The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (472 page)

 
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Target exhibition
.

Exhibition organized in Moscow by
Larionov
,
Goncharova
, and
Malevich
in March 1913, at which
Rayonism
was launched.

 
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(
c.
1580–1644).
Italian painter, born in Rome and mainly active there. He was one of the outstanding
quadratura
specialists of the period, his most famous work being the illusionistic architectural setting for
Guercino's
celebrated
Aurora
fresco (1621–3) in the Casino Ludovisi, Rome. Tassi also painted small landscapes in the manner of
Bril
and
Elsheimer
, and for centuries he was remembered because he taught
Claude
(who entered his service as a pastry-cook), his significance as a decorative painter being forgotten. His other claim to fame is that he was accused of raping Artemisia
Gentileschi
; he was eventually acquitted after spending some time in prison.

 
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Tate Gallery
, London.

The national collection of British art and of modern art from
c.
1870 to the present day. It is named after Sir Henry Tate (1819–99), the millionaire inventor of the sugar cube, who in 1890 offered his collection, consisting mainly of the work of Victorian contemporaries, to the nation on condition that the Government found a suitable site for a gallery. After many difficulties the Tate Gallery was opened at Millbank in 1897 in an undistinguished neo-Baroque building designed by Sidney R. J. Smith . On formation, however, it was not an independent gallery of British art as had been envisaged by Henry Tate . It was subordinate to the
National Gallery
and it was intended only for modern British art. It began to be established as a historical collection of British art in 1910 when a collection of works by Alfred
Stevens
was added and a wing was opened to accommodate most of the paintings left in
Turner's
studio at his death, which had previously been housed (but in the main unexhibited) at the National Gallery. In 1916 the Tate was given the additional responsibility of forming the national collection of modern art. It was not until 1954, however, that it became completely independent of the National Gallery (although transfers are still made between the two institutions). There have been several extensions to the building (some of them paid for by Sir Joseph and Lord
Duveen
), and in 1987 a new gallery—the Clore Gallery (named after Sir Charles Clore , 1904–79, a businessman and philanthropist who was one of the Tate's greatest benefactors)—was opened to house works by Turner, including not only the oil paintings already at the Tate, but also watercolours and drawings previously in the
British Museum
. In 1988 a new branch of the Tate Gallery was opened in Liverpool and in 1993 another one in
St Ives
. The creation of these two outstations reflected not only a desire to share the Tate's collections with regional audiences, but also the fact that the gallery had outgrown its site in London. In 1994 the Tate Trustees announced a decision to create a new museum—the Tate Gallery of Modern Art—in the decommissioned Bankside Power Station, a huge and impressive building designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott , occupying a prime site on the Thames opposite St Paul's Cathedral. It is expected to open to the public in the year 2000. The original Tate Gallery at Millbank will then become the Tate Gallery of British Art.

 
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(1885–1953)
. Russian painter, designer, and maker of abstract constructions, the founding figure of
Constructivism
. He ran away to sea at the age of 18 and until 1914 combined painting with the life of a merchant seaman: many of his earlier pictures are of maritime subjects, notably
The Sailor
(Russian Mus., St Petersburg , 1911–12), a self-portrait. From 1910 he exhibited at several avant-garde exhibitions in Russia and worked in close association with
Goncharova
and
Larionov
, who had known him as a boy. In 1914 (not 1913 as long believed) Tatlin visited Berlin and Paris, and met
Picasso
, who inspired his revolutionary
Painted Reliefs
,
Relief Constructions
, and
Corner Reliefs
of 1914 onwards. Only one or two of these survive and most are known only from photographs. It appears that he used a variety of materials—tin, glass, wood, plaster, etc.—with the object of doing away with pictorial illusion. After the October Revolution of 1917 Tatlin's constructions from real materials in real space were felt to be in accordance with the new doctrines and he threw himself whole-heartedly into support of the demand for socially oriented art. In 1919 he was commissioned by the Revolutionary Department of Fine Arts to design the
Monument to the Third International
(i.e. the Third International Communist Congress, to be held in Moscow in 1921). The huge monument was intended for a position in the centre of Moscow; it was to be in glass and iron, and the central glass cylinder was to revolve. A model was exhibited in December 1920 at the exhibition of the VIIIth Congress of the Soviets. The design was condemned by
Gabo
as impracticable and it was never executed (it was intended to be much bigger than the Eiffel Tower), but it is recognized as the outstanding symbol of Soviet Constructivism. The
Monument
was the culmination of Tatlin's artistic career, and the rest of it is something of an anticlimax. He taught and was active in the Soviet programme for the organization of museums, schools, etc. for the propagation of modern artistic culture. His own work was mainly in the field of
applied art
, designing furniture, workers' clothes, etc. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he devoted his energies to designing a glider, which he called
Letatlin
(a compound of his name and the Russian word for ‘to fly’). From the 1930s his main activity was theatre design, and his later years were spent in lonely obscurity. There has even been some suspicion that he lived for some years after his official death date.