The Personal Library of Joseph Backstein. Book collection

The book collection comprises publications from Joseph Bakstein’s personal library, offering a comprehensive and in-depth view of twentieth and twenty-first centuries contemporary art history.

Photo: Vadim Shtein

Joseph Backstein (1945–2024) was a curator, art critic, sociologist of culture,  founder of ICA Moscow (renamed in 2018, Joseph Backstein Institute of Contemporary Art), and founder and commissioner for the first six Moscow Biennales (2005–2015). As a writer and teacher, he collected books relevant to his work: in art theory (Brian O’Doherty, Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space (Russian edition)); Paul O’Neil, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (Russian edition), catalogues of exhibitions and histories of contemporary art, particularly nonconformism of the 1970s and 1980s and the circle of Moscow Conceptualists (Ekaterina Bobrinskaya, Chuzhie. Neoficial`noe iskusstvo: mify`, strategii, koncepcii [Aliens: non-official art: myths, strategies, concepts] (in Russian); Nonkonformizm. Russkoe i sovetskoe iskusstvo 1958–1995 [Nonconformism. Russian and Soviet art 1958–1995] (in Russian)), and philosophy related to contemporary art (Arthur Danto, After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History; Noёl Carroll, Philosophy of Art: A Contemporary Introduction).  

Author

Katy Deepwell, Joseph Backstein’s widow and wife of 23 years, is an academic and art critic based in London.

He has been described as “the engine of contemporary art” in Moscow (1987–2016) and as a cultural diplomat for contemporary art, given the numerous Russian art exhibitions he organised abroad (Body and the East: From the 1960s to the Present; curated by_vienna: by east south west) combined with international exhibitions he organised in Moscow. He began working as a curator of conceptual art projects at the Avant-Garde Club (1987–1990), organising actions and events across Moscow: Steamship-87, an action on a cruising boat (1987); art shows in Sandunovskie baths (1988) and Butyrskaya prison (1992). This peripatetic approach—using unusual venues to activate the city as a space for contemporary art—continued with the Moscow Biennale. The event was held first in 2005 in the former Lenin Museum (1-ya Moskovskaya biennale sovremennogo iskusstva [1st Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art 2005. Dialectics of hope] (in Russian); then on the 22nd and 23rd floors of the newly built Federation tower (2007); then in the first home of Garage Museum (now the Jewish Museum) (2009), Melnikov’s famous bus garage (3-ya Moskovskaya biennale sovremennogo iskusstva. Protiv isklyucheniya [3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Against exclusion] (in Russian)); then Art Play (2011) (4-ya Moskovskaya biennale sovremennogo iskusstva. Perepisy`vaya miry` [4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Rewriting worlds] (in Russian)), Manege (2013), and finally at VDNKh (2015). Special projects within the Biennale brought solo exhibitions by international artists to Moscow—including Luc Boltanski, Antony Gormley, and Yoko Ono—and fostered collaborations with many international curators (Catalogues of special projects of the 1st, 3rd and 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art).

This small collection represents one interesting feature of his book collecting: the second copy. These second copies offer a condensed picture of his interests in particular books for teaching or research purposes. He bought or was given 2 copies of many books: often, one for his home and one for the ICA Moscow—for his students (Russia! Nine Hundred Years of Masterpieces and Master Collections signed by Zelfira Tregulova; Ekaterina Andreeva Postmodernizm: iskusstvo vtoroj poloviny` XX — nachala XXI veka [Postmodernism: the art of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century] (in Russian), signed by author). Among his favourite books were Walter Benjamin’s Moscow Diaries (of which he had 4 copies in Russian!) and Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida (the library has been given Barthe’s S/Z). He collected many copies of Boris Groys’ books (Politika poe`tiki [Politics of poetics] (in Russian), Utopiya i obmen [Utopia and exchange]) and loved experimental poetry, including that of another friend, Dmitri Prigov. He was a close friend of Kabakov (Ilya Kabakov: Public Projects or the Spirit of a Place), Monastrysky (Ekaterina Degot, Andrej Monasty`rskij [Andrey Monastyrsky](in Russian)), Nakhova (interview in n. paradoxa. international feminist art journal. volume 28), Makarevich and Elagina, all of whom took part in Collective Actions (Kollektivny`e dejstviya. Poezdki za gorod [Collective actions. Trips out of town] (in Russian)) and a friend since childhood of Komar and Melamid, whose work he curated in Venice (1999) and in Moscow (2019) (Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art). He wrote for Moscow Art Magazine four times, but he also read many copies. He collaborated with its chief editor, Viktor Misiano, on a video art exhibition, On the Way to the Screen in 2001. From the late 1990s he curated several video and installation exhibitions, as this medium emerged as a norm in contemporary art. In 2008, at Garage, he organised a major Kabakov installation An Alternative History of Art. Joseph travelled extensively after 1988 and his book collection reflects his visits to other countries and large international biennales around the world, like Documenta in Kassel (documenta X).

As a writer, he also had many copies of his own works and there are copies of some of his articles, books and catalogues. He wrote many times about links across different generations of avant garde artists from the historical avant garde (1920s) (Russkij futurizm: teoriya, praktika, kritika, vospominaniya [Russian futurism: theory, practice, criticism, memories]; Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia), to Moscow non-conformists in 1970s (Conrad Atkinson, Andrey Monastyrsky, Particular Histories) to younger artists emerging in the present day (Practice for Everyday Life: Young Artists from Russia). Dialogues and conversations were important elements in his writing (Judgment Day, ili Problema e`steticheskogo suzhdeniya: Materialy` nauchnoj konferencii [Judgment Day, or the problem of aesthetic judgment: Proceedings of a scientific conference] (in Russian)). There are also copies of catalogues from several ICA student exhibitions (Vremya, vpered? [Time, forward?]; Snaruzhi/Na xolode [Out/In the cold] (in Russian); Dokumenty o sotrudnichestve mezhdu xudozhestvennoj shkoloj “Valand” (Shveciya) i Centrom Sovremennogo Iskusstva v Moskve [Documents on cooperation between the Valand Art School (Sweden) and the сenter for сontemporary art in Moscow] (in Russian)).

The majority of his library (around 4,000 books, catalogues and magazines) is now housed at the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow, whilst his archive of papers and other media is held at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Books from the ICA’s former premises on Sretensky Boulevard, in Kabakov’s old studio (1988–2018), are now part of Garage’s collection.

The official website about Joseph Backstein’s life and work. These books were donated to GES-2 by his widow, Katy Deepwell, a London-based art critic.