WEBVTT

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Okay, we\'re all set.

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Question:

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Mr. Moholy-Nagy, what is your
attitude toward art today?

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Answer:

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I do not believe so much
in art as in mankind.

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Every man reveals himself,

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much of it is art.

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When we think of artists
in the 20th century,

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we might think of Picasso,
or Magritte, or Kandinsky,

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but why don\'t we think
of László Moholy-Nagy?

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One of the most remarkable

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men, artist, and
craftsmen of the century.

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Certainly one of the great
teachers of our time.

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Moholy was one of the leading figures
of the early 20th century avant-garde.

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He was very radical
and groundbreaking.

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And he really put into question,
\"What is art?\"

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Moholy was one of the most
versatile artists in the 20th century.

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Movie and everything...

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photography, typography,

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theater, very much interested
in theater, product design.

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He also was an incredibly important
teacher in the German Bauhaus,

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and then later started the
New Bauhaus in Chicago and,

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we could see that as a
continuation of the German Bauhaus,

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but I think it\'s so much more.

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Moholy\'s almost ten years
in Chicago were

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absolutely foundational for
the history of 20th century art.

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It was during his time in Chicago that he was
able to realize his vision of a school that

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could unite art and design
and a kind of education,

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that would work toward

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the social betterment of
all citizens through art.

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The Bauhaus was
established in 1919,

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in the provincial
town of Weimar,

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in Central Germany,
by Walter Gropius,

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the hotshot
young architect.

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And in 1923 he invited László Moholy-Nagy
to teach the introductory course.

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The Bauhaus was a
radical experiment that

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really upended teaching
and upended design.

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And their goal was that
design could affect

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every aspect of
life and society.

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You should be bold.

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You should have the courage to be utopian,
and think out certain things

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which may be desirable
for men to have.

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They had this remarkable idea of
training artists and designers together,

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starting with the preliminary
course in which they would

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actually unlearn, perhaps,
what they had learned before.

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They would start from the beginning
with different kinds of materials,

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and color theory and
other kinds of exercises.

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My idea was always, we have
to do something together.

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We have to destroy these
separations between

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painting and sculpture and architecture
and design and so it is all one.

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Gropius had brilliant judgement
in the people he hired.

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He hired Paul Klee,

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he hired the Russian émigré
Wassily Kandinsky,

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he hired Oskar Schlemmer,

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and at the end of March 1923,

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he hired László Moholy-Nagy,
now you have to understand,

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that László Moholy-Nagy had identified as a visual
artist for a grand total of five years at that point.

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He had never gone to art school,

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he spoke German with
a heavy Hungarian accent,

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he had never taught,

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and we know from the private
correspondence of the faculty

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that they were furious.

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Why did he hire this person?

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Moholy is one of
these people who,

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you either really loved
or you really hated.

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I think a lot of the painters were,

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were kind of appalled by him.

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Pushing his machine aesthetic.

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Moholy-Nagy was an
extremely lively personality.

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He was almost
childlike in his interest

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that everything new which
came up in techniques and so on

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electrified him, he
went right after that.

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Gropius was very impressed with
the fact that Moholy-Nagy did not

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focus his writings
or his practice

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solely on art.

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In fact, he recognized that the
kernel of Moholy-Nagy\'s project,

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was really pedagogical.

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It was to train people

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to live happier, more
productive lives in modernity.

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In a technologically
infused environment.

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So in 1924, Moholy had a show
at the Sturm Gallery in Berlin.

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One of the first shows that he had
as a professor at the Bauhaus.

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And he showed these things
that we called telephone pictures.

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These porcelain enamel
on steel paintings

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that were manufactured
by a sign factory.

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I had the factory\'s
color chart before me,

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and I sketched my
paintings on graph paper.

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At the other end of the
telephone the factory supervisor,

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had the same kind of paper,
divided into squares.

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He took down the dictated shapes
in the correct position.

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It was like playing chess
by correspondence.

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We know the story\'s probably not true,
but it doesn\'t matter.

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The point is that you could
produce paintings at different scales,

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without ever touching a canvas
or the paints themselves.

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The gesture was sensational.

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It caused quite a bit of controversy.

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If we can make paintings by telephone,

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why don\'t we throw out Goethe
and just do things by,

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you know, by typewriter and,
forget the quilled script.

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We must demand that painterly methods
of representation shall disappear,

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and their place be taken by
mechanical means of representation.

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His fellow painters,
I think were confused by the fact

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that Moholy-Nagy was
practicing, embodying,

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a new conception of what
it meant to be an artist,

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and a new conception
of what art could be.

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So, he was resented
by the faculty.

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They saw his art as mechanistic,

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they saw him as a techno-mad,

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anti-humanist figure,

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but he was very popular
with the students.

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He was charismatic, he was
good looking, he was charming.

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We know that a number
of young women

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were in love with him,

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and his art career continued to thrive,
so he was a real dynamo

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during those early years
of the Bauhaus.

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He was an X-ray mental fellow,
he tried everything out himself.

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He was perhaps the closest friend
of mine at the Bauhaus.

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Moholy-Nagy quit the Bauhaus
after Gropius resigned in 1928.

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He set up his freelance
studio in Berlin,

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and he was
very successful.

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Very successful.

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In fact he became, I would say,
a minor celebrity in Germany.

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And he met his second wife,
Sibyl, in the early \'30s.

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Then, she wanted a family,

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and that\'s how
Hattula was born.

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Named after a little town
in Finland which he visited,

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with his girlfriend
rather than with Sibyl.

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My dad was waffling,
between

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my mother on the one hand,
and Ellen Frank on the other.

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So my mom, I guess,
pried him loose.

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He didn\'t really want kids,
he couldn\'t see fitting them into his life.

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But she did.

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So he told her that if she
was going to keep the baby,

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she\'d have to raise it.

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I was born in Berlin,
October 11th, 1933.

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People forget, they did not
run for their lives in 1933.

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The National Socialist party
was gaining ground.

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One of the first laws
that was passed

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was restrictions on foreigners
working in Germany.

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He was a Hungarian citizen,

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and it became increasingly
difficult for him to work there.

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And that became clear from the
official cultural policy that Modernism,

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at least left-wing Modernism,
was anathema.

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Abstract art was
always seen as,

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not just provocative,
but revolutionary.

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You make abstract art
not because it looks pretty,

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you make abstract art because
you want to change the world.

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I mean, it might sound crazy
that circles and squares

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are supposed to be the foundation
of a revolutionary society,

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but what\'s at the
heart of it is that

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the way that we interface with
the world is shaped by how we see it.

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A program was introduced
by the Nazis

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to remove

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what they saw as degenerate art
from public collections,

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and these were curated into a big exhibition
that first opened in Munich,

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called the Entartete Kunst Ausstellung,
the Degenerate Art Exhibition.

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It was joked that it was the greatest modernist
exhibition ever put on by anybody, ever seen.

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Moholy-Nagy\'s work
was included as well.

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His art and his

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thinking, this idea of Modernism,
of abstraction, was absolutely

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unwelcome in Nazi Germany,

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and therefore he couldn\'t
make a living there.

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And Moholy-Nagy had to
go abroad to work.

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My dad had connections in Holland.

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He always went where he had connections,
so he went to Amsterdam and,

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he stayed there for a year,
my mom and I were in Berlin.

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And then he decided to move
to England where my sister was born.

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March 25th, 1936 in London.

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When he got to
London, in 1935,

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he and his colleague
György Kepes,

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established a studio that did
advertising and commercial work.

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He\'d bought a house
and he was getting established, but,

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he did jump at the chance
to come to United States.

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And so, this
opportunity comes up

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where there\'s a trade
association in Chicago

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that wants to

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kind of create a school
along Bauhaus lines.

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The Association of Arts and Industries
in Chicago said, \"We need a school,\"

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like the Bauhaus
in Germany,

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that will
help us with

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the creation of
these new, better products

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that were distinctive in their
appearance or function.\"

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And that this was the only way
to get out of the depression.

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So they called Walter Gropius who

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had just taken the job of
Chairman of the Architecture School at Harvard,

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and Gropius said, \"Thanks for
the offer, but I can\'t do it,

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but you should call
my friend Moholy-Nagy.\"

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So Moholy made the
long trip to Chicago,

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and was amazed by all the

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hubbub of the streets and the activity in Chicago
and loved the growth and the optimism,

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and wrote a letter back to his wife saying,
\"this is a wild place, but maybe it\'s worth a try.\"

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So he accepted the job,

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and they decided to
open up the school in

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a mansion owned by
Marshall Field on Prairie Avenue.

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And they called it \"The New Bauhaus:
American School of Design.\"

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If I\'m successful,
the effort will be history.

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It\'s a great opportunity,
and for the time being,

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I see the possibilities
in a rosy light.

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So he comes to
Chicago, he makes

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a huge plan for
his New Bauhaus.

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He writes it all up,

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and he goes and
spends a weekend

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with his old Bauhaus
comrades on Cape Cod.

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So Walter Gropius is there,
and Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer.

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And he shows them his plan
for the New Bauhaus.

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And they all said, \"Well,
it\'s good but it\'s completely

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too ambitious and you
have to cut this down.\"

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And he says, \"Nope, it\'s too late,
it\'s already been published.\"

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The basic idea of the
New Bauhaus education

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is that everyone is talented.

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That was his mantra,
\"Everyone is talented.\"

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And I think he thought,

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the way that you could
release those inherent talents

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was to get people to look
again with the eyes of a child.

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Get rid of the conventions
and teach them to see fresh.

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They would go on walks,
and one student told me about how

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he had them stop
and look at the ground,

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and there was like a little puddle
of spittle on the sidewalk.

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And he said \"Look, look at that!
See all of the reflections and the refractions?\"

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The first year was called
the foundation course,

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everyone needed to be
grounded in this way of seeing,

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they had to learn how to see
and have this kind of

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craftsman approach to problems,
and so they really had to

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learn how to understand materials.

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This was a German
Bauhaus exercise,

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where um, you made these,

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these sculptures out of wood to
cultivate your sense of touch.

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They did not have to look good,
they just had to feel good,

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you know, your hand had to
be comfortable holding it and

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the students would cut them
and polish them and,

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you know you\'d feel the
grooves of your fingers.

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Moholy\'s approach was to investigate
materials and investigate form,

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and this was a building block
to a better sense of design.

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He wanted to figure out,
\"What can paper support?\"

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\"How does light
reflect off of wood?\"

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\"What happens if we

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burn this or bend this or
melt this or dissolve this?\"

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Not the product, but the person,
is the end in view.

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The first year was in many
ways a disaster. [Laughs]

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Some of the students loved him,

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a lot of them thought it was terrible.

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People did not understand
why it was important for

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design students
to study Biology,

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or to have lecturers
come in like John Cage,

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and lecture about,
you know, new music.

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They didn\'t get it.

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In the summer of 1938,

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Moholy mounted an
exhibition of the student work

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from the first year of
the New Bauhaus.

