bau7: conversational moholy-nagy

Stu­dent with the Bad Chick­en prob­lem is back. And he’s con­vinced he ‘caught’ it in the air – be­cause the pre­vi­ous week we were dis­cussing the Fos­ter Farms sal­mo­nel­la out­break. This con­cept isn’t too far fetched as we jump into today’s über-long dis­cus­sion; the gloves are now off, we’re go­ing into ob­ses­sive tin­ker­ing, be­yond POINT LINE PLANE.

Today’s class be­comes a con­ver­sa­tion of the world-chang­ing work of re­lent­less ex­per­i­menter, Bauhaus mas­ter Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy (1895–1946).

To start, we have to get the pro­nun­ci­a­tion down. Mo­holy-NAWDGE (-ish). We say this a lot. Amer­i­can stu­dents typ­i­cal­ly not too fa­mil­iar with Hun­gar­i­an names.

‘Un­less it’s Span­ish, don’t ex­pect the spelling to match the pro­nun­ci­a­tion.’

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Pho­togram, 1926

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Pho­togram, 1943

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Pho­togram, cir­ca 1922–24

foto
We im­me­di­ate­ly jump into pho­tog­ra­phy. Stu­dents bring in slides, ex­per­i­men­tal art and a lot to say. With some in­ter­est­ing POVs on pho­tog­ra­phy it­self, ‘See­ing things in a pic­ture is a lot dif­fer­ent than what nor­mal­ly see around us. And we don’t al­ways see every­thing in the pho­to. Es­pe­cial­ly in black and white, that’s not the world we see. A pho­to changes it.’

I build off this: ‘Think about this: How does the one ac­tu­al­ly see the world with­out pho­tog­ra­phy?

‘Un­less you’ve ac­tu­al­ly been there, pho­tog­ra­phy is how one ac­tu­al­ly knows what things look like.’

I lose them for a sec­ond, then ask, ‘Have you ever been to Wind­sor Cas­tle? Then how do you know what it looks like?’

Pho­tog­ra­phy.

I fill in a bit about how pho­tog­ra­phy de­vel­oped as a tech­nol­o­gy and art form, ‘Pret­ty much the first 80 or so years was peo­ple try­ing to per­fect fast ex­po­sures and an im­age that wouldn’t van­ish. Af­ter most of that got un­der con­trol (pho­tog­ra­phy is still, though, a tem­po­rary medi­um; old pho­tos fade, dig­i­tal pho­tos can be delet­ed), it was pho­tog­ra­ph­er Al­fred Stieglitz who ar­gued that pho­tog­ra­phy is an­oth­er ART form – and that’s where the im­ages re­al­ly got in­ter­est­ing.

‘Painters re­ject­ed this tech­no­log­i­cal thing as not real art. Same ar­gu­ment we’ve seen with mod­ern art – same ar­gu­ment when com­put­ers be­came an art tool. Same ar­gu­ment with, well, any­thing fuck­ing new.’

‘In pho­tog­ra­phy there is a re­al­i­ty so sub­tle that it be­comes more real than re­al­i­ty.’
–Al­fred Stieglitz

Al­fred Stieglitz, Sun­light and Shad­ow, 1889

Al­fred Stieglitz, The Flat­iron, 1903

‘The en­e­my of pho­tog­ra­phy is the con­ven­tion, the fixed rules of how to do. The sal­va­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy comes from the ex­per­i­ment.’
–Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Pho­togram, cir­ca 1928

The stu­dents are en­am­ored with Moholy-Nagy’s in­ter­est in pho­tograms and how he’d make them, ‘His cam­era-less pho­tos present an­oth­er way of look­ing at the world.’

One stu­dent shows a pho­to­graph she made for a class by ex­pos­ing leaves at dif­fer­ent times in a dark­room (the oth­ers have lots of ques­tions) and how cool it is to work in an ac­tu­al dark­room, be­fore jump­ing into Pho­to­shop. They dis­cuss how these ex­per­i­men­tal tech­niques be­come the art, and the con­cept keeps com­ing up: What would Mo­holy-Nagy do if he had the tech­nol­o­gy of to­day?

