(lively music)
Dr. Zucker: We're in the Pompidou in Paris
and we're looking at L�szl� Moholy-Nagy.
This is a '20 from 1924.
Moholy-Nagy was a member of the Hungarian Avant-garde
but in 1920, he comes to Dessau, to Germany
to Walter Gropius' Bauhaus
and takes over the first year program.
Now, what's really important is that
when Moholy-Nagy comes in,
he comes in almost as a kind of engineer.
He's often portrayed in work coveralls
and he helps the Bauhaus transform into a school
that emphasizes the industrial to a much greater extent.
Dr. Harris: With the arrival of Moholy-Nagy,
we have this new interest in the machine
and we certainly have a sense here of very simplified forms.
It's easy to misunderstand its simplicity,
unless one spend some time with it.
Dr. Zucker: Okay, so at first, it simply looks like
a number of geometric forms that are overlapping
and there's nothing much there.
but in fact, this is a really careful study
about space transparency, translucency and opacity.
Dr. Harris: So, if you think about it in terms of light,
it becomes easier to understand its complexity.
Dr. Zucker: And this is in fact, one of the so called light paintings.
Let's see if we can work our way through it.
My eye is led into this canvas by this long plane of glass
or what seems like glass.
This purely transparent form
that almost looks like an outsize glass slide
that you might use under a microscope.
Dr. Harris: And it forms a diagonal line
that suggests a recession into space.
Dr. Zucker: I wanna stay with that metaphor
of the microscope's glass slide for a moment
because I think that there is
a kind of scientific investigation here.
Dr. Harris: So, if we have that transparent,
glass-like shape that forms that diagonal,
we have another similar form
that doesn't appear transparent
that emerges into our space
almost like it's abutting against the transparent shape.
Dr. Zucker: But not exactly at a right angle, right?
It's a bit more open
and it goes into a much deeper space.
Dr. Harris: And it's remarkable to me how deep a space,
Moholy-Nagy has constructed just
with these very, very simple forms.
We also have a sense of opacity and transparency
and translucency in the forms around the circle
that are overlapping here
and also, in the two vertical forms.
Dr. Zucker: Well, what's interesting about those vertical forms,
is that instead of using orthogonals to create space,
he's using scale to create space.
So, we have the larger, thicker one
and then evidently, much deeper in space,
much further away, the one that's more narrow.
Dr. Harris: And also that circle in the distance
that helps to create an illusion of space.
Dr. Zucker: Right, and then look at the bands
both vertical and horizontal that crossed.
You know, those are translucent
but when they crossed, in a sense
there's enough visual mass so they become opaque
but then counter that with
what we might take to be opacity but it's not.
It's reflectivity in a way that the transparent plane
actually overlays that translucent vertical
and then you have a kind of white negative space
Dr. Harris: (laughs)
as opposed to opacity.
Dr. Harris: So, we have the opaque,
which one can't see through.
The translucent, which one can see through somewhat.
The transparent, which one can see through entirely
and reflectivity and the different ways that those overlap
and affect color and space.
What's interesting to me is that
Moholy-Nagy has not represented any of those things.
If you think about the way that painters represent reflectivity
and mirrors or transparency with a wine glass in a still life,
all of those things are still here
but in a very different language.
Dr. Zucker: Well, it's almost the language of mathematics.
This is an abstraction that refers to those things
in the purest terms, almost in mathematical terms,
as opposed to the representation of those things.
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