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Everybody\'s really excited to see,
you know, \"What were the results?\"

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And from the criticism that
you can read of that exhibition,

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everybody was
pretty confused.

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These industrialists are
walking through expecting to see

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little miniature
skyscrapers and,

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new designs for coffee cups
and paintings that are beautiful,

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and they were
kind of, you know,

00:19:47.102 --> 00:19:48.937
\"What\'s up?\" you know.

00:19:51.440 --> 00:19:53.317
What are these
constructions made out of?

00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:56.653
Plywood, and paper, and wire.

00:19:56.737 --> 00:20:00.324
And none of this was
immediately sellable,

00:20:00.407 --> 00:20:04.119
all of it was experimentation
and none of it was product.

00:20:04.202 --> 00:20:07.247
So I don\'t know if that was
the reason that the Association

00:20:07.331 --> 00:20:11.793
of Arts and Industries pulled their support,
but it certainly contributed to it.

00:20:13.462 --> 00:20:16.131
The businessmen wanted
basically a vocational school,

00:20:16.214 --> 00:20:19.593
they wanted to
train workers to

00:20:19.676 --> 00:20:21.929
do artistic production
in industry,

00:20:22.012 --> 00:20:24.389
and Moholy of course had
a very different point of view

00:20:24.473 --> 00:20:26.433
on what education should be.

00:20:26.516 --> 00:20:29.019
It wasn\'t something that
was a job training center,

00:20:29.102 --> 00:20:31.521
it was a place to educate
the whole person,

00:20:31.605 --> 00:20:34.274
the whole mind,
the whole spirit.

00:20:34.983 --> 00:20:38.403
There was an incredibly
fractious falling out between

00:20:38.487 --> 00:20:41.698
Moholy and the Association.

00:20:42.157 --> 00:20:45.243
The closure of the school
resulted in him

00:20:45.327 --> 00:20:48.163
suing the Association because
he had a five year contract,

00:20:48.246 --> 00:20:51.625
and he needed five years to
get the school off the ground.

00:20:53.001 --> 00:20:56.880
The Association lodged
really wild accusations

00:20:56.964 --> 00:21:00.592
that he was quote-unquote
Hitlerizing the students.

00:21:01.218 --> 00:21:03.637
Because he had a
thick Hungarian accent,

00:21:03.720 --> 00:21:07.975
and he was a member
of the German Bauhaus.

00:21:08.517 --> 00:21:13.730
And so the failure of the
New Bauhaus under Moholy\'s watch,

00:21:13.855 --> 00:21:16.525
I think he took very personally.

00:21:19.569 --> 00:21:23.073
My failings give me
impetus in the fight.

00:21:23.699 --> 00:21:25.617
They sharpen my effort.

00:21:27.786 --> 00:21:31.206
Moholy was always
incredibly ambitious.

00:21:31.581 --> 00:21:33.375
He is a person who

00:21:33.458 --> 00:21:38.714
does constantly reinvent himself
out of sheer necessity.

00:21:48.640 --> 00:21:52.436
When I was a child,
I thought that I was a king\'s son,

00:21:52.519 --> 00:21:55.063
who had been
exchanged for another,

00:21:55.147 --> 00:21:58.108
but who later would
come into his own.

00:21:59.651 --> 00:22:02.237
The story is, he was
born in this house.

00:22:03.447 --> 00:22:05.991
It\'s on the outskirts
of Bácsborsód.

00:22:06.074 --> 00:22:08.160
It\'s a two street town
sort of in the middle of,

00:22:08.243 --> 00:22:10.328
of nowhere in
Southern Hungary.

00:22:10.954 --> 00:22:11.997
And um,

00:22:13.415 --> 00:22:17.127
it\'s abandoned now,
nobody lives there.

00:22:18.420 --> 00:22:20.672
I think there\'s a lot
of tragedy there that

00:22:20.756 --> 00:22:23.258
I don\'t really know about,
it\'s just sort of

00:22:23.341 --> 00:22:24.676
hinted at.

00:22:25.135 --> 00:22:27.304
It was a broken family.

00:22:28.430 --> 00:22:30.640
He was born
László Weisz,

00:22:30.891 --> 00:22:33.977
into a family which
kind of fell apart,

00:22:34.061 --> 00:22:35.562
uh, early on.

00:22:36.021 --> 00:22:41.651
My father\'s father left the family
when my dad was maybe five or six.

00:22:42.360 --> 00:22:44.696
The family had
made up a legend that

00:22:44.780 --> 00:22:47.824
grandfather had gone to
America and he died there.

00:22:48.033 --> 00:22:50.160
He never left Hungary.

00:22:50.786 --> 00:22:55.999
So, my grandmother took
the three boys to her family

00:22:56.083 --> 00:22:59.252
and my father and his
brother Ákos were raised

00:22:59.336 --> 00:23:02.339
by their uncle, Gusztáv.

00:23:02.547 --> 00:23:04.883
And, I think it was
he that made sure

00:23:04.966 --> 00:23:07.844
that the boys had
a very good education,

00:23:07.928 --> 00:23:11.890
and they changed their name
to his, which was Nagy.

00:23:13.141 --> 00:23:15.185
The elephant in the room,
of course,

00:23:15.268 --> 00:23:18.980
is that side of the family\'s
Jewish heritage.

00:23:21.191 --> 00:23:25.445
I don\'t think Moholy wanted to
abandon Judaism per se,

00:23:25.529 --> 00:23:30.534
but society as a whole during that
time period there was insanely stratified.

00:23:30.617 --> 00:23:34.329
And so, to have any
sort of chance at mobility,

00:23:34.413 --> 00:23:37.541
I think he did
whatever he could.

00:23:38.583 --> 00:23:40.252
When he converted

00:23:40.335 --> 00:23:44.464
from Judaism to the Hungarian
Reformed Church in 1918,

00:23:44.548 --> 00:23:47.926
he changed his name from
László Nagy to Moholy-Nagy,

00:23:48.009 --> 00:23:50.345
with a \"y\" at the
end of Mohol,

00:23:50.428 --> 00:23:54.432
which indicates
noble origins.

00:23:54.516 --> 00:23:59.437
So that indicates to me that he wanted
to give the impression that he was royal gentry.

00:24:02.399 --> 00:24:05.861
I think Moholy knew
that he needed to

00:24:05.944 --> 00:24:09.906
really reinvent his
entire origin story

00:24:09.990 --> 00:24:12.576
in order to have any sort
of chance at success.

00:24:12.659 --> 00:24:15.453
Because he just didn\'t
want to be known as

00:24:15.537 --> 00:24:17.831
a kid that had been
abandoned by his father,

00:24:17.914 --> 00:24:19.791
and had grown up poor.

00:24:32.179 --> 00:24:35.682
In World War I, he joined
as an officer in the artillery.

00:24:35.849 --> 00:24:37.225
He was 20.

00:24:38.476 --> 00:24:40.979
And his family bought
him a horse [laughs].

00:24:41.062 --> 00:24:46.651
And there\'s a picture of him in
uniform with a saber and all that.

00:24:47.444 --> 00:24:50.447
Oh he hated it,
he was a pacifist.

00:24:51.031 --> 00:24:54.784
He couldn\'t see that war
had any useful function.

00:25:13.386 --> 00:25:15.889
That\'s when he started
drawing on postcards.

00:25:15.972 --> 00:25:20.352
He made, you know, hundreds
of these little sketches on postcards.

00:25:28.026 --> 00:25:29.736
He was wounded.

00:25:29.986 --> 00:25:32.113
He got shrapnel
in the left thumb.

00:25:32.364 --> 00:25:35.367
So his left thumb was,
was always deformed.

00:25:37.410 --> 00:25:40.121
My sister and I thought
it was fascinating.

00:25:41.164 --> 00:25:43.166
But it sort of marked him.

00:25:44.626 --> 00:25:48.922
And you almost never see
photographs of that left hand after that.

00:25:49.923 --> 00:25:53.927
You see photographs of him,
but the left hand doesn\'t show.

00:25:57.305 --> 00:26:00.976
He decided to become
an artist after the war.

00:26:01.059 --> 00:26:05.689
And he landed in Berlin
in the spring of 1920.

00:26:15.573 --> 00:26:17.951
Berlin was the
Big Apple of the day,

00:26:18.034 --> 00:26:20.537
for Eastern Europeans.

00:26:21.121 --> 00:26:22.414
He got there,

00:26:22.497 --> 00:26:26.293
and he was able to establish himself
almost immediately in these

00:26:26.376 --> 00:26:29.421
avant garde artistic circles.

00:26:35.176 --> 00:26:40.890
From looking at Moholy\'s
early work, from 1920, 21, 22,

00:26:40.974 --> 00:26:46.062
he went through so many
different styles in such a short time,

00:26:46.187 --> 00:26:48.231
sometimes even parallel.

00:26:48.440 --> 00:26:52.152
I think he was
trying to find his voice.

00:26:54.362 --> 00:26:57.282
My father had an inkling that
he was going to be famous.

00:26:57.365 --> 00:27:00.035
He wanted to be famous.
You know he,

00:27:00.118 --> 00:27:01.578
really worked at it.

00:27:01.661 --> 00:27:04.664
And he took
a new persona.

00:27:05.832 --> 00:27:09.127
His attraction to Modernism,

00:27:09.669 --> 00:27:15.759
was a way to break out of
the situation that he grew up in.

00:27:15.842 --> 00:27:18.636
It was a means
to escape that.

00:27:20.472 --> 00:27:24.517
All this stuff was like, exploding,
and my dad was right in the middle of it.

00:27:24.601 --> 00:27:27.479
Or he was trying to get
into the middle of it.

00:27:27.562 --> 00:27:30.148
And so it was through
these circles that he met

00:27:30.690 --> 00:27:33.568
his first wife,
Lucia Schulz,

00:27:34.110 --> 00:27:35.653
brilliant woman.

00:27:35.737 --> 00:27:40.033
An editor who had studied
Art History and Literature.

00:27:40.450 --> 00:27:42.369
And they fell in love.

00:27:43.912 --> 00:27:47.165
During 1922 into 1923
he\'s on a real roll.

00:27:47.248 --> 00:27:51.669
This is his annus mirabilis,
this is his miraculous year.

00:27:52.170 --> 00:27:55.173
He\'s supported
financially by Lucia,

00:27:55.507 --> 00:27:59.552
he was publishing works,
photograms, arworks,

00:27:59.719 --> 00:28:04.808
and basically some of the earliest texts
in the 20th century on media theory.

00:28:06.476 --> 00:28:12.107
So he was doing very well,
promoting himself, making exhibitions,

00:28:12.190 --> 00:28:16.486
and then he met Gropius
and went to the Bauhaus.

00:28:17.570 --> 00:28:21.074
The soonest he could,
he went west.

00:28:21.157 --> 00:28:22.450
And he never went back.

00:28:22.534 --> 00:28:25.078
That\'s the thing that\'s
very important to note.