An­oth­er stu­dent goes into a de­scrip­tion of the Inkodye process– as a con­tem­po­rary ex­am­ple of some­thing Mo­holy-Nagy could be into.

I men­tion there are a lot of artists work­ing with sim­i­lar tech­niques, such as flom­mist Dan Her­rera and designer/poet Bob Dahlquist.

Dan has tak­en apart scan­ners, cre­at­ed large glass lens­es for them – he is con­stant­ly play­ing around with vin­tage process­es mixed with new me­dia – and he just keeps go­ing. His lat­est work are pure, old fash­ioned tin­types.

Dan Her­rera, Es­tan de Una se­ries

Bob has pur­chased out­dat­ed di­a­zo equip­ment and uses its am­mo­nia-based light ex­po­sure (orig­i­nal­ly used for large blue­prints) to cre­ate new pho­to­graph­ic works.

Bob Dahlquist, al­way­sendeav­or

Most of this think­ing, ab­strac­tion, com­po­si­tion, of course, pi­o­neered by Mo­holy-Nagy and oth­er avant-garde artists of his time.

I men­tion Man Ray (artist with a su­per­hero name) and his tech­nique of so­lar­i­sa­tion; snap the lights on in the dark­room quick­ly, blows out the dark ar­eas of the pho­to.

Man Ray, Un­ti­tled (Meret Op­pen­heim), 1937

And Pho­to­shop – which be­gan as a home­work project (re­al­ly) – makes it pos­si­ble to tin­ker even more.

‘When the true qual­i­ties of pho­tog­ra­phy are rec­og­nized, the process of rep­re­sen­ta­tion by me­chan­i­cal means will be brought to a lev­el of per­fec­tion nev­er be­fore reached. Mod­ern il­lus­trat­ed mag­a­zines are still lag­ging be­hind, con­sid­er­ing their enor­mous po­ten­tial! And to think what they could and must achieve in the field of ed­u­ca­tion and cul­ture.’
–Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy

it’s de­sign
Some­where in here I re­mind that the rea­son they’re tak­ing this course is to have a vi­su­al lan­guage al­ready in place by the time they fire up Adobe Cre­ative Suite (and/or re­lat­ed ap­pli­ca­tions). This, of course, leads to a cri­tique of this stu­dent-made slide pre­sen­ta­tion:

com­pared to this one:

De­sign every­thing.

It’s sort of my own neode­sign­er­flom­mist­phi­los­o­phy­mantra. If you’re go­ing to be a de­sign­er, don’t just throw up a slide where the soft­ware con­trols what you’re do­ing. Every thing you make is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice what you are learn­ing. Work­ing with what you have, make it work!

(and the more you de­sign, the bet­ter you’ll get. Hell, I used to de­sign my col­lec­tion of video­tapes just for prac­tice. Back to Prac­tice Makes Good, from BAU1)

‘When he taught at the Bauhaus, he brought the teach­ing back to the orig­i­nal premise of the school, that is to make it a tru­ly in­no­v­a­tive place where mod­ern art meets mod­ern means of ex­pres­sion and so­lid­i­fied the val­ue of ma­chin­ery and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy for use in vi­su­al or­ga­ni­za­tion of space in the places where we live and breathe.’
–stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tion

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Stage Set­ting for The Tales of Hoff­mann, State Opera, Berlin, 1929

An opera stage, de­signed so the mu­sic can project for­ward to the au­di­ence! Stu­dent notes that the stage is black and white, sim­ple geom­e­try – so the colours of cos­tumes and the per­form­ers stand out. THEY shine over the stage, not the op­po­site.

