Chapter 4. From picture to painting: portraits of Timur Novikov and other New Artists

When we accept certain parallels between Kozlov’s Atlas of Ontology and Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas as atlases based on intuitive logic, it may not seem obvious to extent those parallels to Kozlov’s pictures, as well – more exactly, to the contact sheets of his 35 mm black and white negatives, if we consider them as a variety of panels displaying a number of images. Photographs are commonly seen as documents possessing different degrees of artistic value, and contact sheets as simply assembling such documents.

We must, though, bear in mind that the application of intuitive logic is only one of two fundamental aspects characterising both atlases – the one creating their topographies. The other aspect refers to the elements of their respective topographies; these elements hold the potential of undergoing indeterminate transformation, as explained in the previous chapter.

Both aspects are present in the artist’s photographs, and the second, ontological aspect is in fact particularly significant with respect to Evgenij Kozlov’s portraits and mulitfigure compositions based on his photographs. In this chapter, we will follow some of those images along their internal migration through Kozlov’s works – their travelling routes, or Wanderstraßen, in Warburg’s terminology. I will restrict myself to the period lasting up to 1991, mainly because Kozlov stopped using black and white films that year, and, turning to colour photography, no longer developed his films himself. Yet developing his own films enabled him to apply a special scratching technique that became important in his follow-up works, as the example of the AR film from 1985 will show. Having said that, colour photography still had an impact on his drawings and paintings, and even those black and white pictures from the 1980s played a certain role in the 1990s and later. Besides, the same goes for my own pictures: after Evgenij and I meet in 1990, they became source images for his works and are particularly prominent in his photo collage series from 2014/2015 E-E-Classic (НЛО-UFO), dedicated to the independent art scene in Leningrad / St. Petersburg in the 1980s and 1990.[1]

In the 1980s, Kozlov used his pictures for his painted photo-collages, LP-covers, multi-figure portraits and other works of visual art, integrating them into his artistic practise in a variety of ways I first described in my article from 2010 Evgenij Kozlov’s Photographs in his art of the 1980s.[2] Referring to his portraits, I wrote:

Photography came to him as naturally as painting, and it is in a sense true that the camera had the same function for him as the sketchbook for the artists of the previous centuries: it helped him to preserve for future interpretation the moment that reveals the person’s inner being, which, in his opinion, is the very essence of art.

In this way, the artist created, between 1978 and 1991, some six thousand black and white pictures all related to his personal life, mostly of friends and acquaintances – a vast body of images for his further work. Unlike Warhol, who through his pop-culture choice of celebrities – Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, or Mao Dse-Dung – invited the viewer to identify a brand and thus created his own brand, Kozlov followed his personal preferences, although some of those he portrayed have actually become celebrities in Russia, especially Viktor Tsoy and Georgy Guryanov.

Technically seen, Kozlov and Warhol were equally innovative, but Kozlov’s technique is more complex, as he often transformed an image through successive stages, each leading to a specific work. His emblematic Portrait of Timur Novikov with Arms Consisting of Bones from 1988 (The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg) is a perfect example of such a four-stages process: from a photograph (a; 1985) to a painted vintage print (b; undated) to a work on paper (c; 1986) and, finally, to a work on canvas (d; 1988).

Before looking at Kozlov’s approach in some detail, I should explain that when speaking about the selection of a particular person for a portrait, the phrase “Kozlov followed his personal preferences” must be understood in a literal sense. His choice of a picture with Timur Novikov is not fundamentally different from his choice of the strawberries discussed in the previous chapter: both are objects inspiring him. In other words, there is a certain degree of objectivity in his approach towards portraiture. This might appear strange, but while it is true that Kozlov generously gave away his vintage prints to those appearing in the pictures, he didn’t create his portraits to please his friends with a memory.