00:28:25.161 --> 00:28:28.039
Once he was at the Bauhaus,
he just kept going further west,

00:28:28.123 --> 00:28:31.334
and I think that\'s
indicative of who he was.

00:28:40.135 --> 00:28:42.929
I have never been able
to stand unfinished canvases,

00:28:43.012 --> 00:28:45.181
half-written books.

00:28:45.723 --> 00:28:48.726
Chicago is not only
an unfinished canvas,

00:28:49.602 --> 00:28:51.563
it\'s a smeared-over sketch,

00:28:51.646 --> 00:28:54.774
which I have to clean up
and set straight.

00:28:58.611 --> 00:29:02.574
My Astor Street memories of father
painting probably date to the period

00:29:02.699 --> 00:29:07.412
after the New Bauhaus
closed in June of 1938.

00:29:10.540 --> 00:29:15.211
My sister and I were strictly forbidden
to get within six feet of the easel.

00:29:16.171 --> 00:29:20.091
We marvelled at his ability
to draw a perfect circle

00:29:20.175 --> 00:29:23.428
with one great sweep of his hand.

00:29:26.764 --> 00:29:28.892
My dad was out of a job.

00:29:29.392 --> 00:29:31.311
So he did a lot of painting,

00:29:31.394 --> 00:29:35.565
freelanced that
summer and that fall.

00:29:35.982 --> 00:29:39.861
And then he had the inspiration
to start his own school.

00:29:41.070 --> 00:29:43.865
My mom really
supported dad.

00:29:44.908 --> 00:29:47.869
She was a large part
of his success.

00:29:49.704 --> 00:29:53.249
Moholy always had a lot
of people that supported him,

00:29:53.333 --> 00:29:57.045
and he was able to
reopen the school,

00:29:57.128 --> 00:30:01.925
his own school, with the
help of Walter Paepcke.

00:30:02.759 --> 00:30:06.763
Walter Paepcke was the head of the
Container Corporation and was Moholy\'s

00:30:06.846 --> 00:30:09.849
primary backer at the school.

00:30:10.558 --> 00:30:14.479
So my dad opened up the new school,
with Paepcke\'s support.

00:30:14.854 --> 00:30:16.731
And he managed to persuade

00:30:17.023 --> 00:30:21.611
friends and colleagues to teach
a first year without salary.

00:30:22.487 --> 00:30:27.534
So he got the School of Design
in Chicago underway in \'39.

00:30:32.997 --> 00:30:37.544
Students started to tell each other about it,
just like in the original Bauhaus,

00:30:37.627 --> 00:30:39.796
and people started going there.

00:30:42.006 --> 00:30:43.591
Like the Bauhaus,

00:30:43.675 --> 00:30:47.845
it was an international thing, and people
were coming from all over the place.

00:30:48.263 --> 00:30:51.933
And how did they vet students?
I think they didn\'t vet them at all.

00:30:52.016 --> 00:30:53.726
I think Moholy wanted students

00:30:53.810 --> 00:30:57.939
and if you were interested in coming
he said, \"We have a place for you.\"

00:31:16.207 --> 00:31:19.919
There were 25 or 26 of us,

00:31:20.587 --> 00:31:22.589
and they would
be talking about,

00:31:22.797 --> 00:31:25.133
\"What the hell is going
on around here?

00:31:25.216 --> 00:31:27.093
\"What are we doing?\"

00:31:27.594 --> 00:31:30.888
You really felt confused
at first, and then it would

00:31:30.972 --> 00:31:33.933
gradually come together.

00:31:34.225 --> 00:31:38.146
The education
was doing.

00:31:38.438 --> 00:31:41.190
It was not
reading a book.

00:31:41.274 --> 00:31:45.320
You got involved
with projects.

00:31:45.820 --> 00:31:49.741
One of the provisions of the
school was that every student

00:31:49.824 --> 00:31:53.161
know how to use the
table saw, the jigsaw,

00:31:53.369 --> 00:31:57.790
every tool, every machine
in the building. We had to learn

00:31:58.124 --> 00:32:00.668
how to take it apart,
put it together,

00:32:01.002 --> 00:32:03.087
and how to use it safely.

00:32:03.504 --> 00:32:10.428
And that gives a creative artist
tremendous power.

00:32:11.971 --> 00:32:15.683
They wanted you to find
your own creative way.

00:32:16.726 --> 00:32:21.064
There weren\'t slides
or anything, it was a definite

00:32:21.564 --> 00:32:24.359
project that you
would start with.

00:32:24.609 --> 00:32:27.945
This is, we had to do
something where a lot of stuff,

00:32:28.029 --> 00:32:30.323
so we collected garbage,

00:32:30.406 --> 00:32:32.784
and this is the
worst one I ever did,

00:32:32.867 --> 00:32:36.621
it looks like a pile
of garbage, doesn\'t it?

00:32:42.043 --> 00:32:44.587
I think Art History was
incorporated into a lot of the classes,

00:32:44.671 --> 00:32:47.423
but I don\'t think they actually
taught art history.

00:32:47.507 --> 00:32:49.467
I mean the nice thing
with Moholy was that,

00:32:49.550 --> 00:32:52.804
artists who were part of what we
now call Art History might be

00:32:52.887 --> 00:32:54.764
passing through
Chicago and he could

00:32:54.847 --> 00:32:57.308
bring them to the
school to lecture.

00:32:57.392 --> 00:32:59.644
The most momentous one

00:32:59.727 --> 00:33:02.355
was Buckminster Fuller.

00:33:02.438 --> 00:33:07.443
There was a talk, because no one
knew what he was talking about, [laughs].

00:33:07.527 --> 00:33:12.156
And it went on, and on,
and on, and on.

00:33:13.157 --> 00:33:16.452
They could not keep
that guy down.

00:33:16.536 --> 00:33:19.247
One of the student counselors

00:33:19.330 --> 00:33:22.792
walked over to him after
over an hour of speaking,

00:33:22.875 --> 00:33:26.921
and told him that everybody
would like to go to the bathroom.

00:33:27.004 --> 00:33:29.841
Would you mind
cutting it short?

00:33:32.885 --> 00:33:34.971
Buckminster Fuller taught here,

00:33:35.888 --> 00:33:38.141
György Kepes, who
became the head of

00:33:38.224 --> 00:33:41.018
the Center for Advanced
Visual Studies at MIT,

00:33:41.144 --> 00:33:43.104
taught here.

00:33:44.313 --> 00:33:45.565
In 1938,

00:33:45.648 --> 00:33:48.776
Moholy invited Marli Ehrman
to come from Europe

00:33:48.860 --> 00:33:51.779
to head the weaving
workshop in Chicago.

00:33:51.863 --> 00:33:54.323
They knew each other
through the Bauhaus.

00:33:55.074 --> 00:33:57.368
They all believed in
making a new world,

00:33:57.452 --> 00:33:59.120
They were busy
inventing a new world,

00:33:59.203 --> 00:34:02.248
And that\'s why they came,
it wasn\'t these high salaries,

00:34:02.331 --> 00:34:05.168
they never knew if they
were ever going to be paid.

00:34:05.960 --> 00:34:08.045
The teachers were like students.

00:34:08.212 --> 00:34:10.965
I mean they rolled up their sleeves
and got busy with you.

00:34:11.048 --> 00:34:15.011
We didn\'t have
typical classrooms.

00:34:15.636 --> 00:34:18.639
We moved where
the teacher was.

00:34:19.724 --> 00:34:25.271
We had clay studios,
we had painting studios, we had

00:34:25.480 --> 00:34:30.276
a photography studio
and a motion picture studio.

00:34:30.985 --> 00:34:36.365
And it all went on on the
second floor of this bread factory.

00:34:36.449 --> 00:34:38.868
It was wonderful [laughs].

00:34:38.951 --> 00:34:42.914
It was gorgeous,
it was just...

00:34:42.997 --> 00:34:47.460
I can\'t tell you how
exciting a place it was.

00:34:48.085 --> 00:34:52.215
It\'s a space waiting
for things to happen.

00:34:54.926 --> 00:34:58.805
And above it is the practice
space for Chez Paree,

00:34:58.888 --> 00:35:01.474
which is this big cabaret,
in those years

00:35:01.557 --> 00:35:05.311
when Chicago was the place, you know,
this is where Durante went.

00:35:05.645 --> 00:35:07.563
It\'s still there,
the Chez Paree,

00:35:07.688 --> 00:35:10.024
we could hear about
four o\'clock or five o\' clock,

00:35:10.107 --> 00:35:13.653
when those dancers
would be hitting the floor,

00:35:13.736 --> 00:35:16.197
And we knew what time it was.

00:35:16.405 --> 00:35:19.909
Every time the police
came to close them down,

00:35:20.034 --> 00:35:21.744
here are these...

00:35:21.828 --> 00:35:23.788
less-clad women,

00:35:23.871 --> 00:35:26.207
running through [laughs]
the school.

00:35:26.666 --> 00:35:30.711
They have a kitchen,
and they\'re open late at night.

00:35:30.795 --> 00:35:34.549
We were open late at night
because we had projects to

00:35:34.632 --> 00:35:37.510
finish and we were
in the workshop,

00:35:37.593 --> 00:35:40.388
and they brought us food!

00:35:41.973 --> 00:35:44.976
Well those were
memorable nights when

00:35:45.059 --> 00:35:49.397
the lights are blazing, the machines
are going and we\'re all working.

00:35:49.689 --> 00:35:52.817
When we didn\'t
have to! [laughs].

00:35:53.860 --> 00:35:57.947
I think what they created at the School
of Design and the Institute was something

00:35:58.030 --> 00:36:01.158
that was constantly
veined with joy.

00:36:01.284 --> 00:36:04.328
You know, when you see films
of what they were doing,

00:36:04.412 --> 00:36:08.374
there\'s an immense amount
of constant pleasure going on.

00:36:10.167 --> 00:36:12.461
They didn\'t care about
making precious objects,

00:36:12.545 --> 00:36:14.714
they cared about
the process and

00:36:14.714 --> 00:36:17.174
the act of creation in
making something new.

00:36:17.425 --> 00:36:20.177
It was the world
they were designing.

00:36:24.348 --> 00:36:28.394
A lot of these experimental processes
actually did have applications.

00:36:28.477 --> 00:36:31.814
For example,
the hand sculptures.

00:36:32.315 --> 00:36:35.651
They become the
basis for the kinds of

00:36:35.735 --> 00:36:40.114
molded products that
ergonomically fit your hand.

00:36:40.740 --> 00:36:45.328
A student named Nolan Rhoads
designed this clamshell telephone.

00:36:45.536 --> 00:36:49.123
Unfortunately it was never made,
it was obviously too far-fetched for

00:36:49.206 --> 00:36:52.793
current tastes, but certainly years later
it could have worked.

00:36:53.169 --> 00:36:55.546
From Lever House
in New York City,

00:36:55.630 --> 00:36:58.716
comes the greatest skincare
discovery of our time.

