Vladimir Tatlin

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Vladimir Tatlin

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Vladimir Tatlin , 1885-1953, Russian painter and sculptor, known as the Father of Russian constructivism . After graduating (1910) from the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts, he traveled to Paris where he was so influenced by Picasso 's reliefs that he became a sculptor. After the Russian Revolution, Tatlin produced art that remained abstract but was more politically oriented. His most famous piece remains his monument to the Third International (1920, Moscow), a 22-ft-high (6.7-m) iron frame on which rested a revolving cylinder, cube, and cone, all made of glass. He also is noted for his costumes for stage productions, such as Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman (1915-17).

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Tatlin, Vladimir

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists | 2003 | | © The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Tatlin, Vladimir (1885–1953). Russian painter, designer, and maker of abstract constructions, the founder of Constructivism. He ran away to sea at the age of 18 and until 1914 combined painting with the life of a merchant seaman: many of his earlier pictures are of maritime subjects, notably The Sailor (1911–12, Russian Mus., St Petersburg), a self-portrait. From 1910 he showed work at several avant-garde exhibitions in Russia and worked in close association with Goncharova and Larionov, who had known him as a boy. In 1914 Tatlin visited Berlin and Paris. He haunted Picasso's studio and on his return to Russia began making a series of abstract Painted Reliefs, Relief Constructions, and Corner Reliefs inspired by Picasso's sculptural experiments. Very few of these revolutionary works survive, most being known only from photographs; it appears that they were made of a variety of materials—tin, glass, wood, plaster, etc. After the October Revolution of 1917, Tatlin's constructions made from ‘real materials in real space’ were felt to be in accordance with the new ‘culture of materials’ and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the demand for socially oriented art, declaring: ‘The events of 1917 in the social field were already brought about in our art in 1914, when material, volume and construction were laid as its basis.’ In 1919 he was commissioned to design the Monument to the Third International (the organization set up by the Bolsheviks to coordinate the activities of Communist movements throughout the world). The huge monument—in the form of a leaning, openwork, spiral tower in iron and glass—was intended for a position in the centre of Moscow. It was to be both functional and symbolic, housing various offices of the revolutionary government and including such features as an immense projector for throwing propaganda images onto clouds. Tatlin described it as ‘A union of purely plastic forms (painting, sculpture and architecture) for a utilitarian purpose’. A model was exhibited in December 1920 at the exhibition of the VIIIth Congress of the Soviets. Gabo condemned the design as impracticable and it was never executed (it was intended to be much bigger than the Eiffel Tower), but it is recognized as the outstanding symbol of Soviet Constructivism. (The original model has been destroyed, but there is a reconstruction in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.) The Monument was the culmination of Tatlin's artistic career, and the rest of it is something of an anticlimax. He was active in teaching and administration, and his own work was mainly in the field of applied art, designing furniture, workers' clothes, etc. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he devoted his energies to designing a glider, which he called Letatlin (a compound of his name and the Russian word for ‘to fly’). From the 1930s his main activity was theatre design, and his later years were spent in lonely obscurity. In 1948 the Communist Party declared him an ‘enemy of the people’.

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IAN CHILVERS. "Tatlin, Vladimir." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

IAN CHILVERS. "Tatlin, Vladimir." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (July 10, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O3-TatlinVladimir.html

IAN CHILVERS. "Tatlin, Vladimir." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. 2003. Retrieved July 10, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O3-TatlinVladimir.html

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Tatlin, Vladimir

The Oxford Dictionary of Art | 2004 | | © The Oxford Dictionary of Art 2004, originally published by Oxford University Press 2004. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Tatlin, Vladimir (b Kharkov [now Kharkiv], Ukraine, 12 Dec. 1885; d Moscow, 31 May 1953). Russian painter, designer, and maker of abstract constructions, the founder of Constructivism. He ran away to sea at the age of 18 and until 1914 combined painting with the life of a merchant seaman: many of his earlier pictures are of maritime subjects, notably The Sailor (1911–12, Russian Mus., St Petersburg), a self-portrait. From 1910 he showed work at several avant-garde exhibitions in Russia and worked in close association with Goncharova and Larionov, who had known him as a boy. In 1914 Tatlin visited Berlin and Paris. He haunted Picasso's studio and on his return to Russia began making a series of abstract Painted Reliefs, Relief Constructions, and Corner Reliefs inspired by Picasso's sculptural experiments. Very few of these revolutionary works survive, most being known only from photographs; it appears that they were made of a variety of materials—tin, glass, wood, plaster, etc.

