as falsifiers and barrators, tamquam
falsarii et barattarii, from holding any office or benefice under the
Commune of Florence. On March 10th, a further sentence
condemns these five with ten others to be burned to death, if any of
them at any time shall come into the power of the Commune. In this
latter sentence there is no mention of any political offence, but only
of malversation and contumacy. None of Dante’s six colleagues in
the Signoria are included in either sentence; but in the second
appear the names of Lapo Salterelli, who had headed the opposition
to Boniface in the spring of 1300, but whom the poet judges sternly
(cf. Par. xv. 128), and Andrea Gherardini, who had been Florentine
captain at Pistoia.
There can be little doubt that, in spite of the wording of these two
sentences, Dante’s real offence was his opposition to the policy of
Pope Boniface. In the De Volgari Eloquentia (i. 6) he declares that
he is suffering exile unjustly because of his love for Florence. All his
early biographers bear testimony to his absolute innocence of the
charge of malversation and barratry; it has been left to modern
commentators to question it. In the letter to a Florentine friend, Dante
speaks of his innocence manifest to all, innocentia manifesta
quibuslibet, as though in direct answer to the fama publica referente
of the Podestà’s sentence. His likening himself to Hippolytus is a no
less emphatic protestation of innocence: “As Hippolytus departed
from Athens, by reason of his pitiless and treacherous stepmother,
so from Florence needs must thou depart. This is willed, this is
already being sought, and soon will it be done for him who thinks it,
there where Christ is put to sale each day” (Par. xvii. 46-51). “I hold
my exile as an honour”:
L’essilio che m’è dato, on or mi tegno,
he says in his canzone of the Tre donne. Had Dante completed the
Convivio, he would probably have furnished us with a complete
apologia in the fourteenth treatise, where he intended to comment
upon this canzone and discuss Justice. “Justice,” he says in Conv. i.
12, “is so lovable that, as the philosopher says in the fifth of the
Ethics, even her enemies love her, such as thieves and robbers; and
therefore we see that her contrary, which is injustice, is especially
hated (as is treachery, ingratitude, falseness, theft, rapine, deceit,
and their like). The which are such inhuman sins that, to defend
himself from the infamy of these, it is conceded by long usance that
a man may speak of himself, and may declare himself to be faithful
and loyal. Of this virtue I shall speak more fully in the fourteenth
treatise.”
5. First Period of Exile