some art
Stu­dents con­tin­ue to build in­ter­pre­ta­tions as part of their pre­sen­ta­tions – and the cool thing is (fi­nal­ly) hap­pen­ing that I hope hap­pens in all my class­es; they seem to be en­joy­ing not only com­ing up with the ideas, but ac­tu­al­ly work­ing on their projects. Well, that is the stu­dents present (ab­sences are still a prob­lem; es­pe­cial­ly with stu­dents who are bare­ly into the con­cepts of the sec­ond or even third class). Those present are hav­ing fun:

The last one is the lat­est work of the stu­dent who was run­ning away from WHITE SPACE. On left, he start­ed with an il­lus­tra­tion of his son, we note that the in­di­vid­ual el­e­ments in his work are stronger as in­di­vid­ual pieces than a whole, and point out he’s get­ting it. Next step is to move away from the sub­ject mat­ter and build ab­strac­tions that re­al­ly work.

it’s film
Wal­dorf brings in an­oth­er de­tailed re­port – and shows one of Moholy-Nagy’s short ex­per­i­men­tal films:

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Ein Licht­spiel Schwarz Weiss Grau, 1930

The film was cre­at­ed us­ing his Light-Space Mod­u­la­tor, an ex­per­i­men­tal lamp made from found ma­te­ri­als – that could take light, bend it, move it, cre­at­ing new ab­strac­tions (here’s the de­vice in colour) (and yes, I do bring up Mar­vin the Mar­t­ian be­cause I have to).

I note that he was so par­tic­u­lar about de­tails, that one could take any frame from this film and turn it into a piece of art.

She has a very pink hand­out – that I note works great be­cause her print­er ran out of ink. Mo­holy-Nagy would love this sort of ex­per­i­men­tal thing, I’ve even taught class­es where the colour came from this sort of print­er faux pas.

She brings in a lot of Moholy-Nagy’s back­ground; From Hun­gary, added ‘Mo­holy’ to his sur­name (af­ter the name of the Hun­gar­i­an town he grew up in), had a law de­gree, was in World War I, re­placed It­ten as head of the pre­lim­i­nary course at the Bauhaus, et cetera.

‘He turned the Bauhaus into an in­dus­tri­al de­sign school – made it a tru­ly mod­ern place,’ com­ments an­oth­er stu­dent, ‘rather than It­ten be­ing all do what­ev­er the fuck you want while eat­ing gar­lic paste.’

fo­cus
We also put a lot of this into his­tor­i­cal con­text. Class con­ver­sa­tions are great way to get ideas into stu­dent brains.

Be­cause Rus­sia keeps com­ing up in their re­search, I bring up the jump from cu­bism > fu­tur­ism > Russ­ian fu­tur­ism and how the Russ­ian avant-garde re­al­ly took the idea of a mod­ern rev­o­lu­tion and made it the iden­ti­ty (brand) of this new ex­per­i­ment – the So­vi­et Union; which sort of fucked it­self by al­low­ing a para­noid to be in to­tal con­trol of the en­tire coun­try; and how all this was go­ing on and in­flu­enc­ing the Bauhaus (still don’t bring up De Sti­jl tho; gun­na wait). Then on the war front, there were the ab­stract vor­ti­cists, out of Britain, run by a very good writer – and ass­hole – Wyn­d­ham Lewis. Vor­ti­cism-in­spired ab­stract cam­ou­flage for ships – which led to a crack from Pablo Pi­cas­so – and a dis­cus­sion about dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage used in the Gulf War and tech­niques for cam­ou­flage in use to­day.

Stu­dent re­mark: ‘I’ve learned two Russ­ian phras­es this week: Kiss me and Leave me alone.’

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Hun­gar­i­an Land­scape, 1918

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Land­scape with Barbed Wire, cir­ca 1918

moholy-nagy’s jump into art
Moholy-Nagy’s jump into art hap­pened as an ar­tillery of­fi­cer dur­ing World War I – on the front lines against Rus­sia and Italy. He drew what he saw; in the style of the day (one can see the style in­flu­ences of Kandinsky’s Blaue Re­it­ers).

