ABSTRACT The emergence in the 1920s of the idea that photography could be a full-fledged form of artistic expression—rather than mere mechanical imaging—led artists and art experts alike to wrestle with the question: What exactly constitutes art? Photography now challenged painting, both figurative and abstract, and as photography’s many previously unsuspected potentials were revealed and explored, artists and experts felt an urgency to articulate photography’s relationship to the concept of art. Invested in photography and ever the advocate of a new innovative medium and genre, László Moholy-Nagy wanted to hear what some of the most respected artists and experts of the time had to say about photography, and so in 1927 he moderated a debate on the subject of “painting and photography” in the journal Internationale Revue i 10.

ABSTRACT Although the making of relief prints hardly seems to fit with László Moholy-Nagy’s reputation as an innovator working with new media and industrialized production, Moholy-Nagy did in fact make a few dozen woodcuts and linocuts in the 1920s. In this article, the author seeks to understand Moholy-Nagy’s engagement with these techniques by focusing on the manual prints of the 1924 version of his “Dynamic of the Metropolis,” the text of which is devoted to photographic media. Examining the roles of photomechanical and manual prints in avantgarde magazines, the author argues that relief prints played a key role in the circulation of Moholy-Nagy’s work and served as a substitute for media that posed difficulties for small-scale production.

ABSTRACT In László Moholy-Nagy’s work, the concept of facture fused the material and immaterial, challenging preconceptions about its meaning, practice, purpose, matter and use. Facture was explored by the artist, in a way quite in tune with his Suprematist contemporaries, as an idea, a formless phenomenon, as well as a technological or scientific development. Exploring the significance of facture in Moholy-Nagy’s work, this article focuses on the theoretical and practical affinities that Moholy-Nagy and Kazimir Malevich shared in the early 1920s, as expressed in their approaches toward the creative process, with particular focus on the artists’ explorations of metallic factures.

ABSTRACT This article presents results from an extensive scientific examination of the painting materials used by László Moholy-Nagy. The artist employed modern materials, such as metals and plastics, alongside more traditional artists’ oil paint and canvas, creatively manipulating these diverse media to generate a unique visual vocabulary. This study highlights the intimate link between the material properties and the expressive content of Moholy-Nagy’s painted works.

ABSTRACT In 1937, artist László Moholy-Nagy directed a new school based on Bauhaus principles, The New Bauhaus: American School of Design, in Chicago. Although the school lasted only one year, Moholy-Nagy soon reorganized it as the School of Design in Chicago and then as the Institute of Design, which was later incorporated into the Illinois Institute of Technology. The author conducted numerous telephone and in-person interviews with teachers and students of the school to find insight into Moholy-Nagy’s teaching and working methods, the unusual pedagogy of the school across its iterations and the camaraderie and mutual support felt by the students at this exciting place and time.

ABSTRACT Throughout his career, László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) produced many photograms, a selection of which was examined in European and American collections. Sheet dimensions and thickness, base color, surface gloss and texture were recorded. The analysis of the data and the results of this investigation are presented in this article. The article also explores the effectiveness of paper characterization and how it can contribute to and enhance historical research when applied to a particular body of work by one artist.

ABSTRACT Light Prop for an Electric Stage was presented in 1930 as a prototype for a new kind of mechanical theater that was meant to spark future partnerships between art and industry. Although it was never put into industrial production, Light Prop circulated as an early example of kinetic sculpture, as documented in a highly composed film, in photographs and in textual accounts. In 2016, the Harvard Art Museums and metaLAB (at) Harvard filmed Light Prop and its 2006 replica under highly controlled conditions. The resulting comparative media reveals how László Moholy-Nagy’s film served as the “design fiction” guiding the replication and conservation of Light Prop.

ABSTRACT This article discusses how László Moholy-Nagy’s practice has informed Barbara Kasten’s in the context of their shared interest in experimentation and in the interdisciplinary, explicating those terms in both modernist and contemporary contexts. It considers the various ways Moholy-Nagy has influenced (and continues to influence) Kasten over the course of her ongoing career.