“Since it was the pleasure of the citizens of the most beautiful and
most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me forth from her
sweet bosom (in which I was born and nourished up to the summit of
my life, and in which, with her goodwill, I desire with all my heart to
rest my wearied mind and to end the time given me), I have gone
through almost all the parts to which this language extends, a
pilgrim, almost a beggar, showing against my will the wound of
fortune, which is wont unjustly to be ofttimes reputed to the
wounded.”
In these words (Conv. i. 3), Dante sums up the earlier portion of
his exile. There are few lines of poetry more noble in pathos, more
dignified in reticence, than those which he has put into the mouth of
Cacciaguida (Par. xvii. 55-60): “Thou shalt leave everything beloved
most dearly, and this is that arrow which the bow of exile first shoots.
Thou shalt test how savours of salt another’s bread, and how hard
the ascending and descending by another’s stairs.”
Early Days of Exile.—The terms of the first sentence against
Dante seem to imply that, if he had returned to Florence, he fled
from the city before January 27th, 1302. We do not know where he
went. Boccaccio, apparently from a misunderstanding of Par. xvii.
70, says Verona; if we suppose it to have been Siena, this would
explain Leonardo Bruni’s account of Dante’s first hearing particulars
of his ruin at the latter city. The sentence against Messer Vieri de’
Cerchi, with the other leaders, is dated April 5th in the terrible Libro
del Chiodo, the black book of the Guelf Party. Arezzo, Forlì, Siena,
Bologna, were the chief resorts of the exiled Bianchi; in Bologna they
seem for some time to have been especially welcome. Dante first
joined them in a meeting held at Gargonza, where they are said by
Bruni to have made the poet one of their twelve councillors, and to
have fixed their headquarters at Arezzo. For a short time Dante
made common cause with them, but found their society extremely
uncongenial (Par. xvii. 61-66). On June 8th, 1302, there is
documentary evidence of his presence with some others in the choir
of San Godenzo at the foot of the Apennines, where the Bianchi
allied with the Ghibelline Ubaldini to make war upon Florence. The
fact of this meeting having been held in Florentine territory and
followed by several cavalry raids induced a fresh sentence in July
from the new Podestà, Gherardino da Gambara of Brescia, in which,
however, Dante is not mentioned.
Failure of the Bianchi.—A heavy blow was inflicted upon the
exiles by the treachery of Carlino di Pazzi (Inf. xxxii. 69), who
surrendered the castle of Piantravigne in Valdarno to the Neri, when
many Bianchi were slain or taken. The cruelty of the Romagnole,
Count Fulcieri da Calboli, the next Podestà of Florence from January
to September 1303, towards such of the unfortunate Bianchi as fell
into his hands has received its meed of infamy in Purg. xiv. 58-66. It
is perhaps noteworthy (as bearing upon the date of Dante’s
separation from his fellow-exiles) that the poet’s name does not
appear among the Bianchi who, under the leadership of the
Ghibelline captain, Scarpetta degli Ordelaffi of Forlì, signed an
agreement with their allies in Bologna on June 18th in this year; but
this may merely imply that he did not go to Bologna. He was possibly
associated with Scarpetta at Forlì about this time. These renewed
attempts to recover the state by force of arms resulted only in the
disastrous defeat of Pulicciano in Mugello.
Death of Boniface VIII.—In this same year Sciarra Colonna and
William of Nogaret, in the name of Philip the Fair, seized Boniface
VIII. at Anagni, and treated the old Pontiff with such barbarity that he
died in a few days, October 11th, 1303. The seizure had been
arranged by the infamous Musciatto Franzesi, who had been
instrumental in the bringing of Charles of Valois to Florence. “I see
the golden lilies enter Alagna,” cries Hugh Capet in the Purgatorio;
“and in His vicar Christ made captive. I see Him mocked a second
time. I see renewed the vinegar and gall, and Him slain between
thieves that live” (Purg. xx. 86-90).
Benedict XI.—In succession to Boniface, Nicholas of Treviso, the
master-general of the Dominicans, a man of humble birth and of
saintly life, was made Pope on October 22nd, 1303, as Benedict XI.
He at once devoted himself to healing the wounds of Italy, and sent
to Florence as peacemaker the Dominican Cardinal, Niccolò da
Prato, who was of Ghibelline origin. The peacemaker arrived in
March 1304, and was received with great honour. Representatives of
the Bianchi and Ghibellines came to the city at his invitation; and,
when May opened, there was an attempt to revive the traditional
festivities which had ended on that fatal May Day of 1300. But a
terrible disaster on the Ponte alla Carraia cast an ominous gloom
over the city, and the Neri treacherously forced the Cardinal to leave.
Hardly had he gone when, on June 10th, fighting broke out in the
streets, and a fire, purposely started by the Neri, devastated
Florence. On July 7th Pope Benedict died, perhaps poisoned, at
Perugia; and, seeing this last hope taken from them, the
irreconcilable portion of the Bianchi, led by Baschiera della Tosa,
aided by the Ghibellines of Tuscany under Tolosato degli Uberti, with
allies from Bologna and Arezzo, made a valiant attempt to surprise
Florence on July 20th from Lastra. Baschiera, with about a thousand
horsemen, captured a part of the suburbs, and drew up his force
near San Marco, “with white standards displayed, and garlands of
olives, with drawn swords, crying peace” (Compagni). Through his
impetuosity and not awaiting the coming of Tolosato, this enterprise
ended in utter disaster, and with its failure the last hopes of the
Bianchi were dashed to the ground.
Separation from the Bianchi and Wanderings in Exile.—After
the defeat of Lastra, Bruni represents Dante as going from Arezzo to
Verona, utterly humbled. We learn from the Paradiso (xvii. 61-69)
that, estranged from his fellow-exiles who had turned violently
against him, he had been compelled to form a party to himself. It is
held by some scholars that he had broken away from them in the
previous year, and that, towards the end of 1303, he had found his
first refuge at Verona in “the courtesy of the great Lombard,”
Bartolommeo della Scala, at whose court he now first saw his young
brother, afterwards famous as Can Grande, and already in boyhood
showing sparks of future greatness (ibid. 70-78). Others would
identify il gran Lombardo with Bartolommeo’s brother and successor,
Albuino della Scala, who ruled in Verona from March 1304 until
October 1311, and associated Can Grande with him as the
commander of his troops. There is no certain documentary evidence
of Dante’s movements between June 1302 and October 1306. It is
not improbable that, in 1304 or 1305, he stayed some time at
Bologna. The first book of the De Vulgari Eloquentia seems in many
respects to bear witness to this stay at Bologna, where the exiles
were still welcome; a certain kindliness towards the Bolognese, very
different from his treatment of them later in the Divina Commedia, is
apparent, together with a peculiar acquaintance with their dialect.
But on March 1st, 1306, the Bolognese made a pact with the Neri,
after which they expelled the Florentine exiles, ordering that no
Bianchi or Ghibellines should be found in Bolognese territory on pain
of death. Dante perhaps went to Padua from Bologna, and, though
the supposed documentary proof of his residence in Padua on
August 27th, 1306, cannot be accepted without reserve, it is
tempting to accept the statement of Benvenuto da Imola that the
poet was entertained by Giotto when the painter was engaged upon
the frescoes of the Madonna dell’ Arena. In October, Dante was in
Lunigiana, a guest of the Malaspina, that honoured race adorned
with the glory of purse and sword (Purg. viii. 121-139). Here,
according to Boccaccio, he recovered from Florence some
manuscript which he had left behind him in his flight; possibly what
he afterwards rewrote as the first seven cantos of the Inferno. On
October 6th he acted as ambassador and nuncio of the Marquis
Franceschino Malaspina in establishing peace between his house
and the Bishop of Luni. This is the last certain trace of Dante’s feet in
Italy for nearly five years. There is a strangely beautiful canzone of
his which may have been written at this time. Love has seized upon
the poet in the midst of the Alps (i.e. Apennines): “In the valley of the
river by whose side thou hast ever power upon me”; “Thou goest, my
mountain song; perchance shalt see Florence, my city, that bars me
out of herself, void of love and nude of pity; if thou dost enter in, go
saying: Now my maker can no more make war upon you; there,
whence I come, such a chain binds him that, even if your cruelty
relax, he has no liberty to return hither.”[6]
Dante had probably, as Bruni tells us, been abstaining from any
hostile action towards Florence, and hoping to be recalled by the
government spontaneously. There are traces of this state of mind in
the Convivio (i. 3). It would be about this time that he wrote in vain
the letter mentioned by Bruni, but now lost, Popule mee quid feci tibi.
Clement V.—Death of Corso Donati.—In the meantime
Clement V., a Gascon, and formerly Archbishop of Bordeaux, had
been elected Pope. “From westward there shall come a lawless
shepherd of uglier deeds” than even Boniface VIII., writes Dante in
Inferno xix. He translated the Papal Court from Rome to Avignon,
and thus in 1305 initiated the Babylonian captivity of the Popes,
which lasted for more than seventy years, “to the great damage of all
Christendom, but especially of Rome” (Platina). Scandalous as was
his subservience to the French king, and utterly unworthy of the
Papacy as he showed himself, it must be admitted that Clement
made serious efforts to relieve the persecuted Bianchi and
Ghibellines—efforts which were cut short by the surrender of Pistoia
in 1306 and the incompetence of his legate, the Cardinal Napoleone
Orsini. In October 1308, Corso Donati came to the violent end
mentioned as a prophecy in Purg. xxiv.; suspected, with good
reason, of aiming at the lordship of Florence with the aid of the
Ghibelline captain, Uguccione della Faggiuola, whose daughter he
had married, he was denounced as a traitor and killed in his flight
from the city.
Dante Possibly at Paris.—Villani tells us that Dante, after exile,
went to the Studio at Bologna, and then to Paris and to many parts
of the world. The visit to Paris is also affirmed by Boccaccio, and it is
not impossible that Dante went thither, between 1307 and 1309, by
way of the Riviera and Provence. A highly improbable legend of his
presence at Oxford is based upon an ambiguous line in a poetical
epistle from Boccaccio to Petrarch and the later testimony of
Giovanni da Serravalle at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
Dante’s stay in Paris has been seriously questioned, and still
remains uncertain. The University of Paris was then the first in the
world in theology and scholastic philosophy. Boccaccio tells us that
the disputations which Dante sustained there were regarded as most

