Letatlin

The first mention of “Letatlin” was recorded in 1912 in the notes of Velimir Khlebnikov , with whom Tatlin probably shared his secret thoughts on this subject. However, the idea of ​​creating an ornithopter, according to the assumption of Tatlinologist Anatoly Strigalyov , could have arisen from the artist as a child: in 1898 and 1900 in Kharkov , in the same printing house as the second edition of Tatlin’s book, two editions of Konstantin Danilevsky ’s book “Managed Flying” shell ", which young Vladimir Tatlin almost certainly read ^[1] .

In 1924, Tatlin hinted about his project to Peter Miturich . In 1926-1927, in Kiev, the artist, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, studied the anatomy and flights of birds and made details of the future “Letatlin”. In 1927-1930, teaching in Moscow Vhutein , Tatlin conducted experiments with a bent tree, was engaged in the reorganization and technical equipment of Dermetfak, and selected future assistants in the implementation of the project from among students. ^[2]

In this last, most important period, Tatlin told his friends: “I will do a thing, well, no less than Venus de Milo ” ^[3] .

Despite the subsequent actual failure of the project (“Letatlin” did not fly ), the author never doubted its artistic significance. During the last, after a long break, meeting with Nikolai Punin in 1947, Tatlin, according to Irina Punina , spoke of his ornithopter “with temperament” ^[4] .

The name "Letatlin" came from a combination of two words - the verb fly and the name of the author Tatlin . ^[five]

Tatlin explained the appearance of his work:

I developed the aircraft as an object of artistic construction because it is the most complex dynamic material form that can enter the everyday life of the Soviet masses as consumer goods ... Aircraft is a form that meets the needs of the moment in man to overcome space. ^[6]

Tatlin and his assistants created three apparatuses of dissimilar materials: wood, cork, steel cable, duralumin, whalebone, rawhide belt, ball bearings, fabric, etc. ^[7]

The dimensions of the ornithopter, according to Tatlin, were: wingspan - 9 m, bearing surface - about 12 square meters, weight - 32 kg, load - 8 kg / sq. m. Other sizes were obtained by measuring the surviving apparatus: fuselage length - 3950 mm, height - 990 mm, wing length - 4552 mm, width - 2150 mm. ^[7]

Contemporaries left conflicting memories of the participation (or rather, non-participation) of design engineers in the project. So, Isai Rakhtanov , who spoke with Tatlin in 1932, wrote that “the engineers did not support the artist. Did not make working drawings, did not make technical documentation. Tatlin was not helped by specialists who were previously convinced of the impracticability of his plan. ” But the same Rakhtanov recorded Tatlin’s live speech at a speech at the Writers Club on April 5, 1932:

- The calculations? Let the comrade engineers not be offended by me: did you ask the raven what calculations its wings were made of? <...> You asked why she flies, no? And in vain. I was a sailor. Seagulls flew behind our stern and, mind you, did not get tired. Three days flew by and all were not tired. There was a storm, the wind reached enormous points, and at least that, respectable birds fly and do not get tired. It turns out that they are more perfect than our airplanes. Indeed, the birds have a plastic structure, and the airplanes have a rigid structure. They have vibrant, soft wings, and airplanes have dead, stiff wings. ^[3]

Tatlin proceeded directly to the realization of the plan of the ornithopter in 1929. The team of assistants included A. G. Sotnikov , G. S. Pavilionov, A. V. Shchepitsyn , A. E. Zelensky, students of Vkhutein, surgeon M. A. Heinze, pilot instructor A. V. Losev ^[7] .

A special workshop for the production of an ornithopter was arranged in the corner tower of the Novodevichy Convent . During 1929-1932, three almost identical specimens were made ^[7] . In May 1932, an exhibition was held in the Italian courtyard of the Museum of Fine Arts, at which Letatlin was presented. Tests of one of the devices did not take place due to damage during transportation. After the liquidation of the workshop in the Novodevichy Convent, the ornithopter was never tested.

Unable to store the devices due to the large size in his workshop, Tatlin handed over all three copies to various departments. “Letatlin No. 1” was, according to Tatlin, in the funds of the exhibition “ Artists of the RSFSR for 15 years ” ^[8] . “Letatlin No. 2,” according to Tatlin, was in 1933 in the Central Council of the All-Union Society of Inventors ^[8] . Both copies were irresponsibly lost by these departments ^[9] .

Letatlin No. 3

The only surviving version of the “Letatlin No. 3” apparatus (with some lost details) in 1933, according to Tatlin, was in the Museum of OSOAVIAHIM and then, after several changes in the organization of aviation museums, entered the Central State Museum of Aviation and Cosmonautics named after N. E Zhukovsky in the city of Monin (currently the Central Museum of the Air Force of the Russian Federation ) ^[8] . After restoration work was transferred to temporary storage as part of the 20th century art collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery.

“Letatlin No. 3” was originally intended by the author not for flying, but for visual perception - as a self-contained work of art. It was for this reason that he was left Tatlin without hiding the design "skin" ^[10] .

For the first time after a long break of several decades, “Letatlin No. 3” was exhibited at the Tatlin solo exhibition in 1977. A misinforming annotation in the exhibition catalog was associated with this show:

The exhibition shows photographs of old versions of the model and the model restored from the surviving details ^[11] through the efforts of General L. Reynaud, test pilots A. Sheukov, M. (K.) Artseulov, M. Shishkin.

