In the Big Court of the “Burganov House” Museum is presented Alexander Burganov’s early work the “Tower of the Third International”. It is a two-part composition depicting the worker and a portrait of Emperor Nickolay II with elements of classical architectural rotunda in the form of a crown. The composition was created by order of the art fund in 1967 to the jubilee exhibition of Moscow artists in honor of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.
Alexander Burganov created the composition under the influence of the unrealized Vladimir Tatlin’s project. But unlike the progressive historical spiral of V. Tatlin’s composition, A. Burganov presented a scheme of a flip-flop, demonstrating the possibility of permanent historical development as in the wheel of fortune. The sculpture “Tower of the Third International” could be found in one position or inverted. And then the whole meaning changed. The revolutionary worker was at the bottom, and the image of the emperor rose above him. At that time, it was called “The Tower-Flip-Top”. In this fact, the curators of the exhibition saw a political ambiguity and it was not allowed for it to participate in the anniversary exhibition. Although the high professionalism of the composition was noted.
Since then, this work has not been shown anywhere and it was kept in the artist’s collection. Now this composition can be seen in the exposition of the museum. We can say that it reflected the mood in society during the “thaw” period, when new assessments of our historical realities appeared.
The photo presents the project “Tower-Flip-flop of the Third International” based on archival materials of Alexander Burganov’s workshop of the 1960s.