Happy Birthday to Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953), darling of the Russian avant-garde and architect of the most beautiful monument never made.

A 🧵.
Known as "Tatlin's Tower" but officially "The Monument to the Third International," Tatlin's 1920 structure was meant to be anti-monumental—something that was moving, pushing forward instead of standing still and erect.
Known as "Tatlin's Tower" but officially "The Monument to the Third International," Tatlin's 1920 structure was meant to be anti-monumental—something that was moving, pushing forward instead of standing still and erect.
Known as "Tatlin's Tower" but officially "The Monument to the Third International," Tatlin's 1920 structure was meant to be anti-monumental—something that was moving, pushing forward instead of standing still and erect.
With its energetic design and its height of 400 meters, it was widely interpreted as a challenge to the tallest bourgeois monuments of the day such as the Statue of Liberty (305 m) and the Eiffel Tower (324 m).
Tatlin also intended for it to function as headquarters for the comintern, and to include a lecture hall, an information center, broadcast radio, and a projector that would cast messages "across the clouds on any overcast day."

And it would revolve. (Of course it would revolve.)
This unusual idea of cloud-broadcasting is in harmony with his futurist colleagues who incorporated the spread of information and education—a priority for the Soviets—into their art. You can see this at work in Alexander Rodchenko's designs for street kiosks and workers clubs:
This unusual idea of cloud-broadcasting is in harmony with his futurist colleagues who incorporated the spread of information and education—a priority for the Soviets—into their art. You can see this at work in Alexander Rodchenko's designs for street kiosks and workers clubs:
This unusual idea of cloud-broadcasting is in harmony with his futurist colleagues who incorporated the spread of information and education—a priority for the Soviets—into their art. You can see this at work in Alexander Rodchenko's designs for street kiosks and workers clubs:
Though Tatlin built a model for a 1920 Petrograd exhibition, the monument was too impractical and expensive for the Soviets to construct. (But that's sort of what makes it such a great metaphor for Utopia—the first step toward building one is to imagine it and put it to paper...)
Several artists and museums have created wonderful replica models of Tatlin's Tower over the years. My favorite might be this one made for the 1971 London exhibition, Art in Revolution. (From a book on Tatlin in my collection by John Milner, 1983.)
Though I haven't seen it in person, I admire Ai Weiwei's 2007 reinterpretation, Working Progress (Fountain of Light) commissioned by Tate Liverpool:
And finally, I loved getting to see one of Dan Flavin's 50 neon interpretations, part of his "Monument for V. Tatlin" series, at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome last December.
If you want to spend a little more time in Tatlin's company (and why wouldn't you?), I recommend this article in @cabinetmagazine by the late and unparalleled Svetlana Boym:

https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/28/boym2.php
Anyway, HBD Tatlin & thanks for reading!
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