painting, photography, film, guggenheim

This week­end I was at the Guggen­heim where I saw the Mo­holy-Nagy show – and since I’d nev­er en­coun­tered his work be­fore, my first re­ac­tion was:
 

Pret­ty crazy that he did all this dur­ing the ear­ly 1900s!

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy (1895–1946) orig­i­nal­ly stud­ied to be a lawyer, then dur­ing the First World War, he start­ed sketch­ing – and that led him to pur­su­ing art; but he did­n’t just stick to one medium. 

He ex­per­i­ment­ed in – and with – every­thing; in­vent­ing new ap­proach­es, new tech­nolo­gies and process­es at a time when ab­stract art was con­demned by the au­thor­i­ties – one more thing that sucked about Adolf Hitler.

Seen In­ter­stel­lar? Mo­holy-Nagy’s fin­ger­prints (in­flu­ences, ac­tu­al­ly) are all over Christo­pher Nolan’s movie – but go­ing far­ther back, Mo­holy-Nagy’s own film ef­fects de­but was in Things To Come (1936), tho most of his work end­ed up on the cut­ting room floor (or as ex­tras on the DVD).

Mo­holy-Nagy also in­flu­enced FLOMM, of course – in both game and ed­u­ca­tion. In ar­chi­tec­ture, the NY­Times even sug­gests that the Guggen­heim mu­se­um it­self was built to com­ple­ment Mo­holy-Nagy’s work. It all fits well with­in Frank Lloyd Wright’s mod­ernist spi­ral …

 

Start­ing out, though, I like dark stuff so I grav­i­tat­ed to­wards these …

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Pho­tograms, 1920s

Lots to process = lots of read­ing: Mo­holy-Nagy’s cam­era-less pho­tograms take into ac­count com­po­si­tion, space and form. I thought of my own work, ex­per­i­ment­ing with fax paper.

 

Paint­ings.

 

Mo­holy-Nagy was all about LIGHT – how we see and per­ceive things around us. How light il­lu­mi­nates, or projects. This even re­flects in how he’d paint, use colour, and build.

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, Light Prop for an Elec­tric Stage (repli­ca), 1930

Also known as The Light-Space Mod­u­la­tor – years be­fore the ‘the pew 38’ version.

Lás­zló Mo­holy-Nagy, A Light­play: Black White Gray, cir­ca 1926

His film on light play was amaz­ing (above), Again, pret­ty crazy he did all this so long ago.

This was in front of the light play film.
 

It was all so cool I had to get a shirt. 

Here’s the cat­a­logue.

Mo­holy-Nagy: Fu­ture Present runs thru 7 Sep­tem­ber 2016 at the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Mu­se­um in New York City. THEN, it’ll be at the Art In­sti­tute of Chica­go 2 Oc­to­ber 2016 thru 3 Jan­u­ary 2017; and at LAC­MA 12 Feb­ru­ary thru 18 June 2017.

 

—kylie jack­son

Flom­mist Kylie Jack­son is an in­genue, mod­el, stu­dent, artist, and DJ. Copy­right © 2016 Kylie Jack­son. FLomm ‘fo­to­plas­tique’ im­age of Kylie (up top) craft­ed by mehal­lo, Kylie pho­tographed by David and Tanya Brown.

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