The original picture with Timur Novikov (a) shows a group of three people: left of Novikov we see Uliana Tseytlina and Georgy Guryanov; Kozlov took the picture during the New Theatre performance The Ballet of the Three Inseparable Ones (after Daniil Charms), where he shot two films, classified in my nomenclature as BD and BE, with a total of sixty-seven pictures. The picture with Novikov is BD34.

a)		b)
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Two vintage prints from the same negative, E-E-pho-BD34, approx. 9 x 12.5 cm each. From left to right: Ulyana Tseytlina, Georgy Guryanov, and Timur Novikov. Kozlov took this picture during a New Artists' ("New Theatre”) performance, The Ballet of the Three Inseparable Ones (after Daniil Charms), 1985. See contact sheet below. The picture on the right is an undated print with Novikov's head painted.
c)		d)
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Portrait of Timur Novikov Mixed media on paper. 63 x 49 cm cm, 1986. The Museum Muzeum Sztuki Collection, Lodz.		(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov Портрет Тимура Новикова с костяными руками Portrait of Timur Novikov with Arms Consisting of Bones. Mixed media on canvas, 103 x 94 cm, 1988. more >> The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
		Left: (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Ulyana Tseytlina and Georgy Guryanov during the performance The Ballet of the Three Inseparable Ones (after Daniil Charms), 1985. E-E-pho-BD55, 35 mm СВЕМА (Svema) negative film

in a vintage print of the picture (b), he painted Novikov’s face with a marker, giving it a clownesque appearance. A portrait on paper (c) sees Novikov dressed in a tuxedo, adapted from Guryanov's jacket – together with Guryanov's bow tie – from BD55. Kozlov set the figure before a blue background applied with spray and highlighted the shape of the head with yellow elements, but didn’t use any of the features from the painted face of the vintage print (b). Instead, several features from the painted vintage print (b) – the circle and shades around the eyes and the dotted nose – appear in the work on canvas (d), where the face is painted white: Novikov is now wearing the mask of a magician. His tuxedo is from (c), but the background is again different: Novikov is set inside a gazebo offering a view towards an antique landscape. It is, however, the skeleton arms that constitute the principle addition in (d) – they gave the painting its title. Novikov holds them with his left hand in front of his body.

The example shows that Kozlov did not necessarily develop a subject matter in a linear way through all stages. The painted photograph (b) and the portrait on paper (c) are not directly related to each other, although features from both figure in the painting on canvas (d). If we draw a scheme, we obtain one string a – b – d, and another one a – c – d. In fact, Kozlov possibly painted the photograph (b) after he painted the portrait on paper (c). What is important here is that (d) not only uses features from both strings, but adds a number of new ones – of which skeleton arms, gazebo, and landscape are only the most striking – thereby achieving a profound transformation of the original motif without negating its origin.

Quite often, we can observe yet another – “early” – stage, as the artist would work on a negative while processing the film, scratching into the still wet emulsion, with a scalpel or a sharp pencil, lines or hatches that would appear in the print as black lines with occasional white shadows. With the help of such lines lines, he provided selected figures and objects with new contours and structures, or completed them with additional elements. As in his drawings, these hatches also function as spatial motion lines, agitrons (indicating vibration) and emanate (visualising emotion when applied to characters) – techniques adapted from sequential art.

The thirty-three pictures of the AR film Kozlov took in 1985, during a private performance with Timur Novikov, Igor Verichev, Valery Alakhov and Johann, a Dutch friend, are a perfect example of the transformation of images at such an early stage: Of those thirty-three AR negatives, twenty-five display scratched patterns or even figures, some of them quite elaborate.

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Untitled. (Timur Novikov with his ghostly alter ego) 25.3 x 17.2 cm, photo print on AGFA paper, 2000, printed from a 35mm black and white scratched negative from the AR-film, 1985 (E-E-pho-AR35).		(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Painted collage, 1986, from the B(L)ack art series, based on a vintage print of E-E-pho-AR35 (see left). Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies Special Collection, Harvard University more >> E-E- archival number: E-E-186098

AR35 is a picture with Timur Novikov seen in profile, to whom Kozlov added another figure, also seen in profile but mirrored, like a doppelgänger – a ghostly alter ego. Considering that the figure’s height is no more than 25 mm, its expressiveness and subtlety are quite amazing, as is the delicacy of the lines defining the bones of hips, knees and legs in the figure of Novikov.

