Moscow Conceptualism's Role in Contemporary Art History

Peter Osborne's essay for Afterall Journal 42 examines the historiographical tensions within 'Moscow Conceptualism' as a category. He contrasts Margarita Tupitsyn's view that Moscow conceptualists 'fit successfully' into Western discourses with Boris Groys's assertion that 'Moscow' outweighs Western terms. Osborne argues neither considers the critical transformation of conceptual art by the term 'Moscow', which mediates the shift from conceptual art to contemporary art. He traces the suppressed 'Romantic' middle term in Groys's 1979 essay 'Moscow Romantic Conceptualism', later discarded for a geopolitical label. The essay explores the retroactive 'Kabakov effect'—Ilya Kabakov's installation practice overdetermining the meaning of Moscow Conceptualism. Osborne links the dematerialization thesis to El Lissitzky's 1926 essay, suggesting a Soviet genealogy for conceptual art. He discusses the pluralization of conceptualisms in the 1990s, the role of apartment art (APTART) in Moscow, and Kabakov's collaborative work with Joseph Kosuth, 'The Corridor of Two Banalities' (1994), which staged the dialectic between New York and Moscow conceptual art. The essay concludes that the fictionalization of Soviet history in Kabakov's work risks erasing history, leaving it engulfed by Western contemporary art.