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Art and Business: Perspectives on Art-based Management

Javascript info Ebook Part 3 Additional articles 1st

Javascript info Ebook Part 1 The JavaScript language

Javascript info Ebook Part 2 Browser Document Events

Conversations on art and aesthetics First Edition Maes

The Palgrave Handbook on Art Crime Saskia Hufnagel

Between One Culture Essays on Science and Art Robert

Art on Skin Tattoos Style and the Human Canvas Nancy

Preface and Introduction © 2018 The University of Chicago

isbn-13: 978-0-226-38456-6 (cloth)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992

List of Figures vii

Introduction, by Matthew Jesse Jackson 1

Culture, “I,” “It,” and Favorsky’s Light (“Rhombus”) (1980) 10

Nozdrev and Pliushkin (1981) 24

. . . Everything Is in the Turning of the Pages (1981) 31

The Creator Looks at His Work Twice (1982) 43

Dust, Dirt, and Garbage (Dust as an Object

Discourse on the Perception of the Three Layers, Three Levels,

Epistemological Thirst (1982) 54

Not Everyone Will Be Taken into the Future (1983) 57

New Rhombus (1983) 60

Without Culture (1983) 63

Park of Culture (1984) 66

From The 1960s and the 1970s: Notes on Unofﬁcial

The Artist-Character (1985) 139

From An Apologia for Personalism in the Art of the 1960s:

Edge, Border, Crack (1986) 209

Art Has No Unloved Children (1987) 218

How I Became a Character Myself (1989) 226

A Story about a “Culturally Relocated” Individual (1994) 230

From On “Total” Installation (1995) 246

Text as the Foundation of Visual Expression (1995) 253

On Risk (1997) 255

On Cézannism (1997) 257

The Spirit of Music (1997) 260

Public Projects, or the Spirit of a Place (2001) 263

Why Was It Necessary to Use the “Character” Device for the

Nikolai Petrovich (Commentary) (2008) 273

From Catalog (2009) 276

Translation Credits 357

All works by Ilya Kabakov, unless noted otherwise

This book encompasses a broad cross-section of Ilya Kabakov’s writings on

matthew jesse jackson

2. Kabakov describes conceptualism as “a phenomenon that was at its heart, discursive,

It is these four centers that, in one way or another, in various distillations, in

2. Evgeny Shiffers (1934 – 1997), a Moscow-based writer, philosopher, theologian, theater

3. After the Death of Beatrice

Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,

4. Dante’s Political Life

L’essilio che m’è dato, on or mi tegno,

5. First Period of Exile

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