Timur Novikov, artist: biography, creativity, cause of death, memory

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Timur Novikov is a St. Petersburg painter and graphic artist, a great figure in contemporary art, an organizer of exhibitions, and a musician who made a great contribution to art and founded the New Academy of Fine Arts. He lived a long and amazing life, leaving behind a huge legacy. Many do not even suspect how much he did for national culture and, in particular, fine arts.

Childhood

Timur was born on September 24, 1958 in the city of Leningrad. The future artist grew up under the supervision of his mother Galina Vasilievna. The boy never knew his father. During his school years, Timur Petrovich Novikov began to go to a drawing circle, which was organized at the House of Pioneers.

In 1967, at the age of 9, he exhibited his work at his first children's drawing art exhibition in New Delhi. A year later, he moves to Novaya Zemlya, but after 4 years the family returns to their native Leningrad. Later, the artist recalled that the nature of the Far North hadgreat influence on him. And this was reflected in his work and perception of the surrounding space.

First creative steps

In 1973 he became a member of the Club of Young Art Critics, organized at the Russian Museum of St. Petersburg. Soon Timur enters a technical school, where he studies the technology of varnishes and paints. In 1975, he leaves the walls of the institution of his own free will.

Being a staunch pacifist, Timur refuses the army. Instead, in 1976 he joined the Young Art Lovers' Club at the Hermitage. During this period, Novikov wrote the first pictures. He works not only alone, but also in collaboration with other creators.

So, he teams up with like-minded Oleg Kotelnikov and forms the Monsters ensemble.

In 1977, Timur Novikov joined the avant-garde group "Chronicle", formed by Boris Koshelokhov. As a member of the group, Novikov took part in his first apartment exhibition.

Independent development

In 1978 the artist Timur Novikov brings to life his debut curatorial project. He rents premises from the closed church of the Shestakovskaya Mother of God, where he equips workshops. Already on June 2, he curates his own apartment exhibition. It featured both works by young artists of that time and paintings by Timur Novikov.

Two years later, the artist reunites with his old friend to open an apartment exhibition together. Gallery "Assa" Timur Novikov and Oleg Kotelnikov was located on the street. Voinova, 24. Shewas located in a communal apartment rented by the artists, but by 1987 the apartment building ceased to exist.

Later, Timur meets the artist Maria Sinyakova-Urechina in Moscow. Common interests and strong friendship rallied them. Subsequently, Maria gave Timur the right to be called the Chairman of the globe - this nickname was firmly entrenched in narrow circles.

In 1981, Timur joins the Union of Unofficial Artists of Leningrad. A year later, at the first exhibition of the club in the Palace of Culture. Kirov, together with Ivan Sotnikov, a contemporary artist, he arranges a scandalous action: he exhibits a plywood shield with a hole. In 2014, the film "Zero Object" about Timur Novikov was released - this bright name is consonant with the name of the very action that brought fame to the artist.

New Artists

But Timur did not stop at this success. In 1982, he formed the New Artists group, whose members were Oleg Kotelnikov, Georgy Guryanov, Ivan Sotnikov, Evgeny Kozlov and Kirill Khazanovich. The style of this artistic group was in tune with such Western movements as the "New Wild" from Germany, as well as "Transavant-garde" from Italy, the French "Figuracion Libre" and "East Village" from the USA.

“New Artists” adhered to such phenomena in art as “new romanticism”, “new figurativeness”, “new wave”. Timur Novikov and his associates sought to bring something new to the visual arts, to expand the boundaries of generally accepted standards.

1985 - the year of the formation of the New Academy of All Arts. In the name of Timuruses the word “everything” borrowed from the futurists, which makes a reference to the Russian avant-garde. Thus, the new association began to associate itself with this trend, whose prominent representatives were Novikov's girlfriend Maria Minyakova-Urechina, as well as Maria Spendiarova and Tatyana Glebova, who, by the way, wrote an excellent portrait of Timur Novikov. But the "New Artists" stood somewhat apart from the pure avant-garde: they were distinguished, first of all, by the absence of a serious theoretical base.

In addition to the founders of this association, it also included: Evgeny Yufit, Viktor Cherkasov, Vadim Ovchinnikov, Sergey Bugaev, Inal Savchenkov, Oleg Maslov, Andrey Medvedev, Andrey Krisanov, Vladislav Kutsevich, Oleg Maslov and the famous Viktor Tsoi.

"New Artists" quickly became popular and was on everyone's lips. In addition, the group held joint promotions with legendary Western artists such as John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.

