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(E-E) Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: exhibitions >> • Leningrad 80s >>
Kulturhuset's New Artists project 1987-1988
De Nya från Leningrad / The New from Leningrad, |
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Part One: Outlining the festival project |
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Chapter 1. The four phases of the Kulturhuset festival project |
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Chapter 2. Stockholm’s invitation of Leningrad artists and musicians |
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Part Two: Photo documentation and selection of artworks |
Chapter 5. Colour pictures in Sara Åkerrén’s photo album Two collections of colour pictures help to understand the selection of works documented in the Xerox copies: Sara Åkerrén’s photo album with colour prints of works by Leningrad artists, and slides and colour prints in the Kulturhuset archive. Surprisingly, Sara Åkerrén’s pictures are even closer to the Xerox copy selection than those from the Kulturhuset archive, and it makes sense to start with these.
A page from S. Åkerrén's photo album of Leningrad artists Sara Åkerrén’s photo album is a unique document presenting about two hundred paper prints with works by Leningrad artists, in the main members of the New Artists group. The last pictures are from around 1990. Most pictures are numbered and provided with the name of the artist, and some are also supplied with the title of the respective work. About half of the pictures are related to the Xerox copy selection. They are, in the main, in the first half of the album, more precisely, in the section up to number ninety-four. I will call this section “preselection album pictures”, because it is very likely that these roughly one hundred pictures constitute a large part of the material used for the Kulturhuset photocopy selection. Since in Sara Åkerrén’s archive there are no negatives or slides of these pictures, it seems plausible that Sara received the paper prints from the person who shot the pictures.
A page from S. Åkerrén's photo album of Leningrad artists Of these “preselection album pictures”, about forty can be directly recognised in the black and white copies. This actually helps to distinguish certain features in the paintings that cannot be recognised in the photocopies. Of the remaining sixty or so “preselection album pictures”, most document works by the same nine artists taken at the same artists’ studios, as well as at the TEII May 1987 exhibition (including the one by Evgeny Yufit). There are some exceptions of artists who didn’t make it into the selection, in the first place concerning works by New Artist Mikhail Tarutata, who withdrew from the Kulturhuset project when he left to Israel in the summer of 1987. Bob Koshelokhov is another artist in Åkerrén’s album who didn't make it to the selection. One of his paintings was shot at Novikov’s place (another paper print of the same picture is in the Kulturhuset archive). Koshelokhov was not a member of the New Artists group, but Novikov considered him to be the spiritual father of the group. Pictures with works by Taratuta are also in the Kulturhuset archive. It therefore makes sense to believe that all of these pictures were taken for the same purpose and were part of what constituted the basis for Sissi Nilsson’s selection.
Courtesy Sara Åkerrén archive In some cases, the attribution of an artist to a work differs from that in the Xerox copies. I already mentioned that in Åkerren’s album, a collage is attributed to Kotelnikov, not to Ovchinnikov. Likewise, “Telemost / Satellite TV transmission” is attributed to Andrei Krisanov, not to Bugaev. An analysis of the figures’ stylistic features shows that the attribution to Krisanov is indeed correct.
A page from S. Åkerrén's photo album of Leningrad artists
Telemost ("Satellite TV transmission”) On the other hand, a work attributed to Taratuta in Åkerrén’s album and to Novikov in the Xerox copies is actually by Novikov, according to Mikhail Taratuta, who, during our Facebook conversation in 2022 confirmed the authorship of his other works from Åkerrén’s album. Taratuta said that “extended” attribution was common among the New Artists, but the opposite may also be true. Two paintings co-authored by Bugaev, Kotelnikov, and Krisanov in Åkerrén’s album are attributed to Bugaev alone in the Xerox copies. In the collection of the Russian Museum is a portrait of Timur Novikov, attributed to Kozlov, Egelsky and Khazanovich. In Åkerrén’ album, the same painting (which is not in the Xerox copy selection) is attributed to Kirill Khazanovich. The table below illustrates the problem of attribution of some of the works in Sara Åkerrén’s album when compared to the Xerox copy selection and with catalogue references of two New Artists retrospectives, “Brushstroke” at the Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, 2010, and “New Artists” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2012. It might seem that the correct attribution can be easily established when looking not at an archival photography of a work, but at the factual work, when pictures are taken for exhibition catalogues. However, this isn’t always so, because by far not all New Artists works from this period were signed. This applies especially to works by Bugaev and Krisanov, and to some degree, to Kotelnikov.[1]
Concerning the unselected works in Åkerrén’s album, their number per artist varies. One would have expected to find more works by those three artists represented with few works in the Xerox selection: Gutsevich (3), Yufit (2) and Kozlov (2). But this is the case only for Gutsevich. Ten paintings by Gutsevich are in Åkerrén’s album, most probably taken at Gutsevich’s place. Two of them are in the selection. Gutsevich’s joint work with Kotelnikov was not selected, either.
A page from S. Åkerrén's photo album of Leningrad artists Eleven unselected works by Novikov constitute another large portion of the album pictures. Given the fact that with eight works, Novikov, the leader of the New Artists, is only fifth in the list of selected works, I find this quite remarkable. Even when leaving out those four urban landscape paintings from the early 1980s, painted in a rather traditional style, there were still another six that could have been added. The rest of the unselected works is divided on more or less equal terms between the other five artists, not counting those by Taratuta and Krisanov.
A page from S. Åkerrén's photo album of Leningrad artists
[1] In 1991, the Russian Museum received a large number of New Artists works from Sergei Bugaev and Timur Novikov, many created as collaborative works. I would assume that in case of missing signatures, the lists of items were compiled relying on information provided by Bugaev and Novikov.
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