00:36:58.799 --> 00:37:01.052
Its name is Dove.

00:37:01.344 --> 00:37:05.723
This is an example of how
Moholy\'s hand sculpture class

00:37:05.806 --> 00:37:07.767
became a best-selling product.

00:37:08.225 --> 00:37:11.938
Basically it was made the same as all the
other soap brands that Lever Brothers made.

00:37:12.021 --> 00:37:15.191
There\'s nothing extraordinary
about the making of this soap bar.

00:37:15.274 --> 00:37:17.234
What was extraordinary
is the shape of it,

00:37:17.443 --> 00:37:19.487
and how it has retained,

00:37:19.612 --> 00:37:24.992
not only its shape in the soap dish,
but the shape in our brains.

00:37:25.034 --> 00:37:26.827
If you say \"Dove Soap Bar\"
to anybody,

00:37:26.911 --> 00:37:31.248
they\'re going to know what you\'re
talking about, and here it is 70 years later.

00:37:31.874 --> 00:37:34.502
That was one of the
perfect examples of how

00:37:34.585 --> 00:37:37.129
the School of Design and the
New Bauhaus was supposed to work.

00:37:37.213 --> 00:37:40.216
To take something
that was tactile, and

00:37:40.299 --> 00:37:41.259
an experiment,

00:37:41.342 --> 00:37:45.012
and then turn it into something that
millions of people are using every day.

00:37:46.389 --> 00:37:49.392
One of the most
ubiquitous products that

00:37:49.475 --> 00:37:51.978
came out of the
legacy of the school

00:37:52.061 --> 00:37:53.562
was the honey bear.

00:37:53.646 --> 00:37:57.191
Most people don\'t know this,
but it was designed by Nathan Lerner,

00:37:57.274 --> 00:37:59.527
who was one of
the first five students

00:37:59.610 --> 00:38:02.989
in the graduating class
from the School of Design.

00:38:03.781 --> 00:38:07.159
\"Not the product, but the
person is the end in view.\"

00:38:07.326 --> 00:38:11.330
Can be interpreted from the
point of view of the designer,

00:38:11.455 --> 00:38:15.418
and from the point of view of the
person the designer is designing for,

00:38:15.501 --> 00:38:18.379
which is the user of
the product, of course.

00:38:18.462 --> 00:38:20.673
When we invite a
product into our house,

00:38:20.798 --> 00:38:25.553
we have certain needs, and those needs
need to be fulfilled by that product.

00:38:25.636 --> 00:38:29.557
So the thought of how
design serves a social good,

00:38:29.765 --> 00:38:32.268
of course is very important there.

00:38:43.863 --> 00:38:46.449
I\'m convinced that
a balanced education

00:38:46.532 --> 00:38:48.701
in intellectual and
emotional matters

00:38:48.784 --> 00:38:50.911
is the main requirement.

00:38:51.245 --> 00:38:53.914
However, we constantly have to prove,

00:38:53.998 --> 00:38:58.085
with practical products,
that we are worthy of support.

00:39:02.965 --> 00:39:07.219
Moholy was an idealist and a
pragmatist at the same time.

00:39:08.054 --> 00:39:13.601
He had great ideas about how art
and design could lift up society.

00:39:13.684 --> 00:39:18.397
And he also knew how to work with the people
who were keeping the school afloat.

00:39:18.564 --> 00:39:21.192
Today it is the business
corporation which often acts

00:39:21.275 --> 00:39:24.320
as sponsor to some of
America\'s leading artists.

00:39:24.403 --> 00:39:26.697
The American Container
Corporation in Chicago

00:39:26.781 --> 00:39:29.575
is the undisputed leader among
the companies which have put

00:39:29.658 --> 00:39:32.328
fine paintings to work
for their products.

00:39:33.329 --> 00:39:35.831
Any discussion of
Moholy in Chicago

00:39:35.915 --> 00:39:38.417
has to include
Walter Paepcke.

00:39:39.043 --> 00:39:42.671
Walter Paepcke was the chairman
of Container Corporation.

00:39:42.922 --> 00:39:45.925
And he was selling a commodity,
paperboard boxes,

00:39:46.008 --> 00:39:48.969
and he wanted to try to
distinguish himself.

00:39:49.053 --> 00:39:51.639
And so they got involved
with artists to produce

00:39:51.722 --> 00:39:53.766
advertising for
the corporation,

00:39:53.849 --> 00:39:56.060
to kind of show,
we\'re good guys,

00:39:56.143 --> 00:39:58.229
industry is not all terrible.

00:39:58.813 --> 00:40:04.276
We in Container Corporation do not
believe in the ivory tower concept of art.

00:40:06.237 --> 00:40:08.197
We have used
many eminent artists

00:40:08.280 --> 00:40:10.407
in our various
advertising series,

00:40:10.491 --> 00:40:12.743
and we think to our
mutual advantage.

00:40:13.452 --> 00:40:16.372
And Elizabeth, his wife,

00:40:16.455 --> 00:40:18.499
her name was Pussy Paepcke,

00:40:18.624 --> 00:40:21.293
became a major supporter
and believer in Moholy,

00:40:21.377 --> 00:40:24.171
and that led to Walter
supporting Moholy.

00:40:31.345 --> 00:40:34.181
Moholy absolutely
relied on him, not only

00:40:34.265 --> 00:40:39.019
for financial help, but for
organizational help and for outreach.

00:40:40.646 --> 00:40:43.607
He helped Moholy put
the school on its feet.

00:40:44.733 --> 00:40:47.194
But changed its name
from the New Bauhaus to

00:40:47.278 --> 00:40:49.113
the School of Design.

00:40:49.196 --> 00:40:53.200
And eventually changed its name
to the Institute of Design.

00:40:54.702 --> 00:40:57.246
Paepcke gave him his
farm in Somonauk to

00:40:57.329 --> 00:40:59.165
have a kind of
summer program

00:40:59.248 --> 00:41:01.750
where the girls would be able
to get some fresh air,

00:41:01.834 --> 00:41:04.295
and Sibyl would
work even harder.

00:41:04.378 --> 00:41:07.506
It was another way for
him to make money.

00:41:07.590 --> 00:41:11.469
Paepcke really underwrote
Moholy through these years.

00:41:13.345 --> 00:41:15.556
Paepcke rented the
summer school

00:41:15.764 --> 00:41:19.643
to the Institute of Design
for a dollar a year.

00:41:21.687 --> 00:41:23.522
Paepcke used to ride over

00:41:23.606 --> 00:41:26.442
and play chess with
my dad, I remember that.

00:41:27.651 --> 00:41:30.404
They were two
European men together,

00:41:30.487 --> 00:41:34.450
they were able to enjoy
each other\'s company.

00:41:34.700 --> 00:41:38.370
And I think that
Paepcke enjoyed the

00:41:38.454 --> 00:41:40.956
artistic cache that
Moholy brought

00:41:41.040 --> 00:41:43.250
and Moholy liked having
somebody who could

00:41:43.334 --> 00:41:45.336
pay for all kinds of stuff.

00:41:49.215 --> 00:41:50.507
The amount of money that

00:41:50.591 --> 00:41:52.676
the government paid
for me to go to school

00:41:52.760 --> 00:41:56.847
did not cover the cost of a lot
of that stuff, I assure you.

00:41:56.931 --> 00:42:02.144
But it was there, he made sure
you had what to work with.

00:42:08.692 --> 00:42:10.903
The provocative statement
of modern art

00:42:10.986 --> 00:42:15.532
is constantly annulled by
checkbook and cocktail party.

00:42:16.992 --> 00:42:19.161
Am I on the same way?

00:42:21.914 --> 00:42:27.086
He spent more than half of his time
travelling, raising money for the school.

00:42:27.169 --> 00:42:29.797
School was always in
the edges of closing.

00:42:30.714 --> 00:42:32.841
Apparently he\'s like,
really bad at fundraising

00:42:32.925 --> 00:42:34.760
since he\'s always
pulling people aside

00:42:34.843 --> 00:42:37.012
and stage whisper,
\"How much is he worth?\"

00:42:37.096 --> 00:42:39.348
He got something
of a reputation

00:42:39.431 --> 00:42:42.977
after a while of being somebody
who was always trying to

00:42:43.060 --> 00:42:45.729
get money out of people,
which he reasonably was

00:42:45.813 --> 00:42:48.899
because he wanted to
keep the school open.

00:42:48.983 --> 00:42:53.028
He was a huckster, he
would go out and find people,

00:42:53.487 --> 00:42:57.324
talk to people,
and proposition them.

00:42:57.574 --> 00:43:00.953
Anything to get a few bucks.

00:43:01.036 --> 00:43:03.956
Moholy is an artist
who understands,

00:43:04.081 --> 00:43:06.750
experimentation
is not free.

00:43:06.917 --> 00:43:07.918
And so,

00:43:08.002 --> 00:43:11.046
the success and the viability
of the New Bauhaus

00:43:11.130 --> 00:43:14.216
and then School of Design
was dependent,

00:43:14.300 --> 00:43:17.553
entirely, on Moholy\'s
ability to raise funds

00:43:17.636 --> 00:43:19.263
and also make
an argument

00:43:19.346 --> 00:43:24.393
for how the school
would benefit industry.

00:43:31.191 --> 00:43:33.110
Moholy wanted
for his students

00:43:33.193 --> 00:43:36.280
to be involved in the
city\'s industrial potential.

00:43:36.488 --> 00:43:38.532
It was a
Midwestern city,

00:43:38.615 --> 00:43:41.910
with the rail lines right
in the city center.

00:43:41.994 --> 00:43:45.289
Products were distributed through
the whole country through a network of

00:43:45.372 --> 00:43:47.499
rail lines and
production lines,

00:43:47.583 --> 00:43:49.168
and he wanted
his students

00:43:49.251 --> 00:43:52.129
to be able to design
for that future.

00:43:54.548 --> 00:43:56.592
The job of the
School of Design was to

00:43:56.675 --> 00:43:59.094
get people out there to
get jobs and make stuff.

00:43:59.178 --> 00:44:01.680
Their job wasn\'t to go
live a little garret studio

00:44:01.764 --> 00:44:04.224
and produce little
one-offs for art shows.

00:44:04.308 --> 00:44:07.353
They were supposed to get jobs
and make things that people saw,

00:44:07.436 --> 00:44:09.146
and bought and lived with.

00:44:13.650 --> 00:44:15.861
He was trying
to adapt to

00:44:15.944 --> 00:44:18.614
the realities of
American capitalism,

00:44:19.740 --> 00:44:21.617
and then the
war breaks out,

00:44:22.534 --> 00:44:26.205
and suddenly it\'s a completely
different situation again.

00:44:31.543 --> 00:44:37.299
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941,

00:44:37.758 --> 00:44:41.553
a date which will live in infamy.

00:44:42.054 --> 00:44:46.892
The United States of America was
suddenly and deliberately attacked

00:44:47.184 --> 00:44:50.145
by the Empire of Japan.

