Page 41 - Studio International - November 1969

sible. The keynote of post-Revolutionary art and supported by such structural members as describes the monument's function, the obser-
was collectivism: the creation of an art by co- were essential, was to have formed the frame- ver is physically transformed to participant:
operative effort and for the benefit of the work of the tower. Enclosed in this body was `. . . it should be the centre of a concentration
masses. But this notion had itself different intended four basic forms in vertical align- of movement; there should be as little sitting
interpretations. At one level it implied the ment : a low cylinder, a square-based pyramid, and standing in it as possible, people should
artist united with technology but also the a narrow cylinder, and a hemisphere, each to be instead mechanically led round, up and
creation of an art whose forms were of 'univer- have been made of glass. These forms were down : sometimes there will be glimpsed the
sal' significance, that is, furthered communist not only symbolical, but were to contain powerful and laconic expression of an agita-
principles by metaphorical means. Tatlin's specified activities for the work of the Inter- tor, sometimes messages, decrees, regulations,
1920 Pro gramme of the Productivist Group indicated national: in the lower cylinder, legislative the latest invention, an explosion of clear
both approaches. However, the first attempts assemblies; in the pyramid, executive func- and simple thoughts, creating, only creat-
towards a 'socialist' art around that date were tions; and in the upper cylinder, an informa- ing. . . .'
conceived through the symbolical approach. tion centre for news, proclamations and mani- But there were also more specific meanings.
In the art of revolution, symbol, by and large, festos, to be transmitted by all possible media. According to Lissitzky, the very material of
precedes the spade-work of utility. An essen- In addition, a typographic workshop was in- such a work had its own implications: 'Iron
tially spiritual concern for consciousness, tended, and a large open-air screen on which is strong like the will of the proletariat, glass is
revealed through the 'meanings' of forms, was news could be presented at night, and a clear like its conscience.' But it is the natural
the motivating factor of Tatlin's monument, special apparatus to throw onto the clouds forms which hold the essential content.
whose symbolism was specifically designed to mottos for the day. These facilities were to be According to one source, the pyramid meant
demonstrate its contemporary relevance, and grouped around the uppermost hemisphere. for Tatlin the stability of the Renaissance,
which posited the arrival of the millenium. The arrangement of forms thus expressed the while the spiral was expressive of the dyna-
The source of this new symbolism lies most
immediately in Tatlin's concept of a 'culture
of materials', the notion that each physical
material element could carry a meaning
while yet fulfilling a structural role. This
owes a certain debt to Malevich's Suprematist
elements, but the revolutionary Formalism of
Tatlin and his associates wished to give to
those forms which Malevich could only see
as other-worldly newly specific significances.
In theoretical terms, the most advanced
demonstration of such concepts was pro-
duced within the architectural faculty of the
Moscow Vkhutemas, set up in 1920, by the
studios of Professors Ladovsky, Golosov and
Dokoutchaiev. These teachers proposed a
system of universally expressive abstract
solids from which the 'building' process could
take place. This was conceived along sup-
posedly scientific lines, based upon Gestalt
principles, and formulated abstract pro-
portional schemes intended as expressive of
both emotion and ideology. This idea of a
particularized aesthetic canon reveals a search
for the security of an underlying methodology
at a time of great disorder. And although these
early attempts towards a formal vocabulary
seem as introspective as Yeats's crackpot cos-
mogony, in the long term they were of certain
significance when such systems took root prag- creation of policies : from legislature to execu- mism of the day. This parallels Ladovskian
matically in International Style theory. tive to manifesto; and speeding up at each aesthetics, where this time the cube is a sym-
Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third Inter- stage, for the elemental forms were to revolve bol of eternity while the spiral, more directly,
national was commissioned in 1919 by the on their axes: the lower cylinder once a year, is a metaphor for the Revolution.
Department of Fine Arts and was to have been the pyramid once a month, and the upper
erected at the centre of Moscow. Tatlin cylinder once a day. The tower was thus II
worked on his designs through 1919 and 1920, attuned both to the seasons and to its time, This utilization of basic forms for exceptional
and with two assistants built a wooden model increasing in energy towards its upper limits. purposes or at exceptional times is, in Western
which was exhibited at the Eighth Soviet This quality of implied and real movement art, not an uncommon practice. To what
Congress in December of 1920. In March of was central to Tatlin's conception. At the extent the Formalists were aware of their heri-
1919, the new Third International, or Comintern, beginning of this new age, we find a complete tage is uncertain, but Russian art had tradi-
had been established to propagate interna- and representative demonstration of the tionally made use of a symbolic system, often
tional Communism. The forms of Tatlin's artistic implications of the future. The dyna- motivated by its Eastern connection, and it
work are specifically demonstrative of a mism of form indicated participational in- could be that one should look there for the
socialistic content. volvement, and is a direct pointer to the source of such ideas as well as to earlier Euro-
A double spiral of iron, some 1300 feet high, behaviourist aspects of later art. As Tatlin's pean theory. There is no doubt, however, that
inclined at an asymmetrical diagonal position most sympathetic apologist, Nikolai Punin, a conscious metaphysical activitywas practised