Films and music

The artist became famous not only thanks to exhibitions. Timur Novikov was also fond of music, and had some success in this area. In 1983, he created the avant-garde group New Composers. At the same time, Novikov collaborated with Sergei Kuryokhin's orchestra, called Popular Mechanics.

And since 1985, Timur has been working with a rock club as an organizer of concerts of the still very young Kino group. And Novikov also took on the role of a graphic designer, who created a unique atmosphere of performances. In 1987he even invited the talented fashion designer Konstantin Goncharov to work on the stage images of the members of the group, which included Tsoi, Kasparyan and Guryanov. Thus, Novikov worked hard on the image of "Kino", leaving his own imprint on it, distinguished by exquisite taste and understanding of the psychology of the viewer.

At about the same time, Novikov also worked with the New Artists: they staged performances of Anna Karenina, The Shooting Skier, The Idiot and The Ballet of the Three Lovebirds based on Daniil Kharms with music by V. Verichev and V. Alakhova. The group also dabbled in cinema. They worked in such directions as "necrorealism" and "parallel cinema" - many experiments turned out to be extremely successful and curious.

The creative groups led by Timur Novikov were generally very fertile and versatile: the members also engaged in music and literature, "new criticism" and even invented new musical instruments, such as, for example, the iron.

In 1987, Timur takes part in the creation of the film "Assa", acting in it and participating as a production designer. Collaborating with director Sergei Solovyov, he received the first ever art design award in Soviet cinema.

Timur Novikov, in general, became one of the first media artists in the Soviet Union, becoming the ideologist of Pirate Television, and later, in 1999, the director of such famous films as The Nightmare of Modernism and The Golden Section ". In addition, Novikov took part in the filming of the film "Two Captains-2", shot by SergeiDebizhev in 1992.

Timur was not a step behind his time: he took part in the creation of the rave and the club movement, in such a well-known place as Fontanka-145. And he also became one of the founders of the Gagarin Party at VDNKh, the first of which took place in 1991.

Free University

In the winter of 1988, the Free University was opened, where Timur Novikov became a teacher, as well as Boris Yukhananov and Sergey Kuryokhin. This institution was located in the Central lecture hall of the association "Knowledge". At one of the meetings of the Free University, Novikov announced that he was taking a "course on the classics", thus proclaiming neo-academism as a continuation of the so-called technicism of art.

Timur made attempts to apply new forms in the creation of classical in content and academic in form of art. The artist called academism the ability to use various techniques of artistic craft in his work, while neoacademism, in his opinion, is a transformed form of art, including both the use of traditional methods and interspersed with new technologies and modern content.

In 1990, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg hosted the exhibition "Territory of Art", where he exhibited his panel "New York at Night". Later, together with Dunya Smirnova, he organized an exhibition together with the Youth and Beauty in Art conference, in which he raised the eternal themes of aesthetics, death and immortality, close to every person. Together with Sergei Bugaev, who bore the nickname Africa, as well as Irena Kuksenaite, Viktor Mazin and Olesya Turkina, hefounded the Cabinet magazine, in which artists covered topics important for the art of that time, raising new questions about creativity.

As Novikov grew older, he became more and more concerned about political topics. Having a delicate spiritual nature, Timur was imbued with high-profile world events and created two political installations dedicated to the American-Iraqi war: "The shelling of Baghdad" and "Oil spill in the Persian Gulf." This is not just creativity, but a real dialogue with society, politics and the world - this is a message, a cry from the soul about the unbearable horror of war.

Palace Bridge

In the summer of 1990, Timur and his colleagues try their hand at the First Exhibition on the Palace Bridge, which was organized by Ivan Movsesyan. The exhibition vividly reflected the idea that artists strive for action: now they want to create things that are not easy, they want to speak, to communicate their own thoughts to the world. The participants of the event created works specifically for this exposition, in accordance with the proposed urban space. The works presented at this event have been preserved in the collection of the Palace Bridge Museum.

A year later, Novikov takes part in the Second such exhibition, where he demonstrates the monumental panel "Wrestlers". Movsesyan himself, the organizer of the exhibition, Guryanov, Tuzov, Egelsky and Olga Komarova also took part in the exhibition.

Neoclassical

In his work, Novikov often resorted to neoclassical figurativeness, deliberately intensifying textural and decorative effects. The artist didreferences to the art of the 80s, elegantly emphasizing the ideas of that time. In the new period, the classic views of the New Academy easily coexisted with the colorful life of people in the 90s.

