When, at the end of March 1923, Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, invited Lázsló Moholy-Nagy (Bácsborsód, Hungary, 1895-Chicago, 1946) to join his revolutionary pedagogical project, the news was not very well received.
The teachers already included Paul Klee, Vasily Kandisnky and Oskar Schlemmer.
Moholy-Nagy was a self-taught man with a short five-year career as a visual artist.
He spoke German with a strong Hungarian accent and had no teaching experience.
Why hire someone like that? Some of his colleagues within the school then established in Weimar wondered furiously.
More information
László Moholy-Nagy, light as a medium
However, the charismatic artist was quick to seduce his students.
At the head of the introductory course of the mythical school, he put into practice his innovative pedagogical methods, aimed at expressing the capacity of design to improve all aspects of life and society, and also to blur the barriers that separate the different artistic disciplines.
With the enthusiasm of a child, he encouraged students to unlearn what they had learned, to integrate the technological advances available to them in their projects and to understand that the creative process was more important than the product.
"He personified a new conception of what it meant to be an artist, as well as the very definition of art," says historian Oliver Botar in
The New Bauhaus
,
a
documentary focused on the teaching work of one of the most important and radical figures of the artistic avant-garde of the 20th century.
His significant time at the Bauhaus was just one stage in a unique and fruitful journey
Making a film about someone as visually prolific as Moholy-Nagy is a challenge that Alysa Nahmias, its director, solves with elegance. The film traces the life of the protean author, who managed to move from one artistic genre to another, smoothly, consistently underlining the artist's aesthetic distinctiveness in each of the disciplines. His significant time at the Bauhaus was just one stage in a unique and fruitful journey. In 1937, after settling in Chicago, fleeing the advance of the Nazis, he went on to direct the New Bauhaus. For financial reasons, the school would have to close a year later. Thus, in 1939 he founded the Chicago School of Design, the seed of the current Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology (ITT)."His ten years in Chicago were essential to the history of 20th century art," says Elizabeth Siegel, curator of photography for the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Hungarian author presents himself as someone for whom there are no obstacles; ambitious in his sights and skilled entrepreneur. A self-made artist, who erases his past, changed his last name, Weisz, to leave behind the trauma experienced during his childhood, when he was abandoned by his father. A man who is sometimes insecure, who by habit hides his left hand in portraits, avoiding showing his thumb deformed as a result of an injury during his participation in the First World War. There he would begin drawing while serving the Austro-Hungarian Army as an artillery officer. The pleasure of creating never left him. So when, days before his death, during a conference in New York, he was described as a dilettante, he said he was pleased: “It is something great,since a dilettante is one who does things because he enjoys what he does enormously, and that is what I do, "he replied. "The traumas we experience are what shape us," says Nahmias. “And Moholy-Nagy stands out because he was able to maintain his optimism in times of darkness, war and conflict. Above all, he knew how to keep his trust in humanity. Something very characteristic of modernity. Where does that force come from that pushes you to be so determined and motivated? That is one of the questions I ask the viewer ”.Above all, he knew how to keep his trust in humanity. Something very characteristic of modernity. Where does that force come from that pushes you to be so determined and motivated? That is one of the questions I ask the viewer ”.Above all, he knew how to keep his trust in humanity. Something very characteristic of modernity. Where does that force come from that pushes you to be so determined and motivated? That is one of the questions I ask the viewer ”.
Exterior of the New Bauhaus School of Design in Chicago, in 1938. / Moholy-Nagy Foundation
The presence of the artist's daughter, the archaeologist Hattula Moholy-Nagy - from her second marriage to Sibylle Pietzsch - gives the documentary an intimate tone, reinforced by the intervention of her two grandchildren: the designer Andreas Hug, who trained at the Design Institute of Chicago, and Daniel Hug, current director of the Art Cologne fair.
"One of the themes of the documentary is legacy," says Nahmias.
What does it mean to have a legacy?
What do we contribute to the future?
Moholy always thought long term.
The desire to want to change the world and improve it through art was always latent.
Undoubtedly, his family is a part of this legacy, as are his art and his students ”.
It is the Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist who is in charge of giving voice to the artist's writings: "The basic idea of education at the New Bauhaus is that everyone has talent," he wrote. Talent that emerged when students were able to look with the eyes of a child. Thus, to cultivate the tactile sense, the students made wooden sculptures. They were constantly confused when they saw that the study of biology was part of the curriculum, which would also include lectures, such as those that John Cage, then practically a stranger, would give on music. Upon graduation, students would propagate the philosophy of the school responsible for associating the most innovative designs with everyday objects. Among them we find the curvilinear design of the Dove soap bar,easily adaptable to the shape of the hand, and which has been maintained for 70 years.
“Although he always liked children, we didn't see much of him,” recalls Hattula, alluding to the support the artist received from three women: Lucia Moholy, an official Bauhaus photographer and his first wife; actress Ellen Mark (Gropius's sister-in-law and lover of the artist) and Sibyl / Sybille, his second wife. "I have the impression that none received the deserved recognition", adds the archaeologist. It was with Lucia who, in 1922, he discovered the photograms, during the time they spent photographing a commune of women. Always in the shadow of her husband, Lucia's signature never appeared in the texts written together, as well as in several of the stills they made together. One of the best-known portraits of the author, in which his face is covered by his hand, is the work of Lucia.For years it was referenced as a self-portrait.
Still from a film registered at the Chicago School of Design. / Moholy-Nagy Foundation
"The illiterate of the future will not be those who do not know how to write, but those who do not know how to photograph," would say the visionary artist, who also stood out as a theoretician of the New Vision movement. In order to strengthen the experimental nature of his theories within the field of photography, he hired Arthur Siegel as a professor. He in turn invited Harry Callahan to join the squad. In 1951, Aaron Siskind joined to teach a master's degree in the spirit promulgated by his now-defunct predecessor (Moholy-Nagy died at just 51 years old, a victim of leukemia). Callahan and Siskind would then become the most famous teaching couple in the history of photography in America. They formed a generation that
Aperture
magazine
dedicated the cover of one of its 1961 issues. It includes Ken Josephson, Joseph Sterling, Charles Swedlund, Ray K. Metzker, and Joseph Jachna.
“Moholy-Nagy was never able to separate art from life,” notes Nahmias, “hence one of his most extraordinary creations was his life.
He conceived of art as a constant practice.
He did not attach importance to the created object, but to the perception of the idea that was hidden behind;
the impact of the work on the viewer.
He was a conceptual artist.
I'm very curious to know how today's artists will use technology.
If they will do it as fruitfully as Moholy-Nagy did to help us rethink the world. "
The New Bauhaus
.
(United States, 2019).
Directed by Alysa Nahmias.
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