00:44:50.604 --> 00:44:52.731
From the homefront
to the battlefront,

00:44:52.815 --> 00:44:56.985
America\'s 130 million
citizens are in the war.

00:44:57.111 --> 00:45:00.155
A year ago, these girls
made automobile tires.

00:45:00.239 --> 00:45:03.367
Today they inspect some
of the 1,500 precision parts

00:45:03.534 --> 00:45:06.787
that go into the making
of Bofors Anti-Aircraft Guns.

00:45:08.539 --> 00:45:10.082
This is America.

00:45:10.416 --> 00:45:13.710
America, where we make
war with machines.

00:45:14.753 --> 00:45:17.214
The school was impacted
by the war in many ways.

00:45:17.714 --> 00:45:19.425
Enrollment went down.

00:45:20.008 --> 00:45:23.387
Men were sent off to war,
that caused financial problems.

00:45:24.179 --> 00:45:27.766
And then, scarcity of materials.

00:45:28.350 --> 00:45:33.355
Moholy realizes that he has to
adapt the curriculum of the school

00:45:33.522 --> 00:45:36.024
to this new reality
of a war economy.

00:45:36.108 --> 00:45:39.695
And he does it, as usual,
with brilliance and with originality.

00:45:49.204 --> 00:45:50.873
Being a pragmatist,

00:45:51.039 --> 00:45:54.543
he tried to figure out how
could the Institute of Design

00:45:54.626 --> 00:45:56.962
participate in the war effort.

00:45:57.337 --> 00:46:00.549
So they developed
camouflage courses.

00:46:02.176 --> 00:46:06.513
How can we make big buildings,
for example, disappear?

00:46:08.557 --> 00:46:10.726
Part of that
initiative was,

00:46:10.809 --> 00:46:15.063
how you might actually
camouflage the entire lakefront,

00:46:15.814 --> 00:46:21.862
therefore keeping Chicago
safe from fighter planes.

00:46:21.945 --> 00:46:24.072
The school
started courses in,

00:46:24.156 --> 00:46:26.241
in basically
therapeutic design,

00:46:26.325 --> 00:46:28.744
to rehabilitate
returning veterans

00:46:28.827 --> 00:46:31.205
who came home with injuries
of one sort or another.

00:46:31.288 --> 00:46:35.792
So, that became a very strong
strain in industrial design.

00:46:37.544 --> 00:46:39.087
Metal was rationed.

00:46:39.171 --> 00:46:44.301
And so they did a bunch
of experimentation with wood.

00:46:45.928 --> 00:46:49.014
Can we create
a whole set of

00:46:49.097 --> 00:46:53.310
box springs and other products
that would use only wood?

00:46:53.435 --> 00:46:56.021
Freeing up the metal for
the war effort but also

00:46:56.104 --> 00:47:00.901
helping the school position
itself as being a producer.

00:47:03.487 --> 00:47:07.449
With the Bauhaus in Chicago
he was not only designing for war,

00:47:07.533 --> 00:47:10.494
but also a future beyond war.

00:47:12.371 --> 00:47:17.960
So his infrared oven, designed to
cook food at four times the normal speed,

00:47:18.043 --> 00:47:20.462
could perhaps serve
hot meals in the battlefield,

00:47:20.546 --> 00:47:23.131
but also, in the
post-war environment,

00:47:23.215 --> 00:47:27.219
this kind of technology might
help the suburban housewife.

00:47:31.098 --> 00:47:35.352
There\'s a overall hopefulness,
even during the trauma of war,

00:47:35.435 --> 00:47:39.273
in Moholy\'s thinking,
in Moholy\'s work.

00:47:40.357 --> 00:47:45.195
He believed in the role of technology
to improve people\'s lives.

00:47:55.914 --> 00:48:00.210
He was fascinated with technology
since before the First World War.

00:48:00.377 --> 00:48:02.129
He moved in 1913

00:48:02.212 --> 00:48:07.593
to Budapest which was a technological
center of international standing.

00:48:07.926 --> 00:48:11.346
It\'s where the electric
train car was developed.

00:48:11.597 --> 00:48:16.143
It was the first city in the world
to have a public broadcasting system.

00:48:16.518 --> 00:48:19.479
And so, he encountered
a very kind of, positive

00:48:19.563 --> 00:48:23.066
buzz around
technology in Budapest.

00:48:23.150 --> 00:48:26.737
This was, I think, a very
important experience for him.

00:48:32.367 --> 00:48:37.456
Technology has become as much
a part of life as metabolism.

00:48:39.625 --> 00:48:42.002
Machines are for new potential,

00:48:42.127 --> 00:48:45.589
and are integral to
our present day works.

00:48:52.929 --> 00:48:57.100
He suggested that artists
adopt all new technologies.

00:48:57.184 --> 00:48:59.936
So rather than being afraid
of new technologies,

00:49:00.020 --> 00:49:03.148
artists should adopt new
technologies as they arise,

00:49:03.231 --> 00:49:05.525
whether it\'s the X-ray machine,

00:49:05.609 --> 00:49:07.402
whether it\'s film,

00:49:07.986 --> 00:49:09.363
photography,

00:49:09.738 --> 00:49:13.283
any kind of new technology,
and use it to make art.

00:49:14.451 --> 00:49:17.788
He really saw the
acceleration of the visual,

00:49:17.996 --> 00:49:21.792
and the way in which it was
increasing, through technology.

00:49:22.084 --> 00:49:24.419
In his day, it was
the way in which

00:49:24.503 --> 00:49:29.007
magazines and publishers were
able to print a lot more cheaply.

00:49:29.591 --> 00:49:32.260
The giant presses begin
their 24 hour run.

00:49:32.344 --> 00:49:36.890
Ten copies a second, 600 a minute,
nearly 40,000 copies every hour.

00:49:37.474 --> 00:49:40.060
Modernism is really
interested in the ways in which

00:49:40.143 --> 00:49:44.314
new materials and new ideas could
come together in a productive way.

00:49:44.398 --> 00:49:46.441
And Moholy writes
about the way in which

00:49:46.525 --> 00:49:50.779
you can make a reproductive
technology, productive.

00:49:52.698 --> 00:49:56.076
And so, the visual magazines
of his period are really important

00:49:56.159 --> 00:50:00.330
for all the photo collages that
he and others were doing.

00:50:01.623 --> 00:50:05.627
It\'s because there was that
many more images readily available.

00:50:43.999 --> 00:50:46.877
There\'s a really nice book
about these photo-montages

00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:51.423
which shows the magazines and
the newspapers and the published

00:50:51.506 --> 00:50:55.802
photographs that Moholy
used to construct these.

00:50:56.762 --> 00:50:59.389
This is a rather well-known image.

00:51:01.183 --> 00:51:05.353
It\'s called \"Leda and the Swan.\"

00:51:07.189 --> 00:51:09.524
And you can see
the swan down here,

00:51:09.608 --> 00:51:12.861
towards the bottom,
and I guess Leda is diving.

00:51:12.944 --> 00:51:15.614
And then he\'s added the lines

00:51:15.697 --> 00:51:18.033
to make the composition.
I think it\'s very beautiful.

00:51:18.116 --> 00:51:22.621
A lot of people were doing
these in the \'20s and \'30s,

00:51:23.079 --> 00:51:28.376
but I\'ve, I\'ve kind of always liked
Moholy\'s because they\'re rather simple.

00:51:33.882 --> 00:51:37.052
He has a very distinctive style.

00:52:03.954 --> 00:52:09.292
I would consider László Moholy-Nagy
as one of the founding pillars

00:52:09.376 --> 00:52:12.629
of graphic design
as we know it.

00:52:14.798 --> 00:52:17.926
One of the really interesting
things about Moholy-Nagy

00:52:18.009 --> 00:52:21.304
that, I think in some
ways, goes unsung,

00:52:21.388 --> 00:52:27.185
is his influence on his students
and other practitioners.

00:52:27.269 --> 00:52:32.649
So, we have Serge Chermayeff,
and Ivan Chermayeff, and Robert Brownjohn,

00:52:32.858 --> 00:52:38.405
Art Paul. All people that really made
a significant difference with their work.

00:52:38.989 --> 00:52:41.032
You had someone like Art Paul.

00:52:41.408 --> 00:52:43.952
A Institute of Design student

00:52:44.035 --> 00:52:47.289
who was the first designer
of Playboy magazine.

00:52:52.210 --> 00:52:55.630
Two of the alumni from that period
is Mort and Millie Goldsholl.

00:52:55.714 --> 00:53:01.511
They were famous for designing the
psychedelic 7up ads from the 1970\'s.

00:53:02.721 --> 00:53:06.308
Robert Brownjohn is another
incredibly important designer.

00:53:06.391 --> 00:53:10.770
Most famous probably for the
credits of James Bond movies.

00:53:12.105 --> 00:53:15.609
And Rolling Stones
covers, things like that.

00:53:16.401 --> 00:53:19.029
Robert Brownjohn was part of

00:53:19.112 --> 00:53:21.740
an elitist group at the school.

00:53:21.865 --> 00:53:24.951
I think because they
had been with Moholy.

00:53:25.076 --> 00:53:29.122
I just sort of was brought
into this group at lunch.

00:53:29.205 --> 00:53:34.878
I would sit and listen, it was really
very high cultural, highbrow stuff.

00:53:34.961 --> 00:53:38.131
I didn\'t know half of what
they were talking about.

00:53:38.214 --> 00:53:43.303
And I think he was one of the greatest
graphic designers that came out of the school.

00:53:43.428 --> 00:53:46.431
Very creative young
man, you know.

00:53:50.477 --> 00:53:53.355
The artist is not
a propagandist,

00:53:53.438 --> 00:53:59.945
but more than any other person,
a seismograph of his time and its direction.

00:54:02.155 --> 00:54:05.533
This is a common conversation
that designers have.

00:54:05.992 --> 00:54:08.745
\"What do we use our abilities for?\"

00:54:08.828 --> 00:54:12.457
\"Is it for commerce,
or is it for culture?\"

00:54:15.126 --> 00:54:20.298
You can very much be an artist
and a designer at the same time.

00:54:20.507 --> 00:54:24.386
But I think the deliverable
is quite different.

00:54:25.428 --> 00:54:29.975
When you\'re making art,
you tend to be making art for culture,

00:54:31.059 --> 00:54:34.938
and, generally, all good design
should have a creative brief

00:54:35.021 --> 00:54:37.899
that tends to be
commercial in nature.

00:54:38.358 --> 00:54:39.693
That doesn\'t mean that,

00:54:39.776 --> 00:54:43.488
a design pursuit can\'t
end up in a museum, they can.

00:54:43.571 --> 00:54:45.782
But I think that the intention

00:54:45.865 --> 00:54:51.162
of the artist is different than
the intention of the designer.

00:54:52.789 --> 00:54:55.792
Would it be at all possible
to see the back of this?

