Lot Essay
I took a short flight to Berlin, [from Paris] my first plane ride, to learn what might be new in German photography... The flight was a small taste of the rather amazing moral and political chaos I was to encounter around the Kurfurstendam. The lurching plane threw financiers, rascals, movie stars, and ungemütliche-Herren indiscriminately into one another's laps. One such casual jolt led to an invitation...where I met an experimental filmmaker, Albert Victor Blum, and I was on my way with him the next day to visit the photographer Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
...We went through albums of Moholy's photographs and "photograms", his abstract designs of light and shade made by placing objects on photosensitized paper and exposing them to light: shadow pictures made without a camera. I made a selection for an exhibition to which Moholy had agreed with enthusiasm. I bought a number of his prints and several original photograms, for which he asked what seemed a high price. However, I decided that while in Germany I would purchase everything I wanted with no demur as I did not expect to return regularly. After schnaaps and coffee, Moholy asked us if we would like to go with him and his wife, Lucia, some weekend to a nudist camp where they often vacationed. It was decided for the next weekend and I asked if I could bring my camera. "I'll try to get permission," Moholy promised.
"Why did you let him overcharge you for those photos?" Victor asked me later.
"He dosen't know anything about me. How else could I assure him I would give him an exhibition and send him his share of any sales?"
"He gave away more than you bought to another American he met for the first time just the other day," Victor informed me. "He is devious."
"I found him charming," I said, "and certainly his book the Bauhaus published, Malerei, Fotografie, Film, is a significant contribution."
"Oh yes, if you like the Bauhaus approach," Victor conceded, "at least the photograms are unique. You have an irreplaceable value there."
(c.f., Julien Levy, Diary of an Art Gallery, pp. 65-6).
It is not by accident that Julien Levy, the celebrated Surrealist dealer, should make a significant note of Moholy's photograms upon first meeting him in 1931. The photograms Moholy-Nagy produced from before his tenure at the Bauhaus and until he left in 1928 differ significantly from any other photographic artist's works with the same technique. Their plasticity of forms and insistent denial of any reference to reality differ tremendously from Man Ray's Surrealist autobiographical and narrative works.
Levy goes on, in his Diary, to query the situation that has troubled many historians. Was it Man Ray or Moholy who first resurrected the most basic photographic image making process in a Modernist mode? Of course, it is now well known that Christian Schad preceded both with Dada inspired works, but it was Man Ray, the Surrealist and Moholy, the Constructivist influenced Bauhaus instructor, who most popularized the production of these unique works through painting with light.
The fotogramm offered here is one from a well documented group of perhaps a dozen related works employing the same materials as light diffractors, including a large egg or ovid shaped object and several wooden clothes pins. Included in this composition are thin sheets of glass or plastic which add to the illusion of pictorial depth. This is evidence of Moholy's mastering of the issues of transparency, translucency and space which culminated in the building of his "Light/Space Modulator" in 1930. Other works employing the same elements can be found reproduced in Moholy's first book devoted solely to his photography, 60 Fotos, pls. 7 and 27; in the 1928 journal Bauhaus (1977 Kraus reprint, p. 3); in the special supplement on Moholy of the Czech art journal Telehor, 1936, pl. 42, p. 91.
The recent discovery of this original photogram adds to the definition of Moholy's work in this medium. The orientation of the print, as clearly described on the verso with Moholy's personal inscription, signature and date, as well as the handwritten credit (possibly in Levy's hand) and stamps, fully indicate that Moholy considered the image to be vertical. This adds to the rarity of the work as the majority of the other images from this series are considered to be horizontally aligned. On the verso, the handwritten credit, Nagy is circled and an arrow indicating orientation is drawn, suggesting that the image was sent to a printer for reproduction at some time. If this was the case, no record of it is known to exist.
This image will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Moholy-Nagy's photograms currently being prepared by Floris M. Neusüss.
...We went through albums of Moholy's photographs and "photograms", his abstract designs of light and shade made by placing objects on photosensitized paper and exposing them to light: shadow pictures made without a camera. I made a selection for an exhibition to which Moholy had agreed with enthusiasm. I bought a number of his prints and several original photograms, for which he asked what seemed a high price. However, I decided that while in Germany I would purchase everything I wanted with no demur as I did not expect to return regularly. After schnaaps and coffee, Moholy asked us if we would like to go with him and his wife, Lucia, some weekend to a nudist camp where they often vacationed. It was decided for the next weekend and I asked if I could bring my camera. "I'll try to get permission," Moholy promised.
"Why did you let him overcharge you for those photos?" Victor asked me later.
"He dosen't know anything about me. How else could I assure him I would give him an exhibition and send him his share of any sales?"
"He gave away more than you bought to another American he met for the first time just the other day," Victor informed me. "He is devious."
"I found him charming," I said, "and certainly his book the Bauhaus published, Malerei, Fotografie, Film, is a significant contribution."
"Oh yes, if you like the Bauhaus approach," Victor conceded, "at least the photograms are unique. You have an irreplaceable value there."
(c.f., Julien Levy, Diary of an Art Gallery, pp. 65-6).
It is not by accident that Julien Levy, the celebrated Surrealist dealer, should make a significant note of Moholy's photograms upon first meeting him in 1931. The photograms Moholy-Nagy produced from before his tenure at the Bauhaus and until he left in 1928 differ significantly from any other photographic artist's works with the same technique. Their plasticity of forms and insistent denial of any reference to reality differ tremendously from Man Ray's Surrealist autobiographical and narrative works.
Levy goes on, in his Diary, to query the situation that has troubled many historians. Was it Man Ray or Moholy who first resurrected the most basic photographic image making process in a Modernist mode? Of course, it is now well known that Christian Schad preceded both with Dada inspired works, but it was Man Ray, the Surrealist and Moholy, the Constructivist influenced Bauhaus instructor, who most popularized the production of these unique works through painting with light.
The fotogramm offered here is one from a well documented group of perhaps a dozen related works employing the same materials as light diffractors, including a large egg or ovid shaped object and several wooden clothes pins. Included in this composition are thin sheets of glass or plastic which add to the illusion of pictorial depth. This is evidence of Moholy's mastering of the issues of transparency, translucency and space which culminated in the building of his "Light/Space Modulator" in 1930. Other works employing the same elements can be found reproduced in Moholy's first book devoted solely to his photography, 60 Fotos, pls. 7 and 27; in the 1928 journal Bauhaus (1977 Kraus reprint, p. 3); in the special supplement on Moholy of the Czech art journal Telehor, 1936, pl. 42, p. 91.
The recent discovery of this original photogram adds to the definition of Moholy's work in this medium. The orientation of the print, as clearly described on the verso with Moholy's personal inscription, signature and date, as well as the handwritten credit (possibly in Levy's hand) and stamps, fully indicate that Moholy considered the image to be vertical. This adds to the rarity of the work as the majority of the other images from this series are considered to be horizontally aligned. On the verso, the handwritten credit, Nagy is circled and an arrow indicating orientation is drawn, suggesting that the image was sent to a printer for reproduction at some time. If this was the case, no record of it is known to exist.
This image will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of Moholy-Nagy's photograms currently being prepared by Floris M. Neusüss.