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拍品專文
Moholy-Nagy's lifetime fascination with light led him to experiment with painting, sculpture, cinema and photography. He believed that the manipulation of light through any means could lead to new ways of seeing that would liberate us from traditional pictorial conventions. Turning to experiment with photograms beginning in 1922 he dispensed not only with brushwork in painting but the intervention of the lens in photography.
A photogram is made by placing objects on a sheet of photographic paper. Where the paper is uncovered, it received maximum exposure to light and the tone is darkest. Where the paper received no exposure to light, the tone is lightest. Middle tones result from the relative amount of exposure between those extremes. In order to create the present lot, Moholy-Nagy reversed the tones by using a photogram as a negative. The light passes through the photogram. The areas of even tone in the original photogram become more nuanced in the print by the difference in the translucency of the paper - by the texture and thickness of fibers in the paper. Because a photogram can be used this way as a negative explains why there exist approximately five or six known prints similar to the present lot.
This print was apparenty a gift to Arthur Siegel (1913-1978), who had studied with Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus in Chicago as early as 1937. It was acquired around 1980 by the present owner from Arthur Siegel's succession with the intermediary of Edwynn Houk. It is signed and dated 1925 in ink on the verso. Most unusual is that it is presented in a period over-mat that is signed and dated 1926, presumably the date of its being matted. Other examples of the print are to be found in the Bauhaus Archive, Berlin and the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
A photogram is made by placing objects on a sheet of photographic paper. Where the paper is uncovered, it received maximum exposure to light and the tone is darkest. Where the paper received no exposure to light, the tone is lightest. Middle tones result from the relative amount of exposure between those extremes. In order to create the present lot, Moholy-Nagy reversed the tones by using a photogram as a negative. The light passes through the photogram. The areas of even tone in the original photogram become more nuanced in the print by the difference in the translucency of the paper - by the texture and thickness of fibers in the paper. Because a photogram can be used this way as a negative explains why there exist approximately five or six known prints similar to the present lot.
This print was apparenty a gift to Arthur Siegel (1913-1978), who had studied with Moholy-Nagy at the New Bauhaus in Chicago as early as 1937. It was acquired around 1980 by the present owner from Arthur Siegel's succession with the intermediary of Edwynn Houk. It is signed and dated 1925 in ink on the verso. Most unusual is that it is presented in a period over-mat that is signed and dated 1926, presumably the date of its being matted. Other examples of the print are to be found in the Bauhaus Archive, Berlin and the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.