00:54:56.418 --> 00:54:57.836
I\'ve thought about that.

00:54:57.919 --> 00:55:00.714
With my dad\'s stuff,
especially works on paper,

00:55:00.839 --> 00:55:04.718
the backs are almost
as informative as the fronts.

00:55:08.013 --> 00:55:09.764
Okay, this is great.

00:55:10.432 --> 00:55:13.727
Yeah, these are, this is the earlier
of two stamps that he was using,

00:55:13.810 --> 00:55:15.687
and this is his handwriting.

00:55:16.146 --> 00:55:18.356
That\'s, that\'s very nice.

00:55:21.901 --> 00:55:23.820
What does the handwriting say?

00:55:23.903 --> 00:55:25.739
It says, uh...

00:55:28.783 --> 00:55:33.747
\"Schlachter in Marseille.\"
Butcher in Marseille.

00:55:33.830 --> 00:55:37.459
So this was taken
in the late \'20s, \'30s.

00:55:38.251 --> 00:55:39.919
I haven\'t seen this one before.

00:55:40.003 --> 00:55:40.962
That\'s exciting, yeah.

00:55:41.046 --> 00:55:44.466
It is exciting, my mom
didn\'t keep his negatives.

00:55:44.549 --> 00:55:48.678
I got some of them back from
somebody who salvaged them,

00:55:48.762 --> 00:55:52.599
but um, I don\'t, I\'ve never
seen this one. This is very nice.

00:55:53.516 --> 00:55:55.101
Very Moholy.

00:55:56.436 --> 00:55:57.645
In what way?

00:55:58.646 --> 00:56:01.483
Just the, the way
the man is posed.

00:56:01.733 --> 00:56:04.069
and, you know, that sort of
human interest stuff.

00:56:04.277 --> 00:56:06.696
He liked, he liked that.

00:56:07.864 --> 00:56:11.034
You know showing,
you know, how people lived.

00:56:15.330 --> 00:56:17.665
He was always
photographing.

00:56:17.749 --> 00:56:21.211
I remember him with the Leika,
you know, photographing us.

00:56:23.588 --> 00:56:25.090
He liked to
photograph us,

00:56:25.173 --> 00:56:27.383
and I have a lot of photographs
of him and of my sister.

00:56:31.012 --> 00:56:33.848
He composed in the viewfinder.

00:56:35.433 --> 00:56:40.188
Sometimes it would take a long time,
you know, and for kids it\'s kind of tough.

00:56:40.438 --> 00:56:43.233
But his portraits of people

00:56:43.316 --> 00:56:45.151
are beautiful.

00:56:51.616 --> 00:56:53.827
- Thank you.
- Oh, you\'re welcome.

00:56:53.910 --> 00:56:57.038
It is not the person
ignorant of writing,

00:56:57.622 --> 00:56:59.999
but the one ignorant
of photography,

00:57:00.083 --> 00:57:02.919
who with be the
illiterate of the future.

00:57:07.882 --> 00:57:12.345
In the photography world,
Moholy is certainly a giant.

00:57:16.474 --> 00:57:20.353
For Moholy, photography didn\'t
have to be representational,

00:57:20.436 --> 00:57:22.522
it didn\'t have to be
a snapshot, it could be

00:57:22.605 --> 00:57:25.692
like a painting or like
a print, very abstract.

00:57:25.859 --> 00:57:29.070
But it could still use this
modern technology.

00:57:32.574 --> 00:57:36.828
Photography wasn\'t seen as an
art form, there wasn\'t even a market

00:57:36.911 --> 00:57:38.746
for photography.

00:57:39.747 --> 00:57:47.505
But Moholy saw all visual
cultural production as being equal.

00:57:50.258 --> 00:57:54.554
Light must be sovereignly handled
as a new creative means,

00:57:54.637 --> 00:57:59.058
like color in painting,
and sound in music.

00:58:03.855 --> 00:58:09.068
Moholy thought photography\'s
essence was its sensitivity to light.

00:58:10.945 --> 00:58:14.782
And this was typified
in the photogram.

00:58:22.707 --> 00:58:25.001
There\'s a difference between a
photograph and a photogram.

00:58:25.084 --> 00:58:27.670
A photograph is made with
a camera, it\'s a real subject.

00:58:27.754 --> 00:58:31.507
And a photogram you just have
the light sensitive paper in the darkroom

00:58:31.591 --> 00:58:34.469
and you put forms on it,

00:58:34.552 --> 00:58:36.554
and then you just
expose the paper

00:58:36.638 --> 00:58:38.932
very quickly to
light flashes.

00:58:47.232 --> 00:58:49.442
Moholy\'s photograms
are really interesting.

00:58:49.525 --> 00:58:52.403
For one thing, it\'s
almost the only

00:58:52.487 --> 00:58:54.614
kind of artistic production

00:58:54.697 --> 00:58:58.743
that follows a through thread
from the very early \'20s

00:58:58.868 --> 00:59:02.872
up until his final
days in the 1940s.

00:59:05.667 --> 00:59:08.294
He learned to do
photograms in the countryside

00:59:08.378 --> 00:59:10.588
with his first wife,
Lucia Moholy,

00:59:10.672 --> 00:59:12.715
up in the Rhône Mountains.

00:59:26.521 --> 00:59:29.607
He spent formative months,

00:59:29.691 --> 00:59:31.818
during the summers
in the 1920s,

00:59:31.901 --> 00:59:36.281
closely associated with these
radical women\'s communes.

00:59:42.787 --> 00:59:45.081
At Loheland, one
of the communes,

00:59:45.164 --> 00:59:47.458
one of the young women
there introduced

00:59:47.542 --> 00:59:52.046
Moholy-Nagy & Lucia to the
technique of the photogram.

00:59:59.220 --> 01:00:02.181
When Lucia and Moholy
returned to Berlin,

01:00:02.265 --> 01:00:04.100
even before the Bauhaus,

01:00:04.183 --> 01:00:08.563
they start working on
these photograms.

01:00:11.774 --> 01:00:15.028
And I think that this was a really
important practice for him.

01:00:15.111 --> 01:00:17.322
This idea that you could
take away the camera,

01:00:17.405 --> 01:00:19.490
take away the
reproductive technology,

01:00:19.574 --> 01:00:22.952
and have this direct
experience with objects,

01:00:23.036 --> 01:00:26.789
with surface, with materiality,
and with light.

01:00:29.375 --> 01:00:32.670
We have now reached the stage
when it should be possible

01:00:32.754 --> 01:00:34.922
to discard brush and pigment,

01:00:35.006 --> 01:00:38.843
and to paint by
means of light itself.

01:00:41.137 --> 01:00:45.183
There\'s a kind of progress
that he has in mind where

01:00:45.266 --> 01:00:48.019
you can go from painting

01:00:48.102 --> 01:00:51.272
to photography, from
photography to film,

01:00:51.356 --> 01:00:54.359
you know, from something
still to something in motion,

01:00:54.442 --> 01:00:56.903
from something object-like,

01:00:56.986 --> 01:00:58.696
to something dematerialized.

01:01:02.075 --> 01:01:06.579
For Moholy, film is
really the most modern,

01:01:06.662 --> 01:01:08.081
dematerialized medium,

01:01:08.164 --> 01:01:10.958
and it\'s what he really
wants to work with.

01:01:12.085 --> 01:01:15.004
It can be light in motion.

01:01:18.883 --> 01:01:20.718
\"Lightplay: Black White Gray,\"

01:01:20.802 --> 01:01:24.138
which takes the light prop
as its ostensible subject,

01:01:24.222 --> 01:01:27.308
is kind of the perfect Moholy film.

01:01:29.185 --> 01:01:33.564
He introduced \"Light Prop
for an Electric Stage\" in 1930.

01:01:33.648 --> 01:01:39.278
It was intended to be a rotating
special effects machine.

01:01:39.862 --> 01:01:44.033
He made a short film of
this machine in motion,

01:01:44.117 --> 01:01:47.245
but it wasn\'t just a
straight film of it.

01:01:48.329 --> 01:01:52.834
The film looks at this sculpture
in motion and the way that

01:01:52.917 --> 01:01:57.171
light plays with all surfaces
of the modulator.

01:02:00.383 --> 01:02:02.593
And then there\'s a
great point in the film

01:02:02.677 --> 01:02:05.138
where he starts to play
with double exposure.

01:02:05.221 --> 01:02:10.435
And so you get documentation
into experimentation,

01:02:10.560 --> 01:02:12.395
and the medium of film

01:02:12.478 --> 01:02:16.899
starts playing with the medium of
sculpture and the medium of time.

01:02:17.483 --> 01:02:19.819
Classic Moholy.

01:02:25.158 --> 01:02:28.286
For Moholy, film is
really experimental.

01:02:28.786 --> 01:02:31.497
It\'s documentary
or non-narrative,

01:02:31.581 --> 01:02:34.292
it\'s not Hollywood cinema.

01:02:47.388 --> 01:02:52.393
Then he came to the United States,
fully intending to integrate film into the program,

01:02:52.477 --> 01:02:57.023
in the same kind of experimental fashion
that photography was done.

01:03:08.326 --> 01:03:11.787
The enemy of photography
is the convention.

01:03:12.371 --> 01:03:16.834
The salvation of photography
comes from the experiment.

01:03:17.376 --> 01:03:19.587
The photography program
at The New Bauhaus

01:03:19.670 --> 01:03:23.174
and the School of Design
was founded in experimentation.

01:03:23.257 --> 01:03:25.760
Hands-on doing of problems.

01:03:25.885 --> 01:03:31.933
What can the camera do, what can
film do, what can photography do?

01:03:33.559 --> 01:03:36.896
We would have assignments
to go out to shoot,

01:03:37.396 --> 01:03:41.275
so, and we would have
these big heavy graphics cameras.

01:03:44.654 --> 01:03:47.865
This was an assignment
where we had to do

01:03:48.199 --> 01:03:50.284
a distortion,

01:03:50.826 --> 01:03:53.663
this is we had
to do a close-up,

01:03:54.830 --> 01:03:58.459
which was lousy,
I mean, it\'s so sad.

01:03:58.793 --> 01:04:03.464
We used to go out and do
little shoots by the lakefront.

01:04:05.508 --> 01:04:08.844
Around the ID,

01:04:09.262 --> 01:04:12.181
there was so
much to shoot,

01:04:12.473 --> 01:04:17.603
cause there was old fences
and old sidewalks,

01:04:17.937 --> 01:04:25.945
and old bridges, and you would walk up
the back alleys and there would be weird people.

01:04:27.697 --> 01:04:30.074
You were always looking.

01:04:32.868 --> 01:04:37.415
Photography was the golden key
opening the door to the wonders

01:04:37.498 --> 01:04:40.543
of the external universe to everyone.

01:04:43.379 --> 01:04:45.881
Moholy never taught
the photography class,

01:04:45.965 --> 01:04:50.636
but you could think of the
problems as being Moholy\'s

01:04:50.720 --> 01:04:54.890
DNA, Moholy\'s through line
to the school.

