Maquette of a Monument Symbolising the Liberation of the Spirit 1952

Curator: Here at the Tate Modern, we're looking at Antoine Pevsner's "Maquette of a Monument Symbolising the Liberation of the Spirit". Editor: My first thought? A celestial tumbleweed, all airy grace and controlled chaos. It feels like a cage turned inside out. Curator: Pevsner, brother of fellow constructivist Naum Gabo, aimed to express modern ideas through industrial materials. The spiral form became very important to him. Editor: That spiral! It’s hypnotic. You could lose yourself in its delicate geometry. It's funny that such rigid lines give the feeling of soaring upwards. Curator: It's a testament to the utopian ideals of the Constructivist movement, to their vision of art transforming society after the Russian Revolution. Editor: A cage turned inside out. What would it feel like to build this, one line at a time? The liberation of the spirit, indeed... Curator: Pevsner’s work certainly invites us to think about art's role in envisioning freedom. Editor: Maybe freedom feels like escaping a cage. Maybe it feels like building one. Food for thought.