4th May 1999: First Images of the construction are available here
Many People who stopped to talk while we were making the stucture hadn't heard of Tatlins Tower. For those who would like a subjective description of Tatlins major work I have added one here
I welcome your enquiries, comments and observations - write to me at the.artist@messages.to
Tatlin's Monument to the third International does not exist
Tatlin was perhaps the first to free sculpture from representation and establish it as an autonomous form both by the kind of image or rather non-image he employed and by his literal use of materials.
Robert Morris notes on Sculpture. 1966
His Tower was constructed without previous models,
from only two drawings
Invention is always the working out of impulses and desires of the collective and not of the individual. Vladimir Tatlin, the Initiative Individual in the Creativity of the Collective1919
Five photographs are all that remain of the original work.
As a principle it is necesary to stress that firstly all of the elements of the [Tower] should be modern technical apparatuses promoting agitation and propoganda, and secondly that the monument should be a place of the most intense movement; least of all should one stand still or sit down in it; you must be mechanically taken up, down, carried away against your will; in front of youmust flash the most powerful laconic phrase of the orator agitator, and further on the latest news, decrees, decisions, the latest inventions, an explosion of simple and clear thoughts, creativity, only creativity...
Nicholas Punin Iskusstvo Kommuny 1919
The enduring strength of this tower relies on its fataly optimistic representation of contemporary society
Art, always being connected with life at the moment of change in the political system (change of the collective consumer), and being cut off from the collective in the person of the artist, goes through an acute revolution when the inter-relationship between the initiative individual and the collective is clearly defined. Vladimir Tatlin, the Initiative Individual in the Creativity of the Collective1919
Phase transitions occur when systems are pushed far from equilibrium by adding heat,energy or information. Charles Jencks Architecture of the jumping universe1996
Things are connected, not by time, but by an inner connection, an inner correlation, and time cannot separate those things which are inwardly near, following one from another. Certain other properties of these things force us to think of them as being separated by the ocean of time. But we know that this ocean does not exist in reality and we begin to understand how and why the events of one millenium can directly influence the events of another millenium. Pyotr Uspenski Tertium Organum 1930
The Fourth Nathan Lecture on the Environment - Royal Society of Arts
Economic Growth Sustained By Sunlight And Information
Good evening. It is a great honor to be here. I very much appreciate the invitation to come and speak with you this evening, and to talk with you about one of my favorite subjects - the relationship between industry and the environment. I think it is a particularly timely conversation.
R. B. Horsch, Monsanto Company 6 April 1999
"a structure becomes architecture, and not sculpture, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature." Apollinaire 1912
Even Purely physiological life will become subject to collective experiments. The human species, the coagulated Homo Sapiens, will once more enter into a state of radical transformation, and, in his own hands will become an object of the most complicated methods of artificial selection and psycho-physical training. Leon Trotski 1924
Tatlin and his assistants built in wood and wire. These models came to be a symbol of the utopian world in which these artists had hoped to build.