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, That’s Me, 1917

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Re­clin­ing Sol­dier, 1917

The stu­dent pre­sent­ing this also manned ar­tillery in Iraq and has a per­son­al take, ‘You need some­thing to get you through that. Any­thing you could do. And in that time frame – WWI – it was crazy. Art was prob­a­bly the thing that got him through the war.’

The same stu­dent also sums up Moholy-Nagy’s ob­ses­sive work eth­ic, ‘He was a Hun­gar­i­an, lawyer, painter, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, sculp­tor, film­mak­er, de­sign­er, teacher … and on the side, he was a hus­band.’

Which says a lot.

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Self-Por­trait, 1920

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Head (Lu­cia Mo­holy), cir­ca 1926

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Ce­los, 1927

Home­work:

Mo­holy-Nagy CON­STRUCT AS­SIGN­MENT
First, come up with a list of ran­dom words (us­ing a dic­tio­nary helps. Be a DADAist in this con­text – look up what you need – then stop be­ing a DADAist)

Then, cre­ate a Mo­holy-Nagy con­struct.
You can use any ma­te­ri­als, 3D, plas­tics, mu­sic, light, etc.
This time, your square can be any size.
In­cor­po­rate geo­met­ric ren­der­ings of *TY­POG­RA­PHY us­ing at least three of your ran­dom words.

*For TY­POG­RA­PHY, I’m pro­vid­ing stu­dents with a READ­ER copy of con­tent from Jan Tschichold’s Trea­sury of Al­pha­bets and Let­ter­ing (1966). I used to use this (now out of print) vol­ume as a text­book – and there’s good ad­vice in there on how to work with type. But in this case, I’m just ask­ing you to in­ter­pret the font sam­ples as geom­e­try; i.e. ap­ply­ing POINT LINE PLANE to the let­ter­forms.

I quick­ly demon­strate how geom­e­try ap­pears in type:

Plus, there’s this:

And, here’s some­thing that stu­dents from a Dig­i­tal Type course I used to teach once made:

For fur­ther ref­er­ence (will help with this as­sign­ment), look up Bauhaus guy/typographer Her­bert Bay­er (1900–85) and Bauhaus cos­play fan­boy Jan ‘Ivan’ Tschi­chold (1902–74). Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we won’t have time to cov­er their con­tri­bu­tions in this course (I go over them in great de­tail in most of my oth­er cours­es).

Plus, READ De­sign Ba­sics Chap­ter 10, pages 196–201

of­fice hour
Af­ter class I have a long talk with Star Wars – who again, doesn’t have home­work. We dis­cuss what he’s get­ting out of this class, his frus­tra­tions (with life), and I dis­cov­er he has a love of ty­pog­ra­phy. I talk about why all this stuff is im­por­tant (read your text­book!), and how go­ing over all that we’ve cov­ered so far – cred­it or not (I don’t ac­cept late work) mak­ing sure he un­der­stands this work will al­low him to do great things in his cho­sen ma­jor, graph­ic de­sign.

But I re­it­er­ate: I don’t be­lieve in pass­ing stu­dents who do not know the ma­te­r­i­al (I’ve said this a few times). Be­cause this work gets pro­gres­sive­ly more dif­fi­cult (this is the eas­i­est class I teach), and I’ve seen stu­dents’ HEADS EX­PLODE when they move on and can bare­ly do the next lev­el of work.

—steve mehal­lo

Last year, FLOMM founder Steve Mehal­lo re­built a de­sign fun­da­men­tals course into a five week study of the­o­ries and work done at The Bauhaus (1919–33). This BAU blog se­ries will doc­u­ment the lat­est teach­ing of the course – with les­son plan – Sum­mer 2015 to a group of 8 col­lege stu­dents. What’ll hap­pen, who’ll shine, who’ll drop. Names (and some sit­u­a­tions) have been changed to pro­tect the in­no­cent as well as the guilty.

 
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