Page 56 - Studio International - October1968

Stockholm commentary

Vladimir Tatlin exhibition
at Moderna Museet

The de-mythologizing process to which many example, photographs exist of such things as holding out hope that they would loan material,
`radical' twentieth-century artists have been sub- Larionov's relief of 1915 which incorporated the fan then backed down on the grounds that 'extensive
mitted has, in most cases, been easily accomplished on the exhibition wall; or of Malevich's sets for work on the systematization and restoration of this
—the myths easily, and justifiably, debunked. Such Mayakovsky's Mystery-bouffe from 1918; or the artist's work is at present in progress in the Soviet
a process hasn't so far extended to the Russian circus performances of Mayakovsky's last works— Union'. The exhibition therefore contains no
avant-garde in all its complexity and various mani- e.g. Moscow's burning 1930). The Tatlin exhibition original works. There is however a reconstruction
festations. Monographs, exhibitions, etc. have still at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm this summer, of Tatlin's first model for the Monument to the 3rd
left much of the work, intentions and ideas of even while undoubtedly making known in the West a International, which at last gives one a fairly accu-
figures of the stature of Larionov and Malevich in considerable amount of new material, still leaves rate impression of what this forecast; there are also-
shadow. Indeed the destruction and suppression of our knowledge of his total activity rather insub- some other reconstructions including a very
material seems to imply that a lot is going to re- stantial. Whether this lacuna will be filled remains beautiful corner relief by Martin Chalk, loaned by
main on the fringes of knowledge. (I wonder if, for an open question. The Russian authorities after Portsmouth College of Art, and Tatlin's suit—