01:04:56.100 --> 01:04:58.394
And that notion
of experimentation

01:04:58.477 --> 01:05:01.814
is a fundamental
characteristic of the program.

01:05:03.149 --> 01:05:06.569
Moholy hired Arthur Siegel to teach

01:05:06.652 --> 01:05:11.282
in the Fall of \'46, and this was when
the student population went from,

01:05:11.365 --> 01:05:15.453
in the mid 30s,
to over 300.

01:05:15.911 --> 01:05:18.247
This was all about the G.I. Bill.

01:05:18.539 --> 01:05:22.918
Returning soldiers
all went back to school,

01:05:23.127 --> 01:05:26.505
so there was this
huge influx of students.

01:05:27.840 --> 01:05:31.385
One of the first things that Arthur Siegel
did when Moholy hired him,

01:05:31.469 --> 01:05:34.013
was to hire his
friend Harry Callahan.

01:05:36.599 --> 01:05:40.436
He was self-taught, he had not studied
with Moholy-Nagy, but he shared

01:05:40.519 --> 01:05:44.857
a sympathetic kind of experimental
approach to photography.

01:05:46.567 --> 01:05:48.653
In 1951,

01:05:48.819 --> 01:05:53.282
Harry Callahan invited Aaron Siskind to come
and teach at the Institute of Design.

01:05:53.366 --> 01:05:56.369
And around this time,
they started a master\'s program,

01:05:56.452 --> 01:06:00.915
and Harry and Aaron became
probably the most legendary teaching duo

01:06:00.998 --> 01:06:03.334
in photographic history.

01:06:09.590 --> 01:06:12.718
Going to ID
changed my life.

01:06:13.219 --> 01:06:17.598
I went there because of Siskind,
cause I knew of his work.

01:06:18.265 --> 01:06:21.560
And I think I was around 36.

01:06:22.520 --> 01:06:27.024
My thesis was totally
Bauhaus assignments,

01:06:27.108 --> 01:06:29.860
with my children modelling.

01:06:29.944 --> 01:06:34.073
And the agreement with my
ex-husband at that time was,

01:06:34.156 --> 01:06:36.909
I wouldn\'t show
their faces [laughs].

01:06:38.119 --> 01:06:42.748
I decided to experiment with lighting,

01:06:43.165 --> 01:06:46.794
and I overdeveloped the film.

01:06:48.379 --> 01:06:52.675
It changed my photographic life,
I\'ll tell you that.

01:06:55.177 --> 01:06:57.680
The students would
do all kinds of

01:06:57.763 --> 01:06:59.682
things that were
unconventional.

01:07:00.558 --> 01:07:05.938
I did a lot of experimentation when
I was making the multiple images.

01:07:06.564 --> 01:07:09.650
I so admired the program there,

01:07:09.734 --> 01:07:12.987
and its intelligence,
its straightforwardness.

01:07:13.696 --> 01:07:15.406
It\'s very rich.

01:07:16.657 --> 01:07:21.245
It was during the years of
Callahan and Siskind that you get

01:07:21.328 --> 01:07:25.040
a crop of incredibly
talented students.

01:07:26.667 --> 01:07:27.877
Joe Jachna,

01:07:28.586 --> 01:07:30.045
Ken Josephson,

01:07:30.838 --> 01:07:31.922
Chuck Swedlund,

01:07:32.840 --> 01:07:34.175
Joe Sterling,

01:07:34.717 --> 01:07:35.760
and Ray Metzker.

01:07:35.843 --> 01:07:39.597
Those were five of their most
famous students who were all

01:07:39.680 --> 01:07:44.518
featured in a special 1961
issue of Aperture Magazine

01:07:44.643 --> 01:07:48.773
that was called \"Five Students
from the Institute of Design.\"

01:07:49.231 --> 01:07:52.443
That issue of Aperture
was a big deal.

01:07:55.029 --> 01:07:59.158
That really spread the word
about these five people,

01:07:59.283 --> 01:08:02.203
and also about the
Institute of Design.

01:08:03.579 --> 01:08:08.959
The master\'s program at the ID
became the premiere place for getting

01:08:09.043 --> 01:08:11.462
that additional
education in photography.

01:08:11.629 --> 01:08:14.757
And the kind of career that
these students went on to

01:08:14.840 --> 01:08:17.968
wasn\'t being a photojournalist
or being a commercial photographer,

01:08:18.052 --> 01:08:20.471
it was being being
a photo teacher.

01:08:21.764 --> 01:08:24.141
Once these students graduated,

01:08:24.350 --> 01:08:27.561
there weren\'t enough
photography teachers,

01:08:27.937 --> 01:08:32.358
at that point, in the country,
and schools, colleges, high schools,

01:08:32.566 --> 01:08:35.277
were putting in
photography programs.

01:08:35.611 --> 01:08:39.532
And, so, they went
all over the country

01:08:39.657 --> 01:08:43.577
teaching the ID
philosophy.

01:08:44.912 --> 01:08:48.499
All five of us that
were part of that

01:08:48.874 --> 01:08:52.795
Aperture issue
became teachers

01:08:52.920 --> 01:08:57.675
and continued the tradition
of ID in our teaching

01:08:57.842 --> 01:08:59.844
in various parts
of the country.

01:09:00.636 --> 01:09:02.763
And so, you get
this spawning of

01:09:02.847 --> 01:09:07.893
the next generation and the next,
all coming back to this one school.

01:09:11.647 --> 01:09:14.608
Question: Mr. Moholy-Nagy,

01:09:14.692 --> 01:09:19.154
what do you like most
about yourself, dislike most?

01:09:19.697 --> 01:09:20.698
Answer:

01:09:21.115 --> 01:09:24.368
I like most about myself
that I can be happy,

01:09:24.660 --> 01:09:28.706
the least that I have a tendency
to become a fanatic.

01:09:30.207 --> 01:09:33.919
He was not only making art
but he was administering a school.

01:09:34.003 --> 01:09:36.922
And he was probably doing that
about ten hours a day.

01:09:37.006 --> 01:09:40.175
And then coming home
and continuing to paint,

01:09:40.259 --> 01:09:42.052
continuing to make work.

01:09:47.057 --> 01:09:50.895
Dear Daddy,
you work so hard.

01:09:51.478 --> 01:09:54.398
You sweat so much [laughs].

01:09:54.481 --> 01:09:56.650
So hard, you sweat so hard.

01:09:56.734 --> 01:09:58.736
Oh, this is perspiration.

01:09:58.819 --> 01:10:00.738
Good grief!

01:10:00.863 --> 01:10:03.741
But yet you go on
with your valiant work.

01:10:04.283 --> 01:10:06.368
You come home so late.

01:10:06.911 --> 01:10:10.664
But all these things you must forget
because I\'m wishing you

01:10:11.206 --> 01:10:13.375
a 1945,

01:10:14.960 --> 01:10:16.879
Happy Father\'s Day.

01:10:19.715 --> 01:10:23.260
He loved children, he was
always nice to be around.

01:10:23.677 --> 01:10:25.971
But we just didn\'t
see much of him.

01:10:26.055 --> 01:10:29.308
So I was about five
when I drew this one.

01:10:30.142 --> 01:10:32.186
My dad only
lived 51 years,

01:10:32.269 --> 01:10:35.898
and he only was
active, maybe 30.

01:10:36.357 --> 01:10:38.984
And how could he have accomplished
so much in 30 years?

01:10:39.068 --> 01:10:41.695
you know, I\'ve often
thought about that.

01:10:42.279 --> 01:10:44.740
The thing is he
doesn\'t do it alone.

01:10:45.574 --> 01:10:51.163
It\'s always having somebody
that could do the underpinnings.

01:10:52.998 --> 01:10:55.376
And this is where
Lucia, Ellen Frank,

01:10:55.459 --> 01:10:57.753
and my mom
were so important.

01:10:57.795 --> 01:11:01.924
And I have the feeling they\'re not
really given enough credit for it.

01:11:04.051 --> 01:11:05.636
My mother wasn\'t an artist,

01:11:05.928 --> 01:11:08.555
and she had her own
ambitions, to be a writer.

01:11:08.806 --> 01:11:11.183
But, the work she did for him,

01:11:11.809 --> 01:11:14.770
meant that he was
free to do other stuff.

01:11:20.150 --> 01:11:23.737
So this is from her
letter of July 1941.

01:11:23.821 --> 01:11:28.117
Dear Lutzy, I\'m doing,
since the second half of April,

01:11:28.283 --> 01:11:32.788
a job which I loathe
to the bottom of my heart.

01:11:33.038 --> 01:11:35.624
Oh my.
You go along,

01:11:35.874 --> 01:11:38.127
passing on
wisdom, and art,

01:11:38.210 --> 01:11:41.255
and human superiority
to your students.

01:11:41.505 --> 01:11:44.216
I cook for them,
clean the place,

01:11:44.299 --> 01:11:46.385
and try to strech
the pennies.

01:11:49.638 --> 01:11:52.766
You know, he saw how other people
could be helpful to him,

01:11:53.017 --> 01:11:55.561
and help him along in his way.

01:11:56.770 --> 01:11:58.439
This is really
very important,

01:11:58.522 --> 01:12:02.192
these sort of handmaidens
that tend to get overlooked.

01:12:05.529 --> 01:12:07.614
December 1st, 1945.

01:12:07.698 --> 01:12:11.785
That was the first time he was in the
hospital and when he was diagnosed

01:12:11.869 --> 01:12:14.455
with um,
with leukemia.

01:12:14.621 --> 01:12:16.457
And this is her handwriting:

01:12:16.582 --> 01:12:23.130
Ich bitte um hospital.
That\'s sort of, German and English.

01:12:24.548 --> 01:12:25.966
He had her bring

01:12:26.133 --> 01:12:30.512
paper and crayons and pencils.
He still wanted to draw.

01:12:31.722 --> 01:12:35.893
He underwent treatment,
and then he went into remission,

01:12:36.185 --> 01:12:40.230
which permitted him to
carry on for another year.

01:12:43.484 --> 01:12:48.238
He was very active that last year,
he just sort of went out - poof!

01:12:48.489 --> 01:12:50.365
Very productive year.

01:12:52.826 --> 01:12:57.664
In \'45 he was already
arranging Vision in Motion.

01:13:01.418 --> 01:13:03.295
To benefit society,

01:13:03.378 --> 01:13:08.342
the artist\'s work must penetrate
everyone\'s daily existence.

01:13:12.137 --> 01:13:16.642
Vision in Motion was Moholy\'s
culminating statement.

01:13:17.309 --> 01:13:20.562
It came out in 1947,
the year after he died,

01:13:20.646 --> 01:13:22.648
but it becomes
the mechanism

01:13:22.731 --> 01:13:27.569
through which a lot of his ideas circulated
in the years following his death.

