The Swiss collector Maja Oeri wasn’t a woman to be put off by a few spooks or spiders’ webs in the pursuit of great art for the Basel-based Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation. Works by the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov occupy a special place in the foundation’s history. An extract from the collector’s memoir about first meeting the artist in Moscow in 1985 can be found in the magazine accompanying an exhibition of highlights of the collection at Basel’s Schaulager (until 31 January 2016). The collector recalled finding the artist in a dusty, cobweb-filled attic behind a door that was always locked. “This was where Kabakov worked on his projects, always in danger of being discovered and denounced,” by other occupants of the apartment block. Not officially allowed to work as an artist, he played a record noisily on a gramophone during their meeting. “These walls have ears!”, he explained. She confessed to having no idea how three large paintings she purchased for the foundation were spirited out of the attic, but remembers an obliging diplomat helped them reach Switzerland among other “household effects”. A free lecture on Kabakov, entitled The Work of Art as a Mythological Space between the Spectator and the Protagonist, took place yesterday, 2 July, at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, under very different circumstances.
