Comparing Meireles’s Babel and Tatlin’s Tower
Author’s Note: I wrote this paper for my art history class this past semester. The assignment was to compare two works: one pre and one post WW1. Honestly, trying to fit everything I wanted to say in 1000 words was very difficult, but I tried my best to be thorough.
This paper will compare two works: Vladimir Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (often called Tatlin’s Tower), first modeled in 1920 but never built, and Cildo Meireles’s 2001 piece Babel.
Form and Style
Beyond being large vertically tall structures, Tatlin’s Tower and Babel do not seem to have many similarities at first. Tatlin’s Tower would have been completely made of metal and glass while in Babel, hundreds of radios from different years hide the work’s metal frame.[1] The simplicity and industrial quality of the materials are hallmarks of the Constructivist movement that Tatlin helped shape, which advocated for artists to work with manufactured materials (steel, iron, and wood).[2] Its materials give Tower a sleeker, more “modern” look. In addition, Tower was supposed to be much taller than Babel–although the wooden model he originally unveiled in Petrograd (the tower, as Tatlin conceived of it, was never built) was between 18 and 21 feet, he intended for the full structure to be 1,300 feet, taller than the Eiffel Tower. Babel, by contrast, is only around 16 feet tall.[3] Tatlin’s Tower, with its spiraling metallic structure, also utilizes negative space as part of the piece while in Babel, there is no negative space; every part of the sculpture has a radio. Babel also lacks the mechanized movement and separation of its parts that Tatlin’s Tower was supposed to have. While Babel is one static sculpture, Tower was intended to be a collection of multiple independent structures, including a conical spiral and multiangular slats that would surround four glass compartments. Every compartment would be different shapes rotating at different paces.[4] One similarity in the form of both works is their antennae: Tatlin’s Tower would have had one large antenna (as well as a projector) and Meireles’s Babel has dozens springing from the different radios. This shared element between the two structures allows them to transmit messages using radio waves.
Artistic Intent
A key difference in the two pieces is the intent of their creators. Tatlin wanted his tower to be the headquarters for the Comintern–a soviet organization whose goal was to inspire other communist revolutions across the globe–in Petrograd.[5] Tatlin also wanted his work to be accessible and highly visible, evident not only in the tower’s proposed height, but in its intended location in such a populated city. Tatlin also purposefully shipped his model to Moscow for display while top Russian officials were debating plans to bring electricity to the country, reflecting his political motivations.[6]
Meireles, however, created his piece in a time where displaying sculpture in private and public institutions was commonplace. He also made Babel after the previous commercial success of his other work.[7] In fact, multiple museums have featured Babel in their exhibitions, including London’s Tate Modern.[8] Although admission is free, being in a museum causes Babel to have a more limited reach than even the model of Tower. Because Meireles most likely knew his art would be in a museum or in a private collection rather than serving as a center for a media organization, he probably felt more freedom to focus on the metaphorical aspects of his work. Perhaps he also felt less of a need or desire than Tatlin did to ensure his work was both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
Political Engagement
The purpose of the two works are diametrically opposed: while Tatlin was focused on forging a common communist Russian national identity, Meireles’s Babel encourages the viewer to pause, examine, and reflect on our own reactions to difference. The main purpose of the large antenna and projector on Tower were to broadcast audiovisual material to all of the citizens of the area, even on cloudy days.[9] In giving every citizen the same message and replaying these messages so every worker could hear/see them, the Tower could then unite the Russian proletariat, creating a sense of shared understanding, community, and purpose. Tatlin’s viewer is passive, simply receiving the messages from the tower.
Meireles takes a completely different approach, requiring his viewer to be active. Because there are so many different audio streams, all at a low volume, the viewer (or, in this case, the listener), must choose which channel(s) to listen to. They can also choose not to listen to any particular audio and let the multiplicity of voices overwhelm them. The origin of the work (Canal Street has a large immigrant population) also forces the listener to think about globalization and international immigration.[10] Although all of the different languages are different, if the listener does not focus on any particular audio stream, the voices all sound the same. This effect makes viewers question how different they are from others across the world and perhaps encourages them to think about the current state of the immigrants who inspired Meireles. Furthermore, the constant radio play also forces viewers to recognize their individuality. Every viewer will have a different experience based on which day they visited, when they entered into the room where Babel is, and how long they stayed.[11] Unlike Tatlin’s Tower which repeats the same messages, no moment in time is like the rest for a viewer of Babel. Thus, because of the work’s constantly changing radio audio, Meireles makes the viewer recognize language barriers and their own individuality in a way that would undermine the purpose of Tower.
