[ { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 0.25, "end": 6.72, "text": "So, Moholy, through his art exhibitions at Sturm, caught the eyes of Walter Gropius," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 7.0, "end": 8.8, "text": "who was looking to change the" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 8.8, "end": 14.54, "text": "direction of the Bauhaus from an art school to more of a design school." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 14.99, "end": 19.88, "text": "My name is Daniel Hug. I'm the second grandchild of László Moholy-Nagy." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 20.62, "end": 24.34, "text": "The thing that's interesting about Moholy is that he had kind of a singular" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 24.76, "end": 27.34, "text": "idea of transparency and light." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 27.91, "end": 33.08, "text": "And then I think what he was doing is he was applying this concept into different media." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 34.24, "end": 38.74, "text": "My name is Andreas Hug. I am the eldest grandson of László Moholy-Nagy." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 40.2, "end": 45.61, "text": "He felt that artists had a responsibility to appropriate technologies," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 45.61, "end": 52.4, "text": "to learn how to use them, and to make art with them in order to humanize them for the general public." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 53.31, "end": 57.71, "text": "My name is Dr. Oliver Botar. I'm Associate Director of the School of Art at" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 57.71, "end": 60.48, "text": "the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 60.84, "end": 65.46, "text": "My name is Anja Gutenberger, and this is my podcast, bauhaus faces." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 80.89, "end": 85.84, "text": "Welcome back to a new episode of bauhaus faces. Today, we turn to a Bauhaus" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 85.84, "end": 89.73, "text": "master, whom I have already mentioned many times before on bauhaus faces," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 90.3, "end": 92.25, "text": "especially in episodes about photography." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 92.92, "end": 98.03, "text": "László Moholy-Nagy. Or should I say Moholy or Moholy-Nagy?" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 98.74, "end": 103.39, "text": "His birth name was actually László Weisz. His grandsons, Andreas and Daniel" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 103.39, "end": 107.98, "text": "Hug, explained to me that the name Moholy-Nagy was connected to the surname" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 107.98, "end": 112.19, "text": "of his mother's brother, with whom the family lived after Moholy's father had left them." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 112.75, "end": 117.91, "text": "Later in Germany, where he moved in his 20s, he was often called Moholy-Nagy," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 118.36, "end": 123.35, "text": "partly because the Hungarian pronunciation of Nagy is difficult for German speakers." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 124.13, "end": 129.05, "text": "The family today often simply calls him Moholy, so if you hear different versions" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 129.05, "end": 131.5, "text": "of his name in this episode, this is why." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 132.14, "end": 136.79, "text": "For a long time, I personally associated Moholy most strongly with photography" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 137.01, "end": 138.77, "text": "and more specifically with the New Vision." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 139.57, "end": 143.33, "text": "He influenced many Bauhaus students who later became important photographers" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 143.33, "end": 146.99, "text": "themselves and so I tended to see mainly through that lens." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 147.43, "end": 151.56, "text": "But my perspective changed completely after speaking with Daniel and Andreas" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 151.97, "end": 154.89, "text": "and with the Canadian art historian Oliver Botar." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 155.67, "end": 159.46, "text": "Daniel is the artistic director of Art Cologne Art Fair in Germany." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 159.89, "end": 164.45, "text": "His brother Andreas is a user experience designer and studied at the Institute" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 164.45, "end": 168.28, "text": "of Design in Chicago, the successor institution of the New Bauhaus," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 168.28, "end": 171.73, "text": "which László Moholy-Nagy founded after emigrating to the US." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 172.9, "end": 177.57, "text": "So, in a way, both grandsons are still connected to Moholy's legacy from different" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 177.57, "end": 183.26, "text": "directions, through art, design, education and the question of how people engage" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 183.26, "end": 186.04, "text": "with visual culture and modern systems today." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 187.12, "end": 191.63, "text": "Through these conversations, I began to understand that Moholy was much more" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 191.63, "end": 193.81, "text": "than a brilliant and playful photographer." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 194.39, "end": 198.27, "text": "He was one of the first multimedia artists of the 20th century," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 198.49, "end": 204.47, "text": "working with painting, photography, film, typography, sculpture and stage design." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 205.22, "end": 209.57, "text": "And yet, perhaps the most important key to Moholy is education." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 210.1, "end": 215.09, "text": "He did not see art as something separate from life. His work tried to mediate" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 215.09, "end": 218.02, "text": "between new technology and human experience." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 218.6, "end": 222.87, "text": "That is the Moholy I would like to explore in this episode; not only the artist" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 222.87, "end": 227.51, "text": "of the New Vision, but the educator who asked how we might learn to see," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 227.71, "end": 231.2, "text": "think and live differently in a technological age." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 232.05, "end": 237.32, "text": "Moholy died young, at the age of only 51, but the body of work he left behind" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 237.32, "end": 240.07, "text": "is vast and extraordinarily varied." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 240.7, "end": 243.75, "text": "That is why I decided to tell this story in two parts." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 244.57, "end": 248.97, "text": "The first part focuses on his family background, his path toward becoming an" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 248.97, "end": 252.67, "text": "artist, his Bauhaus years and his later period in Berlin." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 253.55, "end": 257.66, "text": "The second part will follow him to the Netherlands, England and finally Chicago," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 257.92, "end": 259.94, "text": "where he became director of the New Bauhaus." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 260.8, "end": 264.88, "text": "There will also be a bonus episode for you, in which my three interview partners" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 264.88, "end": 267.01, "text": "discussed selected works by Moholy." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 267.57, "end": 271.79, "text": "Together, these works show the development from a young, self-taught painter" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 272.31, "end": 275.07, "text": "to an internationally renowned artist and educator." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 276.2, "end": 281.44, "text": "Before we begin, just a quick reminder. If you enjoy listening to bauhaus faces," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 281.91, "end": 287.54, "text": "please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts, give" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 287.54, "end": 292.94, "text": "it a five-star rating, a thumbs up and recommend the podcast to friends, colleagues and family." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 293.68, "end": 297.91, "text": "And if you would like to support this independent project, you can now do so" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 297.91, "end": 301.67, "text": "via Ko-fi on the podcast website bauhaus faces.com." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 302.71, "end": 308.07, "text": "Every form of support financial or moral is deeply appreciated. Thank you for" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 308.07, "end": 308.67, "text": "being here." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 309.9, "end": 315.81, "text": "Let's now dive into a new episode of bauhaus faces and shine a light on László Moholy-Nagy." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 321.29, "end": 327.45, "text": "Moholy was born in 1895 in, I might say it wrong, Bakšboršod," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 327.72, "end": 331.93, "text": "which at that time was in Hungary. Today, it's in the northern part of Serbia." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 332.54, "end": 339.87, "text": "And he was born to a well-to-do, reformed Jewish family, meaning that they went" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 339.87, "end": 342.66, "text": "to temple on Sunday, not on Saturday." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 343.08, "end": 347.17, "text": "They didn't dress any differently. they didn't, you know, have the locks or" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 347.41, "end": 351.56, "text": "wear kippahs out and about, except when going to temple." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 352.37, "end": 358.3, "text": "The family has kind of a complicated history, but his mother," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 358.45, "end": 362.99, "text": "Rosalind Stern, married the father Lipold Weisz." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 363.29, "end": 366.76, "text": "And I think in total, they had about five children." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 367.69, "end": 373.5, "text": "Early in Moholy's life, the father disappeared. Family lore was that he went" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 373.5, "end": 377.68, "text": "to the U.S., which was what a lot of people did back then." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 378.42, "end": 383.68, "text": "It's questionable. It seems that he just moved to the neighboring town and started a new family." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 384.33, "end": 390.53, "text": "But for whatever reasons, Moholy's mother ended up moving in with her brother, Gustav." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 391.73, "end": 398.55, "text": "And Gustav had already Hungarianized or Magyarized his surname to being Nagy," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 398.8, "end": 402.65, "text": "which is a very common Hungarian name. And he was a lawyer." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 403.23, "end": 407.58, "text": "And he had an extensive collection of art books: Old Masters," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 407.94, "end": 411.64, "text": "Rembrandt, etc., which fascinated Moholy." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 411.95, "end": 414.49, "text": "So that was really his introduction to art." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 415.36, "end": 420.27, "text": "Moholy must have had a very close relationship with his uncle because Moholy" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 420.27, "end": 425.66, "text": "eventually, with his older brother Yenne and younger brother Akos," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 425.93, "end": 427.89, "text": "took on the surname Nagy." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 428.95, "end": 431.94, "text": "Probably in their later teens." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 432.51, "end": 434.95, "text": "So Moholy wanted to become a poet," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 434.95, "end": 436.45, "text": "actually, in the beginning." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 437.06, "end": 444.2, "text": "And then with the outbreak of World War I, he was enlisted and was a junior artillery officer." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 444.74, "end": 448.63, "text": "And it's kind of a funny and sad story." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 448.85, "end": 452.75, "text": "Well, they bought him a horse. So, I mean, they must have been somewhat well off." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 453.2, "end": 458.08, "text": "And he was studying law at the time when World War I broke out." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 458.59, "end": 463.67, "text": "And his mother encouraged him to join the artillery because it was behind the" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 463.67, "end": 465.18, "text": "lines, behind the front." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 465.74, "end": 470.96, "text": "Little did he know that it's the junior officers on horses that have to ride" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 470.96, "end": 473.99, "text": "up to the front to see where the bombs are actually landing." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 474.29, "end": 476.44, "text": "So it did put him in direct harm's way." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 476.94, "end": 480.68, "text": "But on one of the occasions where he was in the trenches and he pulled himself" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 480.68, "end": 482.73, "text": "up to the periscope while reaching" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 482.73, "end": 489.9, "text": "up in the trench, his left hand was struck by a bullet or shrapnel," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 490.56, "end": 493.48, "text": "and he was sent to a hospital." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 493.73, "end": 498.95, "text": "And he had a very long convalescence, almost a year, which leads experts to" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 498.95, "end": 503.12, "text": "believe that he had some kind of an infection, that it wasn't just a mere bullet" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 503.12, "end": 505.36, "text": "wound, but that it became a serious matter." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 506.14, "end": 509.95, "text": "While he was convalescing, he had come to the conclusion that he wanted to become" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 509.95, "end": 515.16, "text": "an artist. And he actually wrote in his diary that he felt he could offer more" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 515.16, "end": 517.16, "text": "to the world as an artist." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 517.89, "end": 522.1, "text": "And I think it was also this sort of life and death experience that pushed him" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 522.1, "end": 525.73, "text": "into taking a more, let's say, for the lack of a better word," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 525.73, "end": 530.64, "text": "selfish idea to dedicate his life to becoming a visual artist." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 532.44, "end": 540.67, "text": "I think like many of Moholy's contemporaries, World War I was a complete shocker." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 541.09, "end": 544.27, "text": "I think it was a shock from a technological perspective." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 544.74, "end": 549.83, "text": "It was a shock from a cultural and societal perspective in the sense that there was so much bloodshed." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 550.39, "end": 558.89, "text": "And I think with that, it produced a type of desire for utopian existence after the war." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 559.21, "end": 564.45, "text": "An idea of no more war, but utilizing the technology that had been fine-tuned" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 564.45, "end": 567.82, "text": "during the war years for a greater good." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 567.82, "end": 574.41, "text": "And when I say technology, I'm thinking of photography, aerial photography especially." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 574.79, "end": 579.08, "text": "I'm thinking about greater capabilities in terms of communication." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 579.7, "end": 584.47, "text": "And so when you have this kind of rebirth after" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 585.01, "end": 591.24, "text": "the horrors of World War I, and you're seeing this introduction of all of these" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 591.24, "end": 595.59, "text": "new art movements, I think it was interesting for Moholy, who" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 596.08, "end": 601.21, "text": "had obviously convalesced during the last part of the war after being shot." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 601.69, "end": 607.69, "text": "I think it was only a natural progression for him to seek out these new utopian" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 607.69, "end": 613.85, "text": "visions that were really interested in kind of resetting and redefining the" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 613.85, "end": 616.28, "text": "cultural zeitgeist of the area." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 616.94, "end": 622.4, "text": "And I think that led to him taking night classes and painting and drawing." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 622.81, "end": 627.73, "text": "It led to him realizing that he needed to start moving west," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 628.28, "end": 630.54, "text": "ultimately ending up in Berlin, as we all know." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 631.1, "end": 640.55, "text": "But that along this journey, he was able to strike and meet with various organizations" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 640.55, "end": 645.5, "text": "such as MA, the Constructivist Organization and Art Group." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 645.98, "end": 649.91, "text": "And then ultimately, of course, the Bauhaus. And I think during this time period," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 649.91, "end": 657.51, "text": "his interest in painting grew out of the fact that it was, to some degree," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 657.51, "end": 659.77, "text": "what a lot of his contemporaries were doing." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 660.18, "end": 664.66, "text": "And it seemed like the medium of expression. And then ultimately," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 664.66, "end": 666.21, "text": "of course, he discovered photography." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 668.25, "end": 673.62, "text": "He really took a very fresh attitude towards art." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 674.13, "end": 678.16, "text": "He never really studied art. He took some drawing lessons in the evening in" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 678.16, "end": 683.55, "text": "Budapest in 1918-19 from a very good teacher, but he studied law." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 684.01, "end": 689.08, "text": "So he came to art as a complete outsider. Now, he was interested in art," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 689.08, "end": 690.89, "text": "but his first love was literature." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 691.38, "end": 694.04, "text": "So this is what he was more interested in when he was younger." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 694.63, "end": 698.19, "text": "But it's interesting that when he had the chance to take photographs during" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 698.19, "end": 700.83, "text": "the First World War, he chose to draw." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 701.48, "end": 706.33, "text": "When, for example, André Kertész was keeping a photographic diary of what he" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 706.33, "end": 709.23, "text": "was experiencing in the Austro-Hungarian army," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 709.97, "end": 714.61, "text": "and there were all kinds of photographic competitions launched by Budapest Illustrated" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 714.61, "end": 716.95, "text": "magazines for soldiers," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 717.72, "end": 721.15, "text": "Moholy-Knight decided he wanted to draw, so he drew." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 721.51, "end": 725.67, "text": "He drew on Feldpostkarte, so on official military postcards," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 725.67, "end": 728.67, "text": "and sent those to his best friend and his godfather, Iván Hevesy." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 729.16, "end": 734.52, "text": "He was the godfather when Moholy-Nagy converted from Judaism to Calvinism, to Reformed Church." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 735.43, "end": 739.66, "text": "And Iván Hevesy was very interested in media. He had already," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 739.66, "end": 744.24, "text": "before the First World War, complained that films were adopting the aesthetics" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 744.24, "end": 748.13, "text": "of theater rather than developing the aesthetics that would," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 748.62, "end": 754.08, "text": "be commensurate with the technical possibilities of the film medium." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 754.91, "end": 760.83, "text": "So he came from a very interesting intellectual milieu, both in Szeged," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 760.83, "end": 764.12, "text": "where he went to high school, and also in Budapest." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 765.59, "end": 774.45, "text": "So from Budapest, he went to Vienna, which was the cultural capital of Austro-Hungary, in 1919. 19." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 774.81, "end": 779.6, "text": "He didn't stay long. He was rather disappointed with Vienna and felt it to be" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 779.6, "end": 787.62, "text": "quite constricting and sort of stuck in its time and moved on to Berlin in 1920." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 789.18, "end": 793.22, "text": "On one hand, I think it is the excitement of being in a larger metropolis," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 793.56, "end": 798.21, "text": "because I think that you'll see a greater variety in terms of socioeconomic" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 798.21, "end": 802.92, "text": "diversity, racial diversity, but you'll also see a diversity of ideas." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 802.92, "end": 805.4, "text": "And I think that's what cities are really famous for." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 805.82, "end": 809.28, "text": "And they've always been. And I think that's the same that was true," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 809.28, "end": 811.4, "text": "especially in Europe during this time." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 811.82, "end": 816.22, "text": "Paris, after World War I, wasn't nearly as popular as Berlin." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 816.95, "end": 821.02, "text": "And so going to Berlin seemed like a natural recourse." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 821.27, "end": 826.57, "text": "I think the thing that really motivated Moholy was the fact that he recognized" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 826.57, "end": 831.42, "text": "that where he was in Hungary and where he was prior to moving Berlin was never" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 831.42, "end": 833.14, "text": "going to really help him career-wise." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 833.56, "end": 837.22, "text": "In order to become an artist of the caliber that he wanted to be," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 837.82, "end": 840.93, "text": "he needed to surround himself with people that knew more than him." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 841.37, "end": 843.22, "text": "And the people that knew more than him were in Berlin." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 845.5, "end": 852.14, "text": "A lot came together in Berlin, and I think he really strongly identified with" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 852.14, "end": 855.25, "text": "Berlin, the metropolis, the city." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 856.32, "end": 860.33, "text": "It must have been a very exciting time during the Weimar Republic." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 861.1, "end": 865.93, "text": "I think also, you know, liberally, socially, culturally, it was probably the" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 865.93, "end": 868.1, "text": "most advanced place on earth." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 869.32, "end": 875.11, "text": "By the time he got to Berlin, you know, he was primed to really rethink art." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 875.11, "end": 877.47, "text": "And by that time, he decided to become an artist." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 878.37, "end": 886.44, "text": "And then he encounters the Dadas. He arrives in 1920, and Berlin is the center of Dada." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 886.62, "end": 892.99, "text": "And it's partly, you know, the Malik-Verlag circle, Heartfield, etc., Grosz." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 893.47, "end": 898.65, "text": "But also, Schwitters, who they hated, was showing at Walden's \"Der Sturm.\"" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 899.23, "end": 903.92, "text": "And we have a letter from Moholy-Nagy to Iván Hevesy, his godfather," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 903.92, "end": 906.66, "text": "saying, this Schwitter's, I don't know what he wants to do." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 907.38, "end": 910.63, "text": "You know, the Cubists already did this years ago." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 910.63, "end": 912.99, "text": "It's awful. It elicited a" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 912.99, "end": 917.63, "text": "crisis in him, a kind of crisis of aesthetics and a crisis of perception." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 917.63, "end": 922.18, "text": "And I think that all these inputs, encountering the Russian constructivists," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 922.53, "end": 929.28, "text": "and then meeting Lucia Schulz, who was steeped in the Freideutsche Jugend and" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 929.28, "end": 932.16, "text": "in the whole biocentric way of thinking about the world," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 933.0, "end": 937.33, "text": "meeting her, this brilliant young woman, all these things came together." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 937.99, "end": 945.11, "text": "But the point here is that the way he perceived all this was not the way a person" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 945.11, "end": 948.43, "text": "who had gone through art academy would perceive it." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 949.07, "end": 951.3, "text": "He perceived it as an outsider." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 952.14, "end": 957.18, "text": "So it was this fresh look at the possibilities of art." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 958.81, "end": 965.3, "text": "And you can see the shift in Berlin. So in 1920, he goes through about four" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 965.8, "end": 972.55, "text": "different styles of geometric abstraction, a short Dada's period," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 973.24, "end": 977.14, "text": "and then his sort of glass architecture series." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 977.43, "end": 981.8, "text": "It's really pretty hard to date everything because it happens so rapidly." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 982.23, "end": 986.43, "text": "I mean, you get a sense that his work changed, I would say, on a monthly basis." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 987.77, "end": 995.1, "text": "In 1921, there's a nickel sculpture, \"Nickelskulptur mit Spirale.\"" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 995.66, "end": 1002.18, "text": "That's owned by MoMA. But when this was produced, it shook the ground. People were shocked." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1002.66, "end": 1006.04, "text": "This took sculpture and sent it in a new direction." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1006.67, "end": 1010.13, "text": "It looks like a machine. And then the whole thing is nickel plated." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1010.5, "end": 1017.28, "text": "So this is taking an industrial process and encoding the sculpture in this industrial coating." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1017.72, "end": 1022.47, "text": "And then the spiral, this very delicate thing, just the slightest vibration" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1022.47, "end": 1024.15, "text": "would have made it shift and move." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1024.63, "end": 1028.16, "text": "Or who knows, maybe make a sound." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1028.81, "end": 1032.87, "text": "This was like, wow, this is radical, crazy." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1034.16, "end": 1039.41, "text": "Yeah, so '21 is very important. He was looking for a style. He was an untrained" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1039.41, "end": 1040.99, "text": "artist, so he had to experiment." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1041.43, "end": 1044.5, "text": "And he was experimenting first with expressionist portraiture," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1044.5, "end": 1046.49, "text": "and then he moved into Dada techniques." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1046.83, "end": 1052.32, "text": "At the end of this encounter with Dada, or in the middle of it, in February of 1921," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1052.98, "end": 1057.05, "text": "he had to go back to Vienna to take care of a friend of his," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1057.38, "end": 1062.95, "text": "a wonderful painter by the name of József Nemes Lampérth, who was having a mental crisis." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1063.77, "end": 1068.61, "text": "And he ended up spending a month there and reconnecting with the activists with" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1068.61, "end": 1073.3, "text": "whom he had been associated in Budapest. All these people who formed the Hungarian" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1073.3, "end": 1075.05, "text": "activist circle around the journal MA." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1075.61, "end": 1081.87, "text": "And then he had an encounter in the early fall of 1921 w with Béla Uitz," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1082.15, "end": 1085.81, "text": "who had just been to the Third Internationale in Moscow," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1086.37, "end": 1092.15, "text": "was coming back with an incredible body of documentation of Russian constructivism." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1092.39, "end": 1096.2, "text": "Absolutely fresh information, theoretical texts, and also images." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1096.8, "end": 1099.23, "text": "And Uitz showed this to him." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1099.87, "end": 1105.83, "text": "So all this inspired him, I think, intellectually as well, to think about art in a different way." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1105.97, "end": 1108.21, "text": "So this really got his wheels turning." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1109.86, "end": 1114.16, "text": "Let's hit the pause button for a moment and take a closer look at Russian constructivism," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1114.16, "end": 1117.68, "text": "which was so central to the development of Moholy's artistic work." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1118.55, "end": 1123.34, "text": "Russian constructivism emerged in the years around the Russian Revolution of 1917." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1123.93, "end": 1129.27, "text": "It was not only interested in making beautiful objects. It asked a much bigger question." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1129.75, "end": 1132.71, "text": "What role should art play in a new society?" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1133.51, "end": 1138.44, "text": "For the constructivists, art was not something that should simply hang on the wall of a museum." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1138.91, "end": 1141.94, "text": "Art, they believed, should enter everyday life." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1142.49, "end": 1147.04, "text": "It should help build the modern world. They wanted to move away from the idea" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1147.04, "end": 1152.01, "text": "of the artist as a solitary genius and towards the idea of the artist as a kind" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1152.01, "end": 1154.84, "text": "of engineer or organizer of visual life." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1156.2, "end": 1160.44, "text": "This is why we often see energy, movement in pure construction." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1161.3, "end": 1166.26, "text": "The image does not simply represent something. It seems to be actively built." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1167.09, "end": 1170.39, "text": "A key idea was that form should serve a purpose." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1170.79, "end": 1175.69, "text": "A poster, for example, was not just an artwork. It was a tool of communication." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1176.22, "end": 1179.78, "text": "A book was not only something to read, it was something to design," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1179.78, "end": 1181.93, "text": "structure and guide the eye through." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1183.14, "end": 1189.3, "text": "At its core, Russian constructivism was driven by the hope that art could participate in social change." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1189.89, "end": 1195.26, "text": "Artists believed that visual culture could help shape a new collective modern life." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1195.86, "end": 1199.71, "text": "Of course, this hope was also tied to the political atmosphere at the end of" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1199.71, "end": 1203.23, "text": "the Russian Empire and the optimism of the early Soviet Union." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1204.0, "end": 1208.67, "text": "So, when we speak about Russian constructivism, we're not simply speaking about" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 1208.67, "end": 1214.93, "text": "a style, we're speaking about an idea that art could help construct society itself." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1216.83, "end": 1225.95, "text": "I think Moholy lost interest in Dada pretty quickly and shifted over to constructivism," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1226.31, "end": 1231.24, "text": "which for him held more meaning or was more serious." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1231.59, "end": 1237.63, "text": "It wasn't just about shocking people, pushing the limits, but having an agenda behind it." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1239.49, "end": 1246.86, "text": "As we move into 1922, he has an exhibition in February at \"Der Sturm\" with Laszlo" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1246.86, "end": 1250.47, "text": "Péri, who was an actor, but then decided to become an artist." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1250.99, "end": 1256.24, "text": "And this exhibition was revelatory. It was a huge \"succès de scandale.\"" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1256.62, "end": 1263.68, "text": "And then after that, [Alfred] Kémeny and he started to talk about what the possibilities for art were." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1263.85, "end": 1269.12, "text": "And they knew [Naum] Gabo and Gabo's brother's realistic manifesto," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1270.05, "end": 1274.0, "text": "which suggested that art could move into the fourth dimension," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1274.0, "end": 1275.4, "text": "which was time, which was movement." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1276.32, "end": 1281.86, "text": "And taking some of those ideas and other ideas, they came up with this manifesto," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1282.04, "end": 1283.92, "text": "the Dynamic Constructive Energy System." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1284.55, "end": 1293.47, "text": "It calls for an art that is completely immersive, participatory, and dematerialized." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1293.79, "end": 1300.06, "text": "And out of this emerged, for example, Moholy-Nagy's proposal for a leaning spiral" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1300.06, "end": 1303.61, "text": "tower, which has always been interpreted as a theater." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1304.2, "end": 1306.96, "text": "But the more I looked at it, the more I realized this is not a theater." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1307.42, "end": 1311.03, "text": "This is more like a play structure for adults." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1311.82, "end": 1315.79, "text": "Moholy-Nagy felt that adults should also get to know their bodies." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1315.79, "end": 1318.61, "text": "He also said, I don't care if you think this is art or not." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1319.42, "end": 1323.89, "text": "Of course, he never realized this tower. This was so radical." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1324.61, "end": 1328.73, "text": "It was going to be a 12-story high spiral ramp," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1329.5, "end": 1336.2, "text": "itself turning on a platform with guardrails, and the middle further very steep" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1336.2, "end": 1341.23, "text": "ramps, which basically would have been suicidal, and fireman's poles that you could go down." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1341.23, "end": 1344.85, "text": "So it was all kinds of opportunities to have physical, proprioceptive," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1344.85, "end": 1350.88, "text": "kinesthetic experiences that expose one to the energies of the world." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1351.66, "end": 1358.93, "text": "So this is just one of the series of texts that he wrote and co-wrote in 1922-23." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1359.71, "end": 1365.73, "text": "He also went on a vacation with Lucia to her old stomping grounds near Fulda" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1365.86, "end": 1369.55, "text": "in central Germany, which is where these women's communes were," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1370.13, "end": 1371.9, "text": "Loheland, Schwarzerden." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1372.72, "end": 1376.94, "text": "And these were her friends. Moholy-Noy, in the meantime, had also made friends" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1376.94, "end": 1378.0, "text": "with some of these people." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1378.43, "end": 1384.05, "text": "And there, they went hiking, they were eating raw and organic food, and etc., etc." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1384.96, "end": 1390.83, "text": "Long story short, they went to this photo laboratory run by one of the women" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1390.83, "end": 1394.1, "text": "at the Lowelland commune, Bertha Gunther was her name." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1394.58, "end": 1398.33, "text": "And they discovered her making photograms of plants." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1398.94, "end": 1403.43, "text": "And they were fascinated with this. And this is when Moholy and I drafted," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1403.89, "end": 1407.27, "text": "with Lucia's help, the Production-Reproduction manifesto." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1408.11, "end": 1413.48, "text": "He was thinking, what the photogram can do is that you can circumvent the camera" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1413.92, "end": 1418.95, "text": "and you can produce images just with light-sensitive paper and light and with objects." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1421.08, "end": 1424.9, "text": "Moholy embraced it and ran off with it, I would say." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1425.26, "end": 1431.33, "text": "He made photograms his entire life. He only lived to the age of 51 and passed" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1431.33, "end": 1435.2, "text": "away in 1946, but we have photograms from 1946." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1436.11, "end": 1443.61, "text": "So from 1922, 1923, up to his death, 1946, Moholy made photograms constantly." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1445.01, "end": 1449.26, "text": "In another article that he published in 1923 on music and sound," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1449.39, "end": 1454.11, "text": "Moholy-Nagy asked, why can't we just scratch directly into the record and make" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1454.11, "end": 1455.93, "text": "new sounds that nobody's ever heard before?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1456.43, "end": 1461.19, "text": "He tried to do this with an Austrian composer by the name of Hans-Heinz Stuckenschmidt." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1461.81, "end": 1463.31, "text": "The results were not that great." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1463.96, "end": 1467.84, "text": "And also, he thought, why can't we do this with film?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1468.09, "end": 1472.43, "text": "Later on, when sound film came, there was the sound strip." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1472.62, "end": 1477.94, "text": "And rather than recording the sounds in the studio, that if we just scratch" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1478.18, "end": 1482.08, "text": "the alphabet into the sound strip, we could hear the alphabet." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1482.24, "end": 1487.14, "text": "And out of this came this film later on \"Tönendes ABC,\" which was recently" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1487.14, "end": 1488.57, "text": "rediscovered a few years ago." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1488.68, "end": 1493.41, "text": "These ideas, they didn't end up being really great works of art always," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1493.84, "end": 1495.54, "text": "but they were ideas nevertheless." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1496.01, "end": 1502.67, "text": "So his whole approach was to take technologies and rather than have the aesthetics," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1503.2, "end": 1505.64, "text": "dictated by traditional art," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1506.39, "end": 1510.94, "text": "which is what most artists did, even when they took up a new technology like" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1510.94, "end": 1518.38, "text": "the camera, even avant-garde artists were so rooted in the academic system of a hierarchy of m" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1518.46, "end": 1521.92, "text": "edia with painting and sculpture and architecture at the top," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1522.4, "end": 1524.12, "text": "and then you move down the hierarchy." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1524.77, "end": 1529.06, "text": "Moholy-Nagy didn't internalize this hierarchy. He couldn't care less." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1529.8, "end": 1533.93, "text": "For him, any medium was just as good as any other medium." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1534.26, "end": 1536.79, "text": "That was one thing. The other thing was, because he was untrained," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1537.35, "end": 1538.9, "text": "he had to always ask for help." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1539.5, "end": 1544.61, "text": "He felt, what I can't do, I can subcontract to experts. Let them do it for me," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1544.83, "end": 1550.97, "text": "which also involves this concept that the idea is the most important thing in art." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1551.33, "end": 1557.02, "text": "The idea can then be realized through different media with the help of others," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1557.59, "end": 1558.97, "text": "technical experts, whatever." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1560.84, "end": 1565.96, "text": "\"Konstruktion in a Emaille,\" his telephone painting. This is probably the most critical." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1566.6, "end": 1570.98, "text": "And this is a series of three paintings he did in 1922." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1572.24, "end": 1577.6, "text": "And they're porcelain enamel on steel plates. And he had them made by a factory." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1578.19, "end": 1580.69, "text": "This is shortly before he went to the Bauhaus in Weimar." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1581.62, "end": 1585.28, "text": "They're called the telephone paintings because the story goes he had the paintings" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1585.28, "end": 1587.69, "text": "laid out on a grid, gridded paper," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1588.12, "end": 1593.61, "text": "and he called the porcelain enamel factory, which normally made street signs" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1593.85, "end": 1598.71, "text": "for naming streets, the numbers on the doors, or advertisements that were outdoors." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1599.32, "end": 1602.32, "text": "They're called the telephone paintings because Moholy did say," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1603.01, "end": 1605.47, "text": "it was so easy, I could have done it on the telephone." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1606.04, "end": 1608.9, "text": "And then it just turned into like, well, he did it on the telephone." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1609.18, "end": 1614.84, "text": "And so he sat in a studio and he dictated like the game battleship where you" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1614.84, "end": 1620.68, "text": "move your battleship from A5 to C2, etc." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1621.63, "end": 1625.81, "text": "So he laid out the composition in a grid. Of course, you can't do diagonals" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1626.1, "end": 1631.25, "text": "because that would look pixelated or strange. So he kept it very east-west, north-south." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1632.71, "end": 1636.69, "text": "The meaning of the work changed. I think when he commissioned the work from" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1636.69, "end": 1639.86, "text": "the factory, he requested three different sizes." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1640.59, "end": 1648.64, "text": "And at first, It was to see the effect, how scale affects color and composition." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1649.53, "end": 1655.46, "text": "So that was the idea behind the work. Part of the constructivist ethos was to" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1655.46, "end": 1661.33, "text": "make paintings as flat as possible, to make the brushstrokes disappear." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1661.67, "end": 1666.43, "text": "And if you look at a, let's say, a pointless painting, or you look at a Van" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1666.43, "end": 1670.46, "text": "Gogh or a Max Lieberman, and you have these heavy brushstrokes," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1670.87, "end": 1672.02, "text": "there's a modernity there." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1672.19, "end": 1677.21, "text": "Of revealing how a painting is made, of showing the steps of the brushstrokes," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1678.94, "end": 1683.09, "text": "The constructivists, they wanted paintings that looked like they were made by" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1683.09, "end": 1686.01, "text": "the machine, a machine aesthetic." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1686.64, "end": 1691.26, "text": "And so there's this logical step to, hey, I'm going to have my next series of" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1691.26, "end": 1693.37, "text": "paintings made in a factory." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1694.22, "end": 1699.45, "text": "That's a great idea. Love it. Modern technology producing a painting." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 1700.38, "end": 1706.38, "text": "The telephone paintings are this gigantic statement shift in the art world." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1708.31, "end": 1711.24, "text": "His success was astonishing if you think about it," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1711.95, "end": 1718.62, "text": "he came as a penniless refugee in march of 1920 to berlin and by february of" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1718.62, "end": 1725.12, "text": "1923 he was having a second major exhibition at the most important gallery in berlin desch durm," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1725.89, "end": 1731.41, "text": "it was the second exhibition at desch durm with laszlo perry it It was in February of 1923." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1732.24, "end": 1736.17, "text": "And he showed \"Nickelkonstruktion mit Spirale\", which he showed," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1736.17, "end": 1738.18, "text": "I think, at the first \"Der Sturm\" exhibition as well." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1738.58, "end": 1740.95, "text": "Mainly, I think, he showed the Metallskulptur." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1741.78, "end": 1746.27, "text": "When Gropius saw these and the other works there, I think he was deeply impressed" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1746.45, "end": 1749.43, "text": "by their newness, by their use of materials." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1750.18, "end": 1753.68, "text": "The fact that he used all kinds of materials, including zinc," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1754.19, "end": 1758.73, "text": "stainless steel, iron, glass, wood, to lead." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1759.14, "end": 1765.37, "text": "I think this stimulated Gropius's imagination as far as teaching students went." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1766.43, "end": 1770.24, "text": "Because he could see that Moholy-Nagy was really interested in the nature of materiality." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1770.78, "end": 1775.12, "text": "He knew that Moholy-Nagy was being accepted, was an up-and-coming artist." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1775.73, "end": 1780.63, "text": "I think when he interviewed Moholy-Nagy, he realized that Moholy-Nagy knew about" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1780.9, "end": 1785.26, "text": "the Pädagogische Reformbewegung, the new ideas of teaching theory." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1785.26, "end": 1789.6, "text": "So even though he had only ever had one private student in his life at that" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1789.6, "end": 1795.0, "text": "point, a few months earlier, he had this Danish woman, Franziska Clausen, he" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1795.3, "end": 1799.24, "text": "really had almost no teaching experience whatsoever, certainly not in a classroom situation." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1799.71, "end": 1803.92, "text": "I think that Gropius was interested or fascinated by the fact that he knew about all this." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1804.26, "end": 1809.88, "text": "Germany was a center of alternative pedagogical approaches in the early 20s and the late teens." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1810.24, "end": 1813.26, "text": "And Gropius was immersed in this through the Novembergruppe," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1813.67, "end": 1817.78, "text": "through the Glass Chain (Gläserne Kette) all of Gropius' involvements." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1818.65, "end": 1824.27, "text": "As we know, Lazar El Lissitzky, the Belarussian artist, would have liked to have this job." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1825.1, "end": 1827.78, "text": "And truth be told, Gropius should" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1827.78, "end": 1831.03, "text": "have given him the job. He was much more accomplished than Moholy-Nagy." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1831.97, "end": 1836.19, "text": "He was trained as an architect. He was also an artist. He had worked with [Kazimir] Malevich." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1836.57, "end": 1842.75, "text": "He had taught in Vitebsk, next to Malevich. He was really the originator of" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1842.75, "end": 1844.2, "text": "international constructivism." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1845.08, "end": 1849.15, "text": "He was a brilliant theorist, writer, all that. As brilliant as Moholy-Nagy," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1849.15, "end": 1850.76, "text": "if not more, just as brilliant." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1851.38, "end": 1853.98, "text": "Different way of thinking about things." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1854.88, "end": 1860.24, "text": "But let's not forget, Gropius was replacing someone in this position." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1861.01, "end": 1865.35, "text": "He didn't want another rival in the Bauhaus. Lissitzky would have been a rival," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1865.46, "end": 1868.01, "text": "or Theo van Doesburg was the other one who wanted to be hired." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1868.43, "end": 1871.59, "text": "He even set up his own classes in his studio in Weimar." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1872.25, "end": 1876.88, "text": "And, you know, van Doesburg was an accomplished editor by that point," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1877.37, "end": 1879.8, "text": "author, theorist, artist." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1880.33, "end": 1886.63, "text": "Gropius, I think, felt that he could, in a sense, form Moholy-Nagy to some extent" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1886.63, "end": 1889.23, "text": "himself, because Moholy-Nagy was a beginner." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1890.01, "end": 1895.54, "text": "And also, he intuited, I think, that Moholy-Nagy did not want to be his rival." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1896.21, "end": 1900.53, "text": "He wanted to be a team player. This must have been Gropius' intuition." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1901.26, "end": 1905.49, "text": "Gropius had enough to contend with. The shift to the right of the government" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1905.65, "end": 1909.54, "text": "in Thüringen. He was in the middle of one crisis after the other." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1910.15, "end": 1914.62, "text": "He didn't want another crisis. Now, he ended up with a crisis because all his" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1914.62, "end": 1915.86, "text": "colleagues were furious." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1916.38, "end": 1921.68, "text": "So his colleagues were like, why did Gropius hire this man who never went to" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1921.68, "end": 1925.48, "text": "art school, never taught a day in his life in a classroom situation," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1926.25, "end": 1930.55, "text": "and had been making art for a few years, seriously, since 1918?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1930.55, "end": 1932.74, "text": "18, that's it, people were upset." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1932.99, "end": 1937.46, "text": "So he was taking over from Johannes Itten. We were alluding to Johannes Itten" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1937.46, "end": 1941.63, "text": "earlier, who was a Swiss artist and teacher, who had been studying in Vienna" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1941.97, "end": 1944.92, "text": "with Ciszek, who was a children's art pedagogue." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1945.55, "end": 1949.22, "text": "And so Itten brought a lot of these ideas with him. He had a certain way of" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1949.22, "end": 1954.9, "text": "teaching, materials, colors, and we know that he took over many of these ideas." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1955.42, "end": 1959.47, "text": "So one of the things that people forget was the degree of continuity that there" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1959.47, "end": 1964.28, "text": "was between the Itten introductory workshop and Moholy-Nagy's introductory course." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1965.11, "end": 1970.19, "text": "He didn't want to reinvent the wheel, but Moholy-Nagy was genuinely interested," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1970.68, "end": 1976.94, "text": "A, in materials and materiality, but also he was learning in a sense with the" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1976.94, "end": 1981.26, "text": "students because he had never taken the course like this before or taught one." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1981.84, "end": 1988.31, "text": "So the way he taught the course was exploratory and educational for himself as well." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1988.88, "end": 1994.06, "text": "And his most talented students built these amazing models, some of which have been reconstructed." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1994.59, "end": 1999.48, "text": "And they took this basic idea of experimenting with materials," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 1999.48, "end": 2003.15, "text": "with light reflecting properties, or light transmission properties," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2003.33, "end": 2007.74, "text": "for example, using wire and tensile strength and experimenting with all these things." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2008.27, "end": 2011.89, "text": "It was for him an opportunity and for students to learn together." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2012.31, "end": 2017.98, "text": "In the end, I think Gropius took a chance and he was incredibly successful." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2019.65, "end": 2024.74, "text": "So, Moholy, through his fame, through his art exhibitions at \"Sturm,\"" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2025.31, "end": 2030.38, "text": "caught the eyes of Walter Gropius, who was looking to change the direction of" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2030.38, "end": 2035.26, "text": "the Bauhaus from an art school to more of a design school." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2036.6, "end": 2040.02, "text": "I think that heading the metal workshop made a lot of sense" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2040.5, "end": 2045.24, "text": "because ultimately I think what Gropius was doing was looking for individuals" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2045.54, "end": 2052.12, "text": "who shared his vision of what could possibly take place at the Bauhaus in terms of" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2052.82, "end": 2058.41, "text": "honing this new idea and this new curriculum of producing not just art," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2058.88, "end": 2065.89, "text": "but encapsulating some overarching ideas, such as breaking away from the previous" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2065.89, "end": 2070.84, "text": "academic art and design and seeking out a new language." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2071.37, "end": 2075.11, "text": "So I think Gropius recognized that Moholy would fit the bill." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2075.67, "end": 2081.82, "text": "So it wasn't so important that Moholy have actual metalwork experience," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2081.82, "end": 2084.7, "text": "which was probably extremely limited, actually." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2085.06, "end": 2089.03, "text": "But what was important is that he was able to come in, hit the ground running," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2089.49, "end": 2092.21, "text": "and literally be an extension of Gropius." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2092.52, "end": 2100.46, "text": "Ultimately, what we start seeing is this kind of awakening of Moholy's pedagogical work, right?" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2100.7, "end": 2106.96, "text": "So the Bauhaus curriculum had already fairly been well-established by Gropius" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2107.08, "end": 2108.78, "text": "and the earlier masters." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2109.34, "end": 2114.99, "text": "So in terms of Moholy's teaching, I think it starts very slowly." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2114.99, "end": 2118.49, "text": "And then what we start seeing is him actually contributing." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2118.8, "end": 2127.05, "text": "And we start seeing this kind of foundation for courses being fine-tuned to meet modern needs." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2129.44, "end": 2133.69, "text": "In the end, with Moholy, Walter Gropius appointed a teacher to the Bauhaus" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2133.69, "end": 2136.67, "text": "staff, who was quite different from many of the others." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2137.21, "end": 2141.24, "text": "He was not academically trained in the same way as Klee, Kandinsky or Feininger," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2141.7, "end": 2147.55, "text": "and I cannot shake the feeling that this was precisely what made him so invaluable for the Bauhaus." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2148.57, "end": 2150.34, "text": "Gropius wanted to lead the school" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2150.34, "end": 2154.38, "text": "into unknown waters, away from the conventions of the art academies." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2155.13, "end": 2161.03, "text": "But how could he truly do that if the Bauhaus continued to rely mainly on academically trained painters?" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2162.05, "end": 2165.5, "text": "Moholy brought exactly that fresh breeze into the Bauhaus." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2166.35, "end": 2171.26, "text": "He had made himself an artist through experimentation. He had tried out different" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2171.26, "end": 2175.59, "text": "styles, media and materials in order to find his own artistic path." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2176.5, "end": 2181.12, "text": "And this was also what Gropius wanted for the students. Not imitation," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2181.24, "end": 2184.56, "text": "not academic routine, but active discovery." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2185.67, "end": 2189.84, "text": "When Moholy took over the preliminary course, the Vorkurs, from Johannes Itten," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2190.29, "end": 2192.73, "text": "he introduced new techniques and new materials." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2193.27, "end": 2196.14, "text": "One of the most famous examples is the photogram." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2197.33, "end": 2201.46, "text": "Earlier in this episode, we heard from Oliver Botar that László and Lucia Moholy" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2201.46, "end": 2205.84, "text": "first encountered the making of photograms through Bertha Günther at the Loheland commune." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2206.81, "end": 2211.88, "text": "For those of you who are not familiar with the technique, a photogram is a camera-less photograph." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2212.27, "end": 2217.02, "text": "Objects are placed directly onto light-sensitive paper and then exposed to light." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2217.57, "end": 2220.7, "text": "When the paper is developed, the covered areas remain light," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2221.02, "end": 2223.23, "text": "while the exposed areas turn dark." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2223.87, "end": 2228.82, "text": "The result is a kind of negative still life. an image made not by looking through" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2228.82, "end": 2232.99, "text": "a camera but by the direct meeting of object, light and surface" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2233.85, "end": 2238.03, "text": "and this is important because it shows us something central about Moholy's approach" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2238.49, "end": 2243.87, "text": "photography for him was never only about documenting the visible world it was" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2243.87, "end": 2245.67, "text": "a field of experimentation" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2246.22, "end": 2251.02, "text": "it was a way of asking what can light do what can technology do" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2251.6, "end": 2254.24, "text": "how can we train the eye to see differently." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2256.37, "end": 2260.87, "text": "As he is in Berlin, is starting to really actively use the camera." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2261.42, "end": 2269.38, "text": "And I think he was really struck by the city lights. And that led to a more mature style" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2269.86, "end": 2278.58, "text": "that we see that's associated with moving away from constructivism and more towards a new vision." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2279.03, "end": 2282.75, "text": "And that ultimately led then to his fairly famous Bauhaus style," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2282.75, "end": 2288.96, "text": "where you can clearly see that he's working with shapes and transparencies and" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2288.96, "end": 2290.71, "text": "that that becomes a central focus." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2292.35, "end": 2297.89, "text": "I think it's really important to understand that when Moholy is appointed to" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2298.49, "end": 2302.95, "text": "the Weimar Bauhaus, it is so to work within the metal workshop." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2303.51, "end": 2309.22, "text": "And of course, his wife at this point, Lucia, has already been doing photography for quite some time." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2309.22, "end": 2314.08, "text": "In fact, at this point, she kind of picks up an interest." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2314.08, "end": 2321.44, "text": "And so it is at the Bauhaus that she starts working with other people," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2321.44, "end": 2328.4, "text": "taking her through the basics of photography. And then she really develops a zeal for it." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2328.82, "end": 2334.98, "text": "At the same time, Moholy is also starting to do photography on the side." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2335.25, "end": 2338.83, "text": "But we have to remember he's doing mostly working in the metal workshop." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2339.46, "end": 2343.84, "text": "So that's a very important distinction to make because we have to be cognizant" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2343.84, "end": 2347.7, "text": "of the fact that he's not hired as a photographer." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2348.61, "end": 2355.92, "text": "So having set that forward, I think what's fascinating is that as they both" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2356.36, "end": 2363.81, "text": "start delving into photography as a medium, Lucia becomes a far more technically" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2364.13, "end": 2365.56, "text": "oriented photographer." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2366.2, "end": 2372.08, "text": "What I think makes Moholy's photography wholly different and I think really" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2372.08, "end": 2377.81, "text": "interesting is the fact that he's not so concerned about technical capabilities," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2378.31, "end": 2384.47, "text": "but it is going back to this concept of playing with transparencies, shape, and light." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2384.82, "end": 2391.21, "text": "One of my favorite photographs that he took was in Berlin, and it was done a little bit later." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2391.46, "end": 2397.53, "text": "It's shooting a streetscape from the third floor apartment that he was living in," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2398.04, "end": 2403.36, "text": "where he basically points the camera out the window, straight down onto the" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2403.72, "end": 2406.54, "text": "trolley tracks and the streets below." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2406.98, "end": 2412.35, "text": "And you have people walking along, casting incredibly long shadows." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2412.75, "end": 2416.28, "text": "So it's obviously has to be taken in the morning or the late afternoon." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2416.81, "end": 2423.84, "text": "And so what he's doing with this is that he's not worried technically what's going on with that." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2424.54, "end": 2429.02, "text": "But what he's concerned about is composition, the elements, and again," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2429.02, "end": 2432.17, "text": "the interplay of the shapes and the light and the space." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2432.92, "end": 2439.05, "text": "I think Lucia ends up developing a very proficient, very technical capability" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2439.52, "end": 2446.26, "text": "that ultimately contributes to her work in documenting in incredible detail" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2446.26, "end": 2449.18, "text": "and just absolutely wonderful compositions" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2449.89, "end": 2453.39, "text": "the entire experience of the Bauhaus, especially Dessau." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2454.12, "end": 2461.08, "text": "Whereas Moholy takes a leap and is utilizing photography, not for the technical" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2461.08, "end": 2463.62, "text": "capabilities, but for the artistry." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2465.04, "end": 2467.97, "text": "As with his telephone series, which he had produced in a factory," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2468.39, "end": 2472.66, "text": "the creative process seems to have mattered more to him than the final object." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2473.7, "end": 2477.48, "text": "In this sense, Lucia and Moholy complemented each other perfectly," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2478.07, "end": 2480.23, "text": "the artist and the savvy technician," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2480.84, "end": 2484.15, "text": "and this is probably one of the reasons why they continued to work together" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2484.36, "end": 2489.17, "text": "even after their separation and after their departure from the Bauhaus in 1928" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2489.17, "end": 2491.06, "text": "when they both returned to Berlin." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2492.02, "end": 2495.61, "text": "If you would like to know more about Lucia Moholy, You should definitely go back" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2495.61, "end": 2499.84, "text": "in the bauhaus faces timeline and look out for the episode about her featuring" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2499.84, "end": 2503.38, "text": "artist-historian and Courtauld Institute professor Robin Schuldenfrei." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2505.46, "end": 2510.82, "text": "Artists were using cameras, but they were trying to imitate graphic art or impressionist painting." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2511.35, "end": 2515.9, "text": "He thought, you know, a camera can be sharp. Why can't we use it to make art that way?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2516.48, "end": 2519.21, "text": "A camera can be out of focus. Let's make out of focus pictures." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2519.21, "end": 2520.19, "text": "Let's play with the focus." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2520.6, "end": 2523.98, "text": "If something is overexposed, that's interesting. Let's play with that." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2523.98, "end": 2527.22, "text": "Let's play with different angles. Let's put the camera down on the ground." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2527.22, "end": 2531.82, "text": "Let's take pictures from above. Let's have unusual perspectives." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2532.58, "end": 2535.83, "text": "It was also a way to help people see the world in a new way." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2536.48, "end": 2539.65, "text": "So the camera could help us see the new world in a new way, which could also," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2539.84, "end": 2543.67, "text": "in a sense, rewire our brains to adapt to the new world." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2544.27, "end": 2548.52, "text": "All these ideas that he was picking up from his environments in Budapest," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2548.52, "end": 2554.86, "text": "in Vienna, in Berlin, He wanted to help people experience this new world in a new way." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2555.11, "end": 2558.34, "text": "So I think that a lot of his theories were about that. And that," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2558.34, "end": 2562.9, "text": "of course, at heart, is a pedagogical project." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2563.88, "end": 2569.09, "text": "Hattula Moholy-Nagy, his daughter, said to me, he was only secondarily an artist." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2569.09, "end": 2570.88, "text": "First and foremost, he was a teacher." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2571.73, "end": 2574.97, "text": "Because he wanted to teach art, but he also wanted to teach through art." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2575.58, "end": 2580.93, "text": "And he felt that as these new and challenging technologies emerge," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2581.74, "end": 2584.21, "text": "in the 20s, it was very challenging for people." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2584.55, "end": 2587.8, "text": "Radio was something very shocking for people." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2588.42, "end": 2591.34, "text": "Of course, by that time, x-ray technology was already in place." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2591.34, "end": 2594.47, "text": "There were experiments with other means of remote imaging." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2594.84, "end": 2601.76, "text": "People were experimenting with television. In any case of any challenging technology, he felt" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2602.18, "end": 2606.59, "text": "that artists had a responsibility to appropriate those technologies," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2606.59, "end": 2609.93, "text": "to learn how to use them, and to make art with them," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2610.41, "end": 2613.31, "text": "in order to humanize them for the general public." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2613.92, "end": 2620.33, "text": "And in order that the general public retain control over all these new technologies." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2620.82, "end": 2626.88, "text": "And this is why I think that his work and ideas is as relevant now as it was" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2626.88, "end": 2629.57, "text": "in the 1920s, the 30s, or the 40s." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2630.01, "end": 2636.36, "text": "If we want to not be intimidated by technology, we have to learn how to use it ourselves." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2636.78, "end": 2641.07, "text": "And it's going to change the way we make art. Photography changed the way people painted." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2641.6, "end": 2646.72, "text": "Many of the great 19th century academic painters started to use photography" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2646.72, "end": 2648.39, "text": "as their method of making sketches." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2649.03, "end": 2651.42, "text": "And some of them made beautiful photographs." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2652.11, "end": 2655.83, "text": "It didn't kill painting. It changed the way people made art." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2656.24, "end": 2658.76, "text": "and this is going to be true into the future as well." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2660.24, "end": 2665.59, "text": "Already in his Bauhaus book \"Malerei, Photographie, Film\" Moholy made a very clear argument." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2666.21, "end": 2670.12, "text": "Photography and film should no longer be seen as secondary to painting." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2670.86, "end": 2674.65, "text": "They were not just technical tools and not just means of documentation." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2675.14, "end": 2677.4, "text": "They were artistic media in their own right." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2677.9, "end": 2680.52, "text": "And this is where the book becomes especially important." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2681.03, "end": 2684.66, "text": "Moholy was not only asking what photography and film could show." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2685.35, "end": 2688.48, "text": "He was asking how they might transform vision itself." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2689.19, "end": 2696.19, "text": "From here, Moholy began to imagine polycinema, a cinema that turns film into a spatial experience." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2696.85, "end": 2698.9, "text": "And this is where we return to Oliver Botar." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2700.28, "end": 2704.22, "text": "So this idea of the polycinema was that you would have a space," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2704.56, "end": 2708.78, "text": "and he never really formulated an absolutely coherent design or planned for" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2708.78, "end": 2711.6, "text": "it, but he did develop the idea over several texts." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2712.1, "end": 2716.25, "text": "The questions he asked is, why do we only show one film at a time on a flat screen?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2716.72, "end": 2720.67, "text": "Why don't we show two films at the same time? Why isn't the film consists of" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2720.67, "end": 2725.13, "text": "two projections, which could allow for different narrative possibilities?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2725.63, "end": 2729.95, "text": "Maybe two lives that come together at a certain point. So you're projecting" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2729.95, "end": 2731.54, "text": "two films. Or why not three?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2732.02, "end": 2737.86, "text": "Why not 12 simultaneous projections of films? And why do we project onto flat surfaces?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2738.59, "end": 2740.58, "text": "We can project onto any kind of surface." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2741.51, "end": 2745.34, "text": "We can project onto spheres. We could project onto cubes. We could project onto," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2745.96, "end": 2750.3, "text": "concave, convex surfaces. It would change the way that the image looks." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2750.61, "end": 2754.81, "text": "And you could play with those aesthetic possibilities that that new arrangement would afford." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2755.55, "end": 2761.2, "text": "Why is the projector stationary? Why can't the projector move around and project" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2761.2, "end": 2763.11, "text": "within a space all over the place?" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2763.99, "end": 2765.59, "text": "According to a formula, of course." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2766.73, "end": 2772.02, "text": "His idea was that already by the 1920s, people were living in such a sensorially" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2772.02, "end": 2774.88, "text": "challenging and technologically challenging environment." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 2775.32, "end": 2780.9, "text": "He wanted to use that complex media environment of modernity as an aesthetic." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2782.79, "end": 2787.31, "text": "He had reached a point in 1928 where he felt, painting, this is it." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2788.23, "end": 2792.8, "text": "It's all going to shift into photography. He focused on photography and film." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2793.79, "end": 2800.08, "text": "Moholy declared painting dead in 1928, only to resume painting in 1930." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2801.96, "end": 2807.17, "text": "By the end of March 1928, several figures crucial to the Bauhaus left the institution" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2807.17, "end": 2808.65, "text": "together with Walter Gropius." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2809.24, "end": 2813.38, "text": "Among them was László Moholy-Nagy, who returned to Berlin, the city where his" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2813.38, "end": 2817.11, "text": "career as an up-and-coming artist had begun in the early 1920s." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2817.55, "end": 2821.14, "text": "He earned his living primarily through typography and stage design." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2822.21, "end": 2827.64, "text": "As in other media, Moholy had formulated clear theoretical aims for typography early on." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2828.25, "end": 2832.25, "text": "For him, typography was above all a tool of communication." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2832.83, "end": 2838.72, "text": "It should primarily create clarity, move dynamically across the page and incorporate" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2838.72, "end": 2842.65, "text": "photography as an active element, which he called typophoto." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2843.92, "end": 2848.32, "text": "During his Bauhaus years, he put these ideas into practice in some of his most" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2848.32, "end": 2853.86, "text": "recognizable book designs, using bold circles, lines, arrows and contrasting" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2853.86, "end": 2856.18, "text": "font sizes to guide the reader's eye" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2856.56, "end": 2859.3, "text": "and make content immediately understandable." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2860.36, "end": 2865.1, "text": "His work for the stage followed a similar logic. In productions such as \"The" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2865.1, "end": 2869.61, "text": "Tales of Hoffman\" and \"The Merchant of Berlin,\" Moholy transformed the stage into" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2869.61, "end": 2871.35, "text": "a dynamic spatial machine" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2871.69, "end": 2875.47, "text": "using projections, revolving platforms, conveyor belts" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2875.82, "end": 2878.91, "text": "and light-reflecting materials to make movement, light" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2879.26, "end": 2882.08, "text": "and technology active parts of the performance." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 2883.04, "end": 2888.62, "text": "This idea would find its most concentrated form in Moholy's \"Light Prop for an Electric Stage.\"" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2889.98, "end": 2897.25, "text": "Have you seen the photo documents of the stage designed for \"Tales of Hoffman\"?" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2897.68, "end": 2902.44, "text": "If you look at those images and you squint your eyes a little bit," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2902.6, "end": 2907.85, "text": "they look like one of his streetscapes, in my mind, just in terms of the" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2908.35, "end": 2913.22, "text": "incredible shadows, the incredible light play that's taking place." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2913.6, "end": 2921.34, "text": "The fact that he can utilize light to highlight certain areas of the stage during different acts" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2922.27, "end": 2929.18, "text": "and completely change the mood and the feeling of that stage design," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2929.18, "end": 2932.72, "text": "which actually remains the same. It's just the lighting that changes." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2933.16, "end": 2937.42, "text": "And to me, that is, like you said, it's the red thread." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2937.6, "end": 2942.56, "text": "You have that continuous message of let's work with transparency." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 2942.56, "end": 2949.48, "text": "Let's utilize shadows. Let's create something novel and that serves the play." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2951.13, "end": 2956.81, "text": "You know, his famous \"Light Prop for an Electric Stage,\" dated 1930." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2957.3, "end": 2962.45, "text": "He was thinking about seeing theater in a different light, creating a machine" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2963.23, "end": 2964.94, "text": "that you would project lights onto." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2965.62, "end": 2970.06, "text": "You know, like a disco ball that sends lights and stuff everywhere." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2970.72, "end": 2973.97, "text": "It's beautiful to look at in a room just by itself." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2974.37, "end": 2981.67, "text": "But Moholy, at first, presented it in a big white box with a circular cutout and colored lights." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2982.44, "end": 2989.35, "text": "So you have to imagine the psychedelic, insane light show. It brings the whole room alive." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2990.17, "end": 2994.96, "text": "Actually, it's quite logical to take this next step to create this machine that" }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2994.96, "end": 2998.11, "text": "will bring a painting into an entire room." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 2998.42, "end": 3002.4, "text": "To be able to immerse yourself within light and space." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3004.18, "end": 3007.84, "text": "Originally, the \"Light Prop for an Electric Stage,\" the so-called \"Light Space" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3007.84, "end": 3010.41, "text": "Modulator,\" I want to underline, he never used that term." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3010.92, "end": 3014.26, "text": "I think it's a wonderful title, but it was invented after he died." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3015.07, "end": 3019.33, "text": "Most people see it as an early kinetic sculpture, but I actually think that" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3019.33, "end": 3023.93, "text": "we have to take seriously his own writings about it, and also the fact that" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3023.93, "end": 3026.13, "text": "he called it the light prop for an electric stage." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3026.13, "end": 3030.85, "text": "So it was supposed to be a prop for creating light effects for a play," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3030.85, "end": 3034.07, "text": "for a live performance on a stage, in a theater." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3034.45, "end": 3038.33, "text": "Because he was doing all this set design at the time for theater productions." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3038.98, "end": 3043.88, "text": "And he was using a lot of projected film and projected light effects and everything in his set designs." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3044.66, "end": 3050.34, "text": "This was first shown in Paris in 1930 at this Werkbund exhibition." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3051.15, "end": 3054.87, "text": "I think that it was in the box, just like it is in that photograph," }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3055.29, "end": 3061.29, "text": "with round opening on it, and that it was meant to be a live abstract film." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3062.21, "end": 3067.42, "text": "And that round opening was exactly the same size as the round openings through" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3067.42, "end": 3070.9, "text": "which avant-garde abstract films were to be shown." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3071.57, "end": 3077.41, "text": "So, he wrote about trying to create a photogram film. This was one of his" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3077.8, "end": 3080.19, "text": "projects. He really was obsessed with this." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3080.65, "end": 3085.46, "text": "And if you have this program of light bulbs inside, which would flash on and" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3085.46, "end": 3087.81, "text": "off in different times, it was programmed." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3088.23, "end": 3091.64, "text": "But even the drawings are very difficult to understand. They're ambiguous." }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3091.87, "end": 3096.02, "text": "I've never been able to prove this 100%, but I think that it was actually meant" }, { "speaker": "Oliver Botar", "start": 3096.02, "end": 3103.95, "text": "to be on, and then you'd see these shadows, a beautiful shadow film behind this translucent glass." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3105.15, "end": 3110.55, "text": "What's interesting, he made also the film \"Ein Lichtspiel.\" So he made a machine," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3110.76, "end": 3114.77, "text": "and then he made a film of it, and I think the film, that's the finished work." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3116.51, "end": 3120.18, "text": "I think his seminal film is \"[Ein Lichtspiel:] Schwarz Weiß Grau\"." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3120.86, "end": 3129.05, "text": "In my mind, at least, that is a culmination of Moholy's obsession with light" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3129.52, "end": 3133.18, "text": "and also the introduction and" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3133.9, "end": 3139.89, "text": "partial realization of his vision through moving pictures." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3140.35, "end": 3143.02, "text": "He must have been so terribly excited to film it." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3143.52, "end": 3152.0, "text": "For people who haven't seen it: It is basically utilizing his light space modulator," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3152.45, "end": 3155.45, "text": "which is a machine sculpture" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3155.93, "end": 3163.06, "text": "that has a perforated disc, spirals made out of chromed metal," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3163.67, "end": 3171.68, "text": "working on a series of gears along with some various pulleys and levers and a wooden ball." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3171.68, "end": 3176.46, "text": "So the idea is, as you turn the machine on, it starts spinning." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3177.24, "end": 3182.69, "text": "And then what you do is you point lights at the machine." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3183.7, "end": 3191.7, "text": "The interesting part about it is it's not so much about the light bouncing off the machine, but" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3192.63, "end": 3200.98, "text": "what happens when the light bounces off the machine and casts shadows on the walls." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3201.43, "end": 3207.08, "text": "And so this movie, even though it's extremely short, I think it's only like five minutes long," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3207.61, "end": 3215.53, "text": "you see an opportunity to view the light play that's happening within this space" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3216.01, "end": 3218.89, "text": "and it is shot in black and white and the" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3219.43, "end": 3225.39, "text": "most fascinating part about it is that ultimately as you're immersing yourself" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3225.39, "end": 3227.56, "text": "in this experience of watching this film" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3228.24, "end": 3235.51, "text": "you lose sight of where the sculpture physically exists and where the shadows" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3236.11, "end": 3238.01, "text": "and the reflections begin." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3238.86, "end": 3247.12, "text": "And it all becomes kind of a wonderfully, almost cosmic experience of watching" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3247.12, "end": 3251.23, "text": "light just bouncing around the space within this frame." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3252.12, "end": 3256.75, "text": "When we remastered the movie, one of the things we were able to do" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3257.35, "end": 3263.95, "text": "was find out that one of the things that Moholy always wanted to do," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3263.95, "end": 3268.09, "text": "but hadn't been able to do it, maybe perhaps of cost or time or whatnot." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3268.51, "end": 3275.67, "text": "But he always wanted to have Gamelan music follow along as kind of a soundtrack." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3276.76, "end": 3280.43, "text": "When I first read that, I was really taken aback. I was thinking," }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3281.27, "end": 3284.34, "text": "where would he have heard gamelan music? When would that have come up?" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3284.88, "end": 3290.56, "text": "And then I listened to gamelan music, and what it is is basically very percussive." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3290.56, "end": 3297.74, "text": "What you're doing is you're hitting slabs of metal, tubes, and they resonate." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3298.04, "end": 3300.43, "text": "So it's kind of a very metallic sound." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3301.08, "end": 3309.22, "text": "This metallic sound superimposed on these beautiful images of light bouncing" }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3309.22, "end": 3313.74, "text": "within a space really does work perfectly together." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3315.39, "end": 3319.99, "text": "He had kind of a singular idea of transparency and light." }, { "speaker": "Andreas Hug", "start": 3320.57, "end": 3325.73, "text": "And then I think what he was doing is he was applying this concept into different media." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3327.5, "end": 3332.19, "text": "Today, it's normal that artists work in different media. Back then, it wasn't." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3332.65, "end": 3337.22, "text": "Feininger was a painter. Klee was a painter. Kandinsky was a painter." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3337.79, "end": 3344.07, "text": "And Moholy did painting, filmmaking, photography, stage set design," }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3344.57, "end": 3347.38, "text": "graphic design, typography." }, { "speaker": "Daniel Hug", "start": 3348.21, "end": 3349.79, "text": "He did kind of everything." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3351.06, "end": 3356.29, "text": "And with this, we come to the end of part one of our podcast episode on Laszlo Moholy-Nagy." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3356.9, "end": 3362.79, "text": "By now, you may have a sense of just how complex, diverse and far-reaching Moholy's artistic work was." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3363.31, "end": 3365.92, "text": "Of course, there is so much more that could be said." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3366.51, "end": 3370.88, "text": "We have not spoken in detail about his photoplastics or about his work as a" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3370.88, "end": 3372.47, "text": "graphic designer and topographer." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3373.11, "end": 3374.96, "text": "Both important fields within his oeuvre." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3375.62, "end": 3379.26, "text": "But for this episode, I wanted to follow one particular thread." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3379.89, "end": 3383.82, "text": "Moholy's intention to mediate between technology and human beings," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3384.01, "end": 3387.97, "text": "and the development of his art as an ongoing exploration of light," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3388.19, "end": 3391.62, "text": "transparency and perception across all the media he used." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3392.77, "end": 3396.39, "text": "In the second part of this episode, we will meet Daniel and Andreas Hug," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3396.69, "end": 3398.31, "text": "as well as Oliver Botar again." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3398.94, "end": 3403.49, "text": "Together, we will look more closely at Moholy's work in the UK and at his role" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3403.49, "end": 3407.82, "text": "as head of the New Bauhaus in Chicago after his immigration to the United States." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3408.78, "end": 3413.93, "text": "With the new Bauhaus, Moholy did something crucial. He helped bring Bauhaus ideas" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3413.93, "end": 3418.26, "text": "to the United States and made them part of an international conversation about" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3418.26, "end": 3420.69, "text": "art, design, technology and education." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3421.43, "end": 3425.59, "text": "He was not simply someone who had worked at the Bauhaus. He became one of the" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3425.59, "end": 3430.35, "text": "figures through whom the Bauhaus traveled, changed and continued beyond Germany." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3431.47, "end": 3436.37, "text": "Please also look out for the bonus material. In it, Daniel and Andreas describe" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3436.37, "end": 3440.73, "text": "some of the most important paintings and sculptures of their grandfather and" }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3440.73, "end": 3445.07, "text": "revisit the evolution from experiment to individual style and beyond." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3446.54, "end": 3450.32, "text": "If you enjoyed this episode of bauhaus faces, or any other one," }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3450.74, "end": 3456.66, "text": "I would be very grateful if you could leave the podcast a 5-star rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3457.15, "end": 3461.4, "text": "It really helps the podcast become more visible and new listeners discover it." }, { "speaker": "Anja Guttenberger", "start": 3462.51, "end": 3469.33, "text": "And now, there's nothing left to say but tune in next time for a new episode of bauhaus faces." } ]