This is the first of thirty–nine "monuments" to the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) that Flavin created between 1964 and 1990. The stepped arrangement of white fluorescent tubes evokes Tatlin’s colossal Monument to the Third International (1920), a soaring tower intended to support Lenin’s Plan for Monumental Propaganda. Tatlin's ambitious but unrealized project to unite art and technology was of particular interest to Flavin. Although the utopian goals of the Russian Constructivists were never fulfilled, their art and philosophy were of great interest to artists of the 1960s.
Gallery label from 2008.