The artists’ positions in the world also affect the political implications of their art. For Tatlin, the Tower was not only a way to connect the Russian citizenry, but to show Russia’s wealth and industrial prowess to other European Powers.[12] Although Meireles’s Brazilian upbringing has a large impact on his work, unlike many of his other pieces, he did not explicitly create Babel to make a political statement.[13] There are still international influences–the works of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges heavily influenced Babel–but Meireles blends these outside influences instead of trying to compete against them.
Community it Cultivates
Ultimately, Tatlin’s Tower never cultivated the community that Tatlin wanted because it was never built. Multiple models of Tatlin’s Tower still exist today, many that museums have created for exhibitions on Russian art. Thus, although Tatlin succeeded in bringing Constructivist art to a larger European audience, these models’ existence locked away in museums shows the failure of Tatlin to unite the Russian populace and exhibit communist Russia’s success. In fact, Ai Weiwei’s 2016 reimagining of Tatlin’s Tower points to the failures of Communism in practice–namely, that in Communist governments such as Russia and China, an elite ruling class remains that disregards the needs of millions in poverty.[14]
Although Babel has not generated the same level of conversation as Tower, it still cultivates community both physically and online. Babel literally creates a community because of its installation–its large room forces viewers to be in the same space as they look at and listen to the piece. Online, Babel has created a diverse community of art-lovers who are all drawn to it for different reasons — some love how the sculpture brings the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel or Borges’s “Library of Babel” to the modern era; others appreciate the work as an example of concept art and opt to discuss the physical experience of seeing the work.
Ultimately, although both works are different in style, intention, and modern impact, they both reflect how a common theme — communication with others — can manifest itself in drastically distinct works of art.
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[1] Emily Brown, Shoshone, “Babel,” Sartle, https://www.sartle.com/artwork/babel-cildo-meireles#:~:text=This%20structure%20is%20five%20meters,eleven%20years%20later%20in%20Helsinki.
[2] Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin D. Buchloh, David Joselit, 2016, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. New York: Thames & Hudson, 200–201.
[3] Foster, Krauss, Bois, Buchloh, Joselit, Art Since 1900, 199.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid
[7] Kathleen Kuiper, “Cildo Meireles,” Encyclopedia Britannica, last modified January 1, 2023,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cildo-Meireles
[8] “Cildo Meireles | Babel,” Artsy.net, https://www.artsy.net/artwork/cildo-meireles-babel.
[9]Ralph Crozier, “Tatlin’s Tower: The Monument to the Future that Never Was,” World History Connected, https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/11.1/forum_croizier.html.
[10] A 1990 trip to Canal Street in New York City inspired Meireles to make Babel. He told Tate that he wanted to experiment with radios “Upon observing the quantity and diversity of radios and all the different types of sound objects that were sold.” Meireles status as an artist instead of as an industrial producer (a distinction Tatlin was trying to erase), allows the intent of the piece to be exploring individual experience and language difference instead of being a meeting place for Communist officials. ; Tanya Barson, “Cildo Meireles | Babel,” Tate Modern, published May 2011, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/meireles-babel-t14041#:~:text=Summary,at%20which%20they%20are%20audible.
[11]Meireles’s desire for each viewer to have an individual experience is reflected in what he told Tate in 2008: “Radios are interesting because they are physically similar and at the same time each radio is unique.”; Barson, “Cildo Meireles | Babel.”
[12] Perhaps a reason he wanted the building to be taller than the Eiffel Tower, then the world’s tallest building. ; Foster, Krauss, Bois, Buchloh, Joselit, Art Since 1900, 199.
[13] Kuiper, “Cildo Meireles,” https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cildo-Meireles.
[14] Melissa Gronlund, “In the frame: The story behind Ai Weiwei’s Fountain of Light at Louvre Abu Dhabi,” The National News, published June 20, 2018, https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/art/in-the-frame-the-story-behind-ai-weiwei-s-fountain-of-light-at-louvre-abu-dhabi-1.741574.
