The Books

by Sylvie Lacerte

Vision in Motion

"This book is written for the artist and the layman, for everyone interested in his relationship to our existing civilization"

(Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947, p.5)

The opening sentence of this book, written by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy in 1946 and published posthumously by his wife Sibyl Moholy-Nagy in 1947, illustrates in an unquestionnable fashion, the author's philosophy. Vision in Motion is the continuation of The New Vision, published in 1930, in which the author presented the Bauhaus School's pedagogical project and methods.

In a way, Vision in Motion is Moholy-Nagy's manifesto, or rather his testament pertaining to his notions on art and education, as well as to the philosophy he had instilled in the New Bauhaus School, that he founded in 1937, within the Chicago Design Institute.

For MOHOLY-NAGY the book, Vision in Motion is the expression of art and life's interpenetration which he illustrated abundantly and where texts and images entertain a dialogue with one another; which is to say that they are in total interaction. The images are not only there to illustrate the discourse, but rather to complete it in order to attain "a better visual communication" (Moholy-Nagy 1947: 6). Thus, this work is intimately related to the New Bauhaus's pedagogical project.

"This book is an attempt to add to the politico-social a biological 'bill of rights' asserting the interrelatedness of man's fundamental qualities, of his intellectual and emotional requirements, of his psychological well-being and his physical health. It proposes that new tools and technologies cause social changes; that they shift ways of production, possessions, wealth and power; yet though the inevitable logic of new technologies, offering easy advantages for labor saving and profit making, is willingly accepted on pragmatic intellectual terms, it is stubbornly opposed in the emotional sphere, where man clings to obsolete standards and empty conventions of the past, unnaproachable by logical argument and often against his best interests." (Moholy-Nagy 1947: 5)."

MOHOLY-NAGY's desire to witness an inalterable link between art and life (following in John Dewey's footpath, cf. Art as experience, 1934) is included in the New Bauhaus's philosophy via its pedagogical program in which interdisciplinarity acts as the school's keystone. The table of contents of Vision in Motion is particularly revelating as far as MOHOLY-NAGY's visionis concerned:

Foreword

Acknowledgement

Introduction

Analyzing the Situation

Vision in Motion

The Discrepancy - The Inalienable Rights - Specialists - Moral Obligations Diminish- Indivisible Education - Official and Unofficial Education - Confusion Around Science - The Propaganda Machine - Carreerists - Liberal Education - Stabilizing the Transitory - Second-hand Facts - Attempts at Improvements - The Task of this Generation - Capacities - Fear - The Amateur - The Function of Art - The "Professional" Artist - Art and Science.

New Method of Approach - Design for Life

Axioms - Quality of Relationships - Designing is not a Profession but an Attitude - Design Potentialities - Established Paths of Thought - Forms and Shapes - The Age of Assemblage - Streamlining - New Working Conditions - Other Social Implications - Economy of Production - The Role of Intuition - The Avant-Garde - Dissemination of Knowledge - Mental Adjustment.

New Education - Organic approach

general outline

The Background - The Bauhaus - The Foundation (Basic) Course - Policy - The Educational Technique - Practising Correlations - Scientific Curiosity - Common Denominator - Aptitude Tests: Vocationnal Guidance - Hand Sculptures - Weight Sculptures - Tactile Sculptures - Measuring Exercise - Machine Exercise - Sheets, Slabs, Joints - Glass, Mirror and Spatial Exercises - Motions Studies - Emphasis on "Objective" Quality - The Specialized Workshops - The Architectural Department - Mechnical Draughting - Space Modulator - The Primitive House - Contemporary House - The Larger Concept of Structure - Spatial Concepts - Social Planning.

integration - the arts

Painting

Issues - Cubism - Distortion - Attempts of Rendering Motion - The System of Cubism - Visual Fundamentals - Solutions of Legilbility - Vision in Motion - In Defense of "Abstract" Art - Stages in Space Interpretation On Color - From Pigments to Colored Light - "Optophonetic".

Photography

Color Photography - Black and White - Photographic Quality - Teaching Photography - Photography Without Camera (Photogram) - Light Modulator - Other Experiments - Photographic Vision - Eight Varieties of Photographic Vision - Image Sequences; Series - Photogenic Versus Photocreative - New Directions - Superimposition - Photomontage.

Sculpture

The General Situation - Aspects of Representation - Fudamental Attitudes in Treating Materials - Volume Creation - The Five Stages of Volume Modulation (Articulation) - Parallel Phenomena - Volume Modulator: First Stage, Second Stage, Third Stage - Succession in Time - Amplification - Fourth Stage - Fifth Stage - The History of Kinetic Scultpture - Duality of Volume - Sculptural Development and Emotional Experience.

Space-Time Problems

Rendering Motion (space-time) on the Static Plane - Speed - Analysis of Speed - Transparency and Light - Photographic Practice - Symbols - Mobile Architecture - Exposition Architecture, Display, Theatre, Dance - Space - Time?

Motion Pictures

The Situation - The Problem - The Visual - Light - Abstract Film - Documentary Film - Pioneers - Sound Film - Film Cutting (Montage) - Genuine Technique for the Sound Film - Colour Film and Long Shot Montage - The Visual Axis - Color Economy - Projection - The Tasks of Film Production - Institute of Light - Film Script.

Literature

First Steps - Verbalized Communication - Whitman and Lautréamont - Appolinaire, Morgenstern, Stein - Futurism - "The Geometrical and Mechanical Splendor" - The New Typography - Rimbaud - Dadaism - Hans Arp - Tristan Tzara - Hugo Ball, Richard Huelsenbeck - Kurt Schwitters - Writing on the Psychotic - Children's Verses - Sound and Number Magic - The New Poetry Arrived - Surrealism - Art and Society - Sigmund Freud - James Joyce - Finnegan's Wake - Freedom and Unpredictability.

Group Poetry

Group Poetry as "Word Modulator" - Individual Work.

A Proposal

Youth Only - Parliament of Social Design4

Although, for the purpose of this article, it may seem fastidious at first glance, to replicate the table of contents in its integral form, if we delve closer into it, it not only allows to notice, in a nutshell, M.-N.'s attention to detail, but also his deeply felt belief in the interrelatedness of all artistic disciplines and life. It is also very interesting to recognize, fifty years after Vision in Motion's publication, how actual and fitting M.-N.'s philosophy still is today. The visionnary that he was not only limited himself to the listing of the different stages of the creative process, from the inception of the first idea to the consumption of the final product, but granted a great deal of significance to the context in which and for which the objects were created. The links established between the artistic disciplines, between arts and the "new technologies" and between arts and sciences were always taken into account in relation to their integration into the environment for which they were designed.

© Sylvie Lacerte & OLATS, septembre 2000