Tatlinʼs Tower, or the project for the Monument to the Third International (1919–20), Honour, H. and Fleming, J. (2009) ''A World History of Art''. 7th edn. London: Laurence King Publishing, p. 819. was a design for a grand monumental building by the Russian artist and architect

Vladimir Tatlin Vladimir Yevgrafovich Tatlin (; ; – 31 May 1953) was a Russian and Soviet painter, architect, and stage-designer. Tatlin achieved fame as the architect who designed The Monument to the Third International, more commonly known as Tatlin's Tower, ...

, that was never built. Janson, H.W. (1995) ''History of Art''. 5th edn. Revised and expanded by Anthony F. Janson. London:

Thames & Hudson Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...

, p. 820. It was planned to be erected in Petrograd (now

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

) after the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

of 1917, as the headquarters and monument of the

Communist International The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internationa ...

(the "Third International").

Plans

Tatlinʼs Constructivist tower was to be built from industrial materials: iron, glass and steel. In materials, shape and function, it was envisaged as a towering symbol of

modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...

. It would have dwarfed the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower from 1887 to 1889. Locally nicknamed "''La dame de fe ...

in Paris. The tower's main form was a twin

helix A helix (; ) is a shape like a cylindrical coil spring or the thread of a machine screw. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is for ...

which spiraled up to in height,Ching, Francis D.K., et al. (2011). ''Global History of Architecture''. 2nd edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p. 716. around which visitors would be transported with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain four large suspended

geometric Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician w ...

structures. These structures would rotate at different rates. At the base of the structure was a cube which was designed as a venue for lectures, conferences and legislative meetings, and this would complete a rotation in the span of one year. Above the cube would be a smaller pyramid housing executive activities and completing a rotation once a month. Further up would be a

cylinder A cylinder () has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infinite ...

, which was to house an information centre, issuing news bulletins and manifestos via telegraph, radio and loudspeaker, and would complete a rotation once a day. At the top, there would be a hemisphere for radio equipment. There were also plans to install a gigantic open-air screen on the cylinder, and a further projector which would be able to cast messages across the clouds on any overcast day.

Evaluations

There are serious doubts about the tower’s practicality given that the amount of steel required would have been impossible to obtain in bankrupt post-revolutionary Russia. Tatlin's tower was critical to Soviet propaganda. Symbolically, the tower was said to represent the aspirations of its originating country and a challenge to the

as the foremost symbol of modernity. Soviet critic

Viktor Shklovsky Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures asso ...

is said to have called it a monument "made of steel, glass and revolution."

Models

There are models of Tatlinʼs Tower at the

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened Moderna Museet Malmö in Malmö. History The museum opened in Stockh ...

in Stockholm, Sweden, at

Tretyakov Gallery The State Tretyakov Gallery (; abbreviated ГТГ, ''GTG'') is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, which is considered the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. The gallery's history starts in 1856 when the Muscovite merchant Pavel ...

in Moscow, and at

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...

at the

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

in Paris. A 1:42 model was built at The Royal Academy of Arts, London in November 2011. In September 2017, the same 1:42 model was erected as part of the ʻRussian Seasonʼ at the

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts The Sainsbury Centre is an art museum located on the campus of the University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. As part of its relaunch in 2023 under new executive director, Jago Cooper, the Sainsbury Centre became the first museum in the wor ...

Norwich Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of the county of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich ...

. Since the exhibition closed in February 2018, the tower is expected to continue as a feature of the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a Public university, public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus university, campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and twenty-six schools of ...

's 'sculpture park' until the end of 2021.

Ai Weiwei Ai Weiwei ( ; , IPA: ; born 28 August 1957) is a Chinese contemporary artist, documentarian, and activist. Ai grew up in the far northwest of China, where he lived under harsh conditions due to his father's exile. As an activist, he has been ...

ʼs 2007 sculpture ''Fountain of Light'', currently on display at the

Louvre Abu Dhabi The Louvre Abu Dhabi (; ) is an art museum located on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It runs under an agreement between the UAE and France, signed in March 2007, that allows it to use the Louvre's name until 2047, and has ...

, is modelled on the Tatlin Tower.

References and sources

;References ;Sources * ''Tatlinʼs Tower: Monument to Revolution'', Norbert Lynton, Yale University Press, 2008 * ''Art and Literature under the Bolsheviks: Volume One – The Crisis of Renewal Brandon Taylor'', Pluto Press, London 1991 * ''Tatlin'', edited by L.A. Zhadova, Thames and Hudson, London 1988 * ''Concepts of Modern Art'', edited by Nikos Stangos, Thames and Hudson, London 1981 * ''Vladimir Tatlin and the Russian avant-garde'', John Milner, Yale University Press, New Haven 1983 * Nikolai Punin.
The Monument to the Third International
', 1920

External links

Tatlinʼs Tower and the World
nbsp;— Artist group's web site on the project of building Tatlin's Tower in full scale. * – using computer graphics, archive footage and locations in Moscow, this film illustrates Tatlin's contribution to world architecture and how his tower may have looked in Moscow had it been built after the revolution; by Michael Craig; 3:37.
Photographs of Tatlin and his assistants constructing the first model for the monument to the Third International, Petrograd, 1920

Canadian Centre for Architecture The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA; ) is a Architecture museum, museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 1920, rue Baile (1920, Baile Street), between rue Fort (Fort Street) and rue Saint-Ma ...

digitized items
{{Coord missing, Russia Comintern Russian avant-garde Soviet art Towers in Russia Constructivist buildings and structures Unbuilt buildings and structures in Russia Proposed monuments and memorials

Plans

Evaluations

Models

See also

References and sources

External links