Consequently, the design of those hatches appears in the contact print which, in this way, represents the third stage of a creative process of transformation (first stage: selecting / creating the motif for the picture; second stage: selecting and transforming a picture with scratching; third stage: printing the contact sheet).

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Untitled. (Timur on Horseback) 25.3 x 17.2 cm, photo print on AGFA paper, 2000, printed from a 35mm black and white scratched negative from the AR-film, 1985 (E-E-pho-AR42).		(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov Тимур на Коне / Timur on Horseback Partial view of (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov's painting from 1985 , reproduced on the catalogue cover of "De Nya fran Leningrad" (The New from Leningrad), Kulturhuset, Stockholm, 27.8. - 25.9. 1988; graphic design: Slow Fox / Johan von Friedrichs, offset print, 31 x 24 cm, 1988. more >>

Sergey Kuryokhin (piano), Yury Kasparan (lead guitarist, Kino) and Viktor Tsoy (frontman of Kino) at the Riga Aeronautical Institute, 15 April 1987. The picture, taken during the performance with DJ Westbam (Berlin), was published on the LP cover of «ПОП МЕХАНИКА featuring WESTBAM LIVE at RIGA (Father and Son)», released in Germany in 1990. Photographer unknown. Painting on the left: (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, Тимур на Коне / Timur on Horseback Size of the painting (approx.) 290 x 106 cm, water emulsion paint (?) on hessian, 1985.

But the AR film is also significant with respect to the number of works derived from it, twelve all in all – one painted photograph, seven painted photo-collages, one drawing on paper and three paintings. Among those three paintings is the emblematic painting Timur on Horseback, the title of which I later used to designate the photo session itself. Timur on Horseback, based on AR42, was displayed on stage during Sergey Kuryokhin's legendary Pop Mekhanika concert with DJ Westbam in Riga, 1987. It was printed on the catalogue cover of the first large international exhibition of the New Artists De Nya från Leningrad, Kulturhuset, Stockholm, 1988, and it was the logotype for The Raw, the Cooked, the Packaged. The Archives of Perestroika Art. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of this painting are unknown, and the same goes for the second large painting from the AR series, Страх Врагам / Terror to the enemy, based on AR44. The third painting, When You Start Feeling Muscles, related to AR11 as well as to a number of other pictures, is now in the collection of the Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg.

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Когда вы начинаете чувствовать мускулы! / When You Start to Feel Muscles! Mixed media on canvas, 118 x 158.8 cm, 1986. The State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Kozlov took this black and white picture of his painted collage, which is based on a vintage print of E-E-pho-AR11 (see right). The whereabouts of this collage are unknown, as is its title. Approx. 30 x 20 cm, 1985 or 1985. A mirrored image of the painted picture appears in the painting Когда вы начинаете чувствовать мускулы! / When You Start to Feel Muscles! (see above)		(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov. Untitled. (Igor Verichev) 25.3 x 17.2 cm, photo print on AGFA paper, 2000, printed from a 35mm black and white negative from the AR-film, 1985 (E-E-pho-AR11).

Following the publication of the 2010 article, I have discussed Kozlov’s artistic pratice in several other articles. One of the texts is in the booklet Portraiture (2016) presents, in the main, portraits that are today in public and private collections. Kozlov and I published Portraiture for the exhibition Notes from the Underground, (Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland, 201)[2], where several of Kozlov’s portraits from his own collection were exhibited – among them his portrait of Timur Novikov from 1986 just discussed, but also those of Georgy Guryanov, the New Composers, Joanna Stingray, Igor Verichev, Oleg Kotelnikov, and Kozlov’s Self-Portrait with Blue Eyes. (see catalogue)