At the end of the millennium, it ha

At the end of the millennium, it has become fashionable to speak about the "end of history" and the "end of art," to say nothing about the end of the world. Boris Groys has commented that Soviet civilization was the first modern civilization whose death we have witnessed, and there are more to come. (1) While the world might end, the art world does not have to. Arthur Danto suggests that we live in the era of the end of art, which is not at all bad for the artists. (2) It is simply the end of the Hegelian narrative of art history, which culminates in the self-reflexivity and diversity of art, liberated from a teleological master narrative. Kabakov's work fits in well with the eschatological fashions of the end of the millennium. Yet it does not quite represent them. For Kabakov, art remains an inevitable, existential need and a therapy for survival. The artist loves the museum not merely as an institution, but as a personal refuge.