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Joyce Tsai, guest curator of the exhibition The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come, discusses the work of László Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus professor, theorist, and visionary multi-media artist. Her talk examines the challenges he faced as an artist in exile, working in an age of both technological progress and of catastrophe. Examining the work he produced in his final years in the U.S., Tsai shows how Moholy attempted to rescue the technological promise of his age in the modest medium of painting.
Mary Craig Auditorium
Free SBMA Members/$10 Non-Members/$6 Senior Non-Members
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The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come,
The Paintings of Moholy-Nagy: The Shape of Things to Come
July 5 – September 27, 2015
Organized by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, this exhibitionis the first to explore how the practice of painting served as the means for the artist to imagine generative relationships between art and technology. László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) is now recognized as one of the most influential members of the Bauhaus. While his legacy for later 20th-century art is typically linked to the photogram (a type of cameraless photography), the driving force behind this presentation is the relatively under-recognized role of the more traditional medium of painting throughout Moholy’s career, which is explored in a selection of 33 works of art ranging in date from the 1920s to 1940s, including paintings, works on paper, photograms, video projections, and a facsimile replica of Moholy’s prescient Light Prop―one of the first kinetic sculptures of its kind. The installation also includes a Kodachrome slide set (the latest in color photography innovation at the time), which comprises 12 luminous images.
Guest curated by art historian Joyce Tsai (University of Florida, Gainesville), the exhibition is organized chronologically and thematically, and is accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, distributed by Yale University Press. The presentation also includes educational interactives, related programming, and an unprecedented installation by high-end designer Alex Rasmussen of Neal Feay.
The exhibition was made possible through the generous support of the Tom and Charlene Marsh Family Foundation, Cecille Pulitzer, SBMA Women’s Board, an anonymous donor, Marcia and John Mike Cohen, Dead Artists Society, The Dwight G. Vedder Family, Susan Bowey, Gregg Wilson and John Maienza, The David Bermant Foundation, and The Moholy-Nagy Foundation.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
1130 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
