Vladimir Tatlin: The Transition from the Technological to the Organic?

This text focuses on Vladimir Tatlin and the different concepts of energy that he embraced during the 1920s: from the technological ethos of his Model for a Monument to the Third International (1920) to the organic forms and renewable energy of The Letatlin, (1932). Despite the differences, I shall argue that there are strong continuities in the way that Tatlin approached the innate properties of material. I shall also suggest that his reservations about technology in the late 1920s may have reflected some misgivings about the government’s industrialization policy.