The same misinformation was repeated 15 years later, in 1992, in the catalog of the Great Utopia exhibition. But “Letatlin”, unlike Tatlin’s other famous project, “Monument of the III Communist International” , was not a model , but a completed work itself, and the details of each of the three apparatuses were unique, that is, they could not be arranged in one apparatus. Finally, “Letatlin No. 3” was not restored in principle, it was exhibited in an authentic preserved form. ^[12]

Today’s most detailed public description of “Letatlin No. 3” with a large number of photographs of fragments of the apparatus belongs to Pavel Kuznetsov, an employee of the AV Shchusev Museum of Architecture, and he made it in 2012 in the LiveJournal personal blog.

Apparently, the first “Letatlin” was shown on the evening of April 5, 1932 at a meeting of Vladimir Tatlin at the Writers' Club in Moscow. The host of the evening was Mate Zalka , who managed to finish this evening without scandal without difficulty. One of the three devices without a “skin-tight”, for the sake of design visibility, was suspended from the ceiling of the hall in which the discussion was being held. “The bird was without plumage. It was a skeleton, but already alive, ”said Isai Rakhtanov , who described that evening in the April issue of the children's magazine “ Pioneer ” and much later, in the small posthumous memoir,“ The Artist's Spiral, ”about“ Letatlin ”. ^[3]

In 1932, “Letatlin” became a key exhibit of the “Exhibition of Honored Art Worker V.E. Tatlin” in Moscow. The exhibition was held at the State Museum of Fine Arts in 1932. The aircraft model was made in triplicate. In his preface to the exhibition catalog, V. E. Tatlin wrote that this apparatus “could come into everyday use of the Soviet masses as consumer goods” ^[13] When working on Letatlin, the artist was advised by the surgeon M. A. Heinze, the pedagogical aviator A V. Losev; A comment in the catalog of the exhibition was written by military pilot and pilot-pilot K. Artseulov. The models themselves were carried out in a research laboratory for the culture of materials with the participation of employees A. G. Sotnikov and Yu. V. Pavilionov. In total, there were 12 exhibits at the exhibition ^[14]

By the beginning of the 1990s, three attempts were made to reconstruct the apparatus, aiming to convey only its appearance - in Stockholm (exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art ), Berlin and Penza ^[8] . The main model for these reconstructions (and in fact copies) was “Letatlin No. 3”.

One of the leading Tatlinologists, Anatoly Strigalyov , wrote about “Letatlin”:

Tatlin proposed things-ideas , things-tasks , things-riddles , really or problematically functional, but always exciting with the energy of the formative impulse enclosed in them, the feeling of the emerging road to the art of the future. At the time of the rise of technical utopias, which paid great attention to aviation and other means of conquering airspace, Tatlin considered it a priority to create intimate aviation for an individual, complementing the motor functions he received from nature. In a word, he wanted to return a man to his everlasting dream of his own flight and realize this dream. ^[15]

Selim Khan-Magomedov considered the “Letatlin” as part of Tatlin’s design activities, related primarily to Vhutein:

An analysis of the three areas of Tatlin’s design activities in the late 1920s (wooden things, dishes and an aircraft) reveals an important feature: products are developed whose shape depends on their direct contact with the human body. This is a chair and a sled, this is a ceramic drinkers and a teapot, this is a “Letatlin” inside which a person lies.
Tatlin thought a lot about the rationality and functionality of the form, about the correspondence of its properties to the material. All this is an important part of his concept of shaping. But in the late 1920s, completing the formation of his design concept, he takes an important step: he goes on to search for the organic form in relation to the organic form of the person using it. From these positions, Tatlin revises the attitude to the geometry of forms, their conditionality by technical requirements. He gazes intently at the forms of living nature, trying to find confirmation of his concept of organic form there too. ^[sixteen]

Publications by Vladimir Tatlin

• Tatlin V. Art in Technique // Artists Brigade. - 1932. - No. 6 .

Other publications

• Rakhtanov I. Letatlin - an air bike // Pioneer . - 1932. - No. 4 .
• From the tower of the Comintern to the “Letatlin” // Artists Brigade. - 1932. - No. 6 .
• Zelinsky K. Letatlin // Evening Moscow . - April 6, 1932.
• Arkin D. Tatlin and Letatlin // Soviet Art . - April 9, 1932.
• Rakhtanov I. Spiral artist // Ruthenia. Says Moscow.
• A. Strigalev “Bionic Foundations” of V. E. Tatlin’s Creative Concept // Problems of Formation in Soviet Architecture. - M. , 1978. - Issue. 4 . - S. 29-32 .
• Molchanovsky O. About “Letatlin” // Friendship of Peoples . - 1979. - No. 2 .
• Kovalev A. “Letatlin”: the search for a new world // Art . - 1990. - No. 6 .
• Strigalyov Anatoly . Retrospective exhibition of Vladimir Tatlin // Vladimir Tatlin. Retrospective: [Exhibition catalog] / Under the general editorship of A. Strigalev and Yu. Harten . - Köln: DuMont , 1993 .-- S. 8-52 . - ISBN 3-7701-3250-5 .
• Kotovich T.V. Letatlin // Kotovich T.V. Encyclopedia of the Russian avant-garde. - Mn. : Econompress, 2003 .-- S. 168 . - ISBN 985-6479-30-4 .
• Fedorchenko Andrey. “Letatlin” landed in Basel // Our Newspaper. - June 5, 2012.
• Kuznetsov Pavel. Letatlin No. 3 // Live Journal . - June 11, 2012.
• The legacy of one of the symbols of the Russian avant-garde is presented in Penza // Culture.ru. - February 12, 2013. (inaccessible link)
• Dimakov D.N. "Letatlin" // Encyclopedia of the Russian avant-garde. Art. Architecture. In 3 volumes. vol. 3 book 1. M., 2014. C. 333-335. ISBN 978-5-902801-12-2