01:13:28.320 --> 01:13:31.365
And that book changed
my life because it

01:13:31.448 --> 01:13:33.742
demonstrated that the
approach to working

01:13:33.826 --> 01:13:36.370
was more important than
what you actually produced.

01:13:36.453 --> 01:13:40.040
You had to produce something
for it to be valuable to the world,

01:13:40.124 --> 01:13:42.251
but for personal development,

01:13:42.334 --> 01:13:44.628
it wasn\'t that you were
a maker of this object,

01:13:44.711 --> 01:13:46.964
it\'s that you were a
maker of yourself.

01:13:47.047 --> 01:13:49.466
And you worked,

01:13:49.758 --> 01:13:53.053
and lived differently,
through your work.

01:14:16.618 --> 01:14:19.621
I am inspired by both
Moholy\'s teaching

01:14:19.705 --> 01:14:22.708
and writings as well
as his artwork.

01:14:24.793 --> 01:14:29.882
Over the years, I have
developed a number of art projects

01:14:30.174 --> 01:14:33.802
that incorporated Moholy
works and materials.

01:14:37.389 --> 01:14:42.394
As an artist that works
across media, from

01:14:42.728 --> 01:14:46.857
photography, video
installation, sculpture...

01:14:47.232 --> 01:14:51.945
my art is always using
light as the media

01:14:52.029 --> 01:14:55.866
to be in dialogue with
the matters at hand,

01:14:55.949 --> 01:14:58.118
and so, many times,

01:14:58.202 --> 01:15:02.247
with my light installation
and projection pieces,

01:15:02.331 --> 01:15:05.459
I\'m not necessarily doing
photographic work,

01:15:05.584 --> 01:15:10.881
but I\'m thinking as a photographer,
as somebody who works with light as a material.

01:15:25.687 --> 01:15:29.900
For Moholy-Nagy, it was clear that
a work of art and society was connected.

01:15:29.983 --> 01:15:35.614
And the whole artistic practice
was one of societal importance.

01:15:36.406 --> 01:15:38.951
And this totally
influenced me, a lot.

01:15:40.327 --> 01:15:42.454
A very exposed work
of art that I\'ve done

01:15:42.537 --> 01:15:45.874
is the Weather Project at
the Tate Modern in London.

01:15:45.958 --> 01:15:48.794
That was like a
collective experience.

01:15:49.628 --> 01:15:52.631
People came in and they
kind of took over the space.

01:15:52.714 --> 01:15:55.634
They occupied the space
and they said, \"This is ours.\"

01:15:55.884 --> 01:15:57.552
\"We own this space.\"

01:15:57.886 --> 01:16:00.430
And suddenly, there was
all kinds of things going on

01:16:00.514 --> 01:16:03.684
where people are sleeping on the floor,
and some are dancing, some are kissing,

01:16:03.767 --> 01:16:06.270
some are rolling around
being foolish and silly.

01:16:06.353 --> 01:16:08.814
So we have this situation
where you have suddenly this,

01:16:08.897 --> 01:16:12.818
turnaround from the viewer
going from being a consumer,

01:16:12.901 --> 01:16:16.196
passive, to a sort of
active producer.

01:16:18.448 --> 01:16:23.620
And this stands on the shoulders
of the ideas that Moholy-Nagy worked with.

01:16:33.964 --> 01:16:38.385
I\'d looked into Moholy\'s
process and his thinking.

01:16:40.429 --> 01:16:45.809
People think creativity comes
straight from God to the artist.

01:16:46.018 --> 01:16:49.646
And they forget all the
hard work in between.

01:16:50.689 --> 01:16:55.068
I found this material, this
plexiglass that has a glowing edge,

01:16:55.152 --> 01:16:57.279
it\'s a fluorescent plexi,

01:16:57.362 --> 01:16:59.948
and I\'ve been working
with it now for,

01:17:00.032 --> 01:17:01.742
three or four years.

01:17:03.327 --> 01:17:07.372
What I do is I make the photograph
using the digital camera.

01:17:08.040 --> 01:17:10.042
And then I arrange

01:17:10.167 --> 01:17:15.213
how I want the shapes to
stand up and be formed,

01:17:15.505 --> 01:17:19.676
and then that I give to the architectural
modeler and he constructs it.

01:17:19.760 --> 01:17:23.555
So, it goes through many
steps along the way.

01:17:26.600 --> 01:17:28.643
But I think in
making the work,

01:17:28.852 --> 01:17:31.646
the process is the
most important thing.

01:17:31.855 --> 01:17:37.027
And the process ends up making
a difference in your own growth.

01:17:37.319 --> 01:17:39.988
Because in the end,
you\'ve gone through this

01:17:40.072 --> 01:17:43.950
examination, this
soul searching.

01:17:44.076 --> 01:17:48.455
What\'s right, what\'s wrong,
what\'s good, what\'s bad.

01:17:48.538 --> 01:17:54.461
So I think we grow as we make art,
and I think that\'s part of the process.

01:19:05.949 --> 01:19:10.162
Moholy died six months
before I entered the school.

01:19:13.498 --> 01:19:15.250
It was leukemia.

01:19:15.542 --> 01:19:17.961
And I think he just went.

01:19:18.879 --> 01:19:22.424
We were his class
and we were told.

01:19:22.632 --> 01:19:25.385
And it was shattering.

01:19:25.635 --> 01:19:27.679
Everybody was...

01:19:28.138 --> 01:19:29.973
broken.

01:19:32.476 --> 01:19:36.646
Well that was terrible,
just, just awful.

01:19:37.981 --> 01:19:39.483
There was a sense of...

01:19:39.900 --> 01:19:41.401
doom.

01:19:42.027 --> 01:19:46.114
That all he had done
is slipping away.

01:19:50.452 --> 01:19:52.120
I remember being,
of course, his wife,

01:19:52.204 --> 01:19:56.708
and knowing he had not a very strong
health and you know, he died at 51.

01:19:56.833 --> 01:20:01.129
He worked till uh,
three days before he died.

01:20:05.133 --> 01:20:07.636
I\'m sorry it took so long.

01:20:08.470 --> 01:20:10.138
Do you come often?

01:20:10.972 --> 01:20:13.808
Oh no, well as
you can see,

01:20:14.809 --> 01:20:17.979
I\'m not a very
dutiful descendant.

01:20:20.148 --> 01:20:24.110
For a while, I really didn\'t
think much about him.

01:20:24.653 --> 01:20:27.739
But, once I inherited the estate,

01:20:28.240 --> 01:20:32.869
you know, he\'s, he\'s right at
my shoulder the whole time.

01:20:57.811 --> 01:21:03.817
Why isn\'t Moholy as common a
household name as Picasso, or Magritte?

01:21:04.192 --> 01:21:09.656
He\'s a giant of 20th century art
and did almost everything.

01:21:09.781 --> 01:21:12.909
But that might be part of
the problem, was that Moholy

01:21:12.993 --> 01:21:17.956
did so much so that instead of
being known for one single thing, one

01:21:18.039 --> 01:21:20.792
perfect, concise contribution,

01:21:20.875 --> 01:21:24.879
he spread himself out over
so many different arenas.

01:21:31.094 --> 01:21:33.054
The exhibitions at the
Guggenheim Museum,

01:21:33.138 --> 01:21:34.556
the Art Institute of Chicago,

01:21:34.639 --> 01:21:36.641
and the Los Angeles County Museum,

01:21:36.766 --> 01:21:40.186
are, I think, beginning this
process of making people aware

01:21:40.395 --> 01:21:44.316
of the extent to which Moholy
and his students and his faculty

01:21:44.608 --> 01:21:46.943
had an effect on American culture.

01:21:59.205 --> 01:22:01.791
Retrospectives or, you know,
major exhibitions,

01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:04.628
sometimes bring out some
privately owned works,

01:22:04.711 --> 01:22:07.088
so that\'s always very exciting.

01:22:08.048 --> 01:22:10.008
Yeah, I saw some new stuff.

01:22:10.967 --> 01:22:13.094
I didn\'t recognize any of
the plastic sculptures,

01:22:13.178 --> 01:22:16.848
but I recognized some of the paintings
that were on the walls of our living room.

01:22:16.931 --> 01:22:18.600
So, that was nice.

01:22:18.683 --> 01:22:20.185
Old friends.

01:22:20.518 --> 01:22:22.354
I know, I\'m sorry.

01:22:22.437 --> 01:22:24.064
No, that\'s okay.

01:22:24.564 --> 01:22:27.275
Did you see the Moholy
show at the Art Institute?

01:22:27.317 --> 01:22:30.904
- Did you see the exhibition?
- I did, sure.

01:22:32.864 --> 01:22:36.493
I was a little bit
discouraged by it.

01:22:38.078 --> 01:22:41.289
It too formalized Moholy.

01:22:41.456 --> 01:22:45.919
Moholy is messier than the show.

01:22:48.505 --> 01:22:52.175
I think he\'s at his best
when he\'s messing around.

01:22:52.342 --> 01:22:55.887
Messing with photograms
and messing with photography, and...

01:22:55.970 --> 01:22:57.889
I mean that\'s the
way he taught.

01:23:05.438 --> 01:23:09.317
Ten days before he died he went
to New York to a big conference.

01:23:11.820 --> 01:23:13.780
You know, in this
last conference, he

01:23:13.863 --> 01:23:17.409
was accused of being a dilettante,
and he said, \"yes of course,

01:23:17.492 --> 01:23:20.829
it is the greatest thing to be a dilettante
because a dilettante is a man

01:23:20.912 --> 01:23:24.290
who does things because he
enormously enjoys what he is doing.

01:23:24.374 --> 01:23:26.751
And this is why I\'m doing it.

01:23:33.466 --> 01:23:36.678
Moholy\'s career and,
in a sense, his life

01:23:36.845 --> 01:23:40.223
is a paragon of the history
of the 20th century.

01:23:41.891 --> 01:23:44.811
He keeps moving
from a small village

01:23:44.894 --> 01:23:48.148
to larger towns, to
major metropolises.

01:23:50.150 --> 01:23:53.486
He sees terrible
things first-hand.

01:23:53.820 --> 01:23:56.197
The devastation
of World War I.

01:23:56.281 --> 01:24:00.034
The death and destruction
in World War II.

01:24:00.243 --> 01:24:03.663
And yet he remains an optimist.

01:24:05.206 --> 01:24:09.169
It makes sense that someone
as forward moving as Moholy

01:24:09.294 --> 01:24:12.172
would end up in a
city like Chicago.

01:24:12.464 --> 01:24:15.258
A place of incredible possibility,

01:24:15.341 --> 01:24:20.305
a place of industry, a place of art,
and a place of ideas.

01:24:23.266 --> 01:24:26.311
Question: Mr. Moholy-Nagy,

01:24:26.394 --> 01:24:29.063
why do you go on living?

01:24:29.355 --> 01:24:30.315
Answer:

01:24:30.607 --> 01:24:35.111
I live because it makes me
enormously happy to live.