In the late 80s, Novikov abandoned painting forever. Being influenced by the aesthetic views of his friend, fashion designer and artist Konstantin Goncharov, he moved away from "expressive drawing" to a completely new technique for himself - textile collage. Timur used minimalistic stencils, simplifying his work as much as possible, reducing them to dividing a plane and placing a small symbol on it. This technique made his work more abstract and at the same time deep. Departing from academic precision, Novikov turned to intuitive imagery, which echoed the modern views on the art of that time.

The Horizons series by Timur Novikov, created during this period, was a resounding success and wide publicity. Echoes of these ideas have now been embodied in the present: the motifs of Novikov's works are now used in the design of clothing, such as, for example, sweatshirts.

New ideas

In 1991, Timur Novikov held an exhibition "Neocademism" in the Russian Museum. All the same Goncharov, Guryanov, Bugaev and Yegelsky took part in the exhibition. Timur exhibited his work "Narcissus", as well as "Apollo trampling the red square". Goncharov, on the other hand, showed the audience "Knight's Cloaks", which look like spacious cloaks made of velvety material, decorated with extravagant inserts from postcards.

Starting from that time, Novikov began to actively usephotographs and postcards with reproductions of classical painting. And also after this exhibition, Timur began to resort to the images of Greek deities, which, in his opinion, symbolized the "living power of creativity." Aphrodite, Apollo, Eros began to appear on his works. A whole series of paintings was devoted to the history of Cupid and Psyche.

In the artist's work, great aesthetes with a difficult fate began to flicker - Oscar Wilde, Ludwig of Bavaria. In their honor, separate exhibitions "On Beauty", "Secret Cult", "Regina", "Ludwig II of Bavaria and Swan Lake", "Swan Song of German Romanticism" were even held.

NAII

By 1993, neo-academists united in the Institute of the "New Academy of Fine Arts". It included Novikov himself, as well as Medvedev, Guryanov, Tuzv and Yegelsky, who received the titles of honorary professors. NAII occupied premises in the now legendary place at Pushkinskaya, 10.

There were also exhibitions of professors - Olga Tobreluts (nee Komarova), Geryanov, Bella Matveeva, as well as Maslov, Goncharov, Egelsky and Kuznetsov. Also, demonstrations of works here were organized by NAII students Yegor Ostrov and Stanislav Makarov.

By 1995, Timur Novikov moved to Berlin, where he did not stop his creative activity. He organized the exhibition "The Decline of German Romanticism", which also had the title "Architecture in the Third Reich". It was based on designs for monuments on the frontiers of the Third Reich. However, the scandalous exhibition was closed at the behest of censorship.

In 1997Timur has already returned to Russia and continued his active work. He arranged a celebration of neo-academism in the Pavlovsk Palace. Music for the event was performed by composer and musician Brian Eno.

At the same time, the artist formed the NAII classrooms in the Mikhailovsky Castle. And he also took part in the creation of the European Society of Classical Aesthetics with the participation of Professor Alexander Zaitsev. Thus, Timur did not forget about his offspring, regularly making efforts to develop it.

Late activity

In 1998, Timur became the founder of the "Institute of the History of Modern Art" and the organization "Artistic Will", which advocated the preservation of the latest artistic culture. Together with Andrei Khlobystin, he founded the newspaper Khudozhestvennaya Volya and the magazine Susanin.

During this period, the artist changed his views towards conservatism, arguing that the classics are a form of glorifying Russian statehood. Thus, he announced the need to strengthen the reputation of St. Petersburg as a cultural capital, while not competing with international centers of contemporary art, such as New York or London. In the 90s, Novikov was engaged mainly in publishing activities.

May 23, 1998 at the 7th fort of Kronstadt NAII Timur together with the "Artistic Will" held an artistic action of memory. In an empty fort, they staged a "Burning of Vanities" in honor of the 500th anniversary of the execution of Savonarola in Florence's Piazza Signoria. During the action, painters burned their paintings.

Recent years

During a trip to America in 1997, the artistgot sick. The disease led to loss of vision. Despite this serious illness, he continued to lead the New Academy, as well as give lectures at St. Petersburg State University and other major educational institutions in the city. In addition, Timur was the host of the New Academy program on the Port FM radio station, which popularizes classical music. He donated part of his art collection to the Russian Museum and the Hermitage.

In 2001, Timur participated in the exhibition "Between Earth and Sky", dedicated to neoclassical trends in contemporary art, which was held in Belgium, Ostend.

Death

At one time, many contemporaries wondered why Timur Novikov died. This active, active, creative person did not risk his life in vain, did not burn through the years, and did not even give up after he was completely blind. But the great artist suddenly died of banal pneumonia on May 23, 2003. Novikov was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in his native St. Petersburg.