After the October Revolution of 1917, Tatlin's constructions made from ‘real materials in real space’ were felt to be in accordance with the new ‘culture of materials’ and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the demand for socially orientated art, declaring: ‘The events of 1917 in the social field were already brought about in our art in 1914, when material, volume and construction were laid as its basis.’ In 1919 he was commissioned to design the monument to the Third International (the organization set up by the Bolsheviks to coordinate the activities of Communist movements throughout the world). The huge monument—in the form of a leaning, openwork, spiral tower in iron and glass—was intended for a position in the centre of Moscow. It was to be both functional and symbolic, housing various offices of the revolutionary government and including such features as an immense projector for throwing propaganda images onto clouds. Tatlin described it as ‘A union of purely plastic forms (painting, sculpture and architecture) for a utilitarian purpose’. A model was exhibited in December 1920 at the exhibition of the VIIIth Congress of the Soviets. Gabo condemned the design as impracticable and it was never executed (it was intended to be much bigger than the Eiffel Tower), but it is recognized as the outstanding symbol of Soviet Constructivism. (The original model has been destroyed, but there is a reconstruction in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.)

The monument was the culmination of Tatlin's artistic career, and the rest of it is something of an anticlimax. He was active in teaching and administration, and his own work was mainly in the field of applied art, designing furniture, workers' clothes, etc. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he devoted his energies to designing a glider, which he called Letatlin (a compound of his name and the Russian word for ‘to fly’). From the 1930s his main activity was theatre design, and his later years were spent in lonely obscurity. In 1948 the Soviet government, demanding Socialist Realism in the arts, declared him an ‘enemy of the people’.

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IAN CHILVERS. "Tatlin, Vladimir." The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Jul. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

IAN CHILVERS. "Tatlin, Vladimir." The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (July 10, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O2-TatlinVladimir.html

IAN CHILVERS. "Tatlin, Vladimir." The Oxford Dictionary of Art. 2004. Retrieved July 10, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O2-TatlinVladimir.html

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Magazine article from: C: International Contemporary Art; 9/22/2008; 700+ words ; ...on current art practices was signalled by Poulin's design for the craft-paper cover of Issue 1: a reproduction of Vladimir Tatlin's sketch for a Monument to the Third International (1919-1920). A hybrid criticism (6) was sought using tools developed... Read more
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Magazine article from: Art in America; 10/1/1997; ; 700+ words ; ...undertaken to detail the early careers of such principal figures of the Revolutionary avant-garde as Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Vasily Kandinsky. Those scholars who transgressed the strictly defined boundaries of the high moment of Soviet... Read more
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Magazine article from: Reference & Research Book News; 5/1/2009; 131 words ; ...avant-garde through contemporary times are discussed in subsequent chapters, with many color plates of the works. Works by Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich are among those described in detail. The volume is oversized (9.5x10.5 ) and distributed in... Read more
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Magazine article from: C: International Contemporary Art; 3/22/2007; ; 700+ words ; ...travelled to the Soviet Union in my late teens to research Vladimir Mayakovsky's films and was very inspired by the avant-garde climate in which he and artists like Vladimir Tatlin operated. Collaborations between poets, playwrights, filmmakers... Read more
Dia:Beacon: the imperturbables: with 240,000 square feet of exhibition space, Dia's new Hudson River facility shows off its permanent collection to suitably monumental effect, making the case for its anointed masters from the 1960s forward, presenting their achievement as towering, timeless and unassailable. (Cover Story).(overview of the works of several artists)(Cover Story)
Magazine article from: Art in America; 7/1/2003; ; 700+ words ; ...installations by Dan Flavin, including his 1964 monuments for Vladimir Tatlin. Twenty of these symmetrical configurations of mostly...helps connect the series to the sequenced rotation in Tatlin's famous 1920 proposal for a monument to the Third International... Read more
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Vladimir Tatlin. Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

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