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Lot Essay
One of the most experimental and influential artists of his generation, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy moved to Weimar with his wife Lucia to teach at the Bauhaus, from 1923 – 1928. Subsequent to leaving his teaching position, he supported himself as a graphic designer and artist, and eventually emigrated to America in 1938, where he taught at the School of Design in Chicago until his untimely death of leukemia at the age of 51 in 1946.
Moholy-Nagy's use of photography as one of the many art forms he utilized is well-documented. The output during this period covered paintings, photography, industrial manufacture, light and space. The artists of the Bauhaus period championed the printed page, and all worked across media on journals, advertisements, book designs, as well as photography and collage.
One of his best-known projects was initially conceived as an advertisement for the Schocken Department Store (Kaufhaus Schocken), one of Germany’s largest. The full-realization of the advertisement is illustrated here, with the addition of screen-printed type in red ink, and which translates to: ‘HALT! Were you in Schocken Department Store already?’ (Louis Kaplan, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Biographical Writings, p. 147).
The man depicted in the original photomontage, and who is exposed twice onto the photographic paper, is Marcel Breuer, the Hungarian-born architect who was a colleague at the Bauhaus, and a friend. The graphic elements of the circle, the arcing lines and arrow, and the photo-illustrations of the department store façade were more than likely applied to a now-lost original collage. This collage would have been placed on a copy-stand and photographed, yielding a copy negative and thus the ability to make multiple prints (which he referred to as fotoplastiks). By ‘multiple prints’ it should not be assumed that vast quantities were made. Outside of the three known prints of this image that reside in the Getty’s collection, including the final work with screen-printed type, this is the only other known print and the only one in private hands.
Moholy-Nagy had access to the negative of Breuer—whether he took the picture or not is unknown—since he used that negative in three other known compositions, also housed at the Getty. One features five exposures of Breuer on the same sheet of paper and is also titled The Law of the Series, and could very well be a study for the final advertisement, whereas another, titled Transformation/Anxiety Dream, features three exposures of Breuer however with another person’s eyes pasted in upside down on two of the figures. It is surreal in nature and reads as a different artwork altogether.
These advertisements themselves held double meanings – for the business, the gestures were quite literally intended to draw people physically into the building. The figure’s raised hands encouraged passersby to stop and shop, while the curved lines and arrow would draw them into the store. The figure’s raised hands mirror a common theme in Moholy-Nagy’s work and Constructivism more broadly – a focus on the hand, a symbol representing the artist as constructor and engineer (see fig. 2, a self-portrait from the School of Design catalogues).
The additional significance lies with the title, The Law of the Series, and is more theoretical and linked to Moholy-Nagy’s artistic ideology. The ‘law of series,’ first studied by an Austrian scientist in the 1910s, addresses the belief that random, rare events tend to happen repeatedly in unusually short periods of time. Generally, the belief is that this ‘randomness’ occurs by more than chance alone. The ‘law of series’ suggests that the passersby will stop or pause to wonder if they had, indeed, been inside already. This sense of uncertainty could, perhaps, result in the viewer entering the store upon the belief that they were returning.
Source material for his fotoplastiks were usually taken from periodicals, wide-ranging visuals from film stills, as well as his and other photographers’ work (Katharine Ware, Vision in Motion: The Photographs of Moholy-Nagy, n.p.). The content of these resulting images—and the photograph’s capacity to be mass reproduced – was celebrated above all else. This aligns with his steadfast belief in the importance of modern technology and the potential of reproducibility. Moholy-Nagy considered art an educational tool for societal impact, and the camera the most efficient tool for mass distribution. As a result, very few of his ‘original’ photomontages and collages have survived and the ones that do reside in institutional collections. It is worth noting that while Moholy-Nagy was a proponent of photography, he still did not reproduce his fotoplastiks in high quantity. As such, the present lot—a vintage print of one of the artist’s most renowned series—is a very rare object.
As noted, the J. Paul Getty Museum collection includes a print of the present lot and two additional variants (fig. 2), one of which is also in the collection of MoMA. Another vintage print of this image resides in the institutional collection of the The Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.
Moholy-Nagy's use of photography as one of the many art forms he utilized is well-documented. The output during this period covered paintings, photography, industrial manufacture, light and space. The artists of the Bauhaus period championed the printed page, and all worked across media on journals, advertisements, book designs, as well as photography and collage.
One of his best-known projects was initially conceived as an advertisement for the Schocken Department Store (Kaufhaus Schocken), one of Germany’s largest. The full-realization of the advertisement is illustrated here, with the addition of screen-printed type in red ink, and which translates to: ‘HALT! Were you in Schocken Department Store already?’ (Louis Kaplan, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Biographical Writings, p. 147).
The man depicted in the original photomontage, and who is exposed twice onto the photographic paper, is Marcel Breuer, the Hungarian-born architect who was a colleague at the Bauhaus, and a friend. The graphic elements of the circle, the arcing lines and arrow, and the photo-illustrations of the department store façade were more than likely applied to a now-lost original collage. This collage would have been placed on a copy-stand and photographed, yielding a copy negative and thus the ability to make multiple prints (which he referred to as fotoplastiks). By ‘multiple prints’ it should not be assumed that vast quantities were made. Outside of the three known prints of this image that reside in the Getty’s collection, including the final work with screen-printed type, this is the only other known print and the only one in private hands.
Moholy-Nagy had access to the negative of Breuer—whether he took the picture or not is unknown—since he used that negative in three other known compositions, also housed at the Getty. One features five exposures of Breuer on the same sheet of paper and is also titled The Law of the Series, and could very well be a study for the final advertisement, whereas another, titled Transformation/Anxiety Dream, features three exposures of Breuer however with another person’s eyes pasted in upside down on two of the figures. It is surreal in nature and reads as a different artwork altogether.
These advertisements themselves held double meanings – for the business, the gestures were quite literally intended to draw people physically into the building. The figure’s raised hands encouraged passersby to stop and shop, while the curved lines and arrow would draw them into the store. The figure’s raised hands mirror a common theme in Moholy-Nagy’s work and Constructivism more broadly – a focus on the hand, a symbol representing the artist as constructor and engineer (see fig. 2, a self-portrait from the School of Design catalogues).
The additional significance lies with the title, The Law of the Series, and is more theoretical and linked to Moholy-Nagy’s artistic ideology. The ‘law of series,’ first studied by an Austrian scientist in the 1910s, addresses the belief that random, rare events tend to happen repeatedly in unusually short periods of time. Generally, the belief is that this ‘randomness’ occurs by more than chance alone. The ‘law of series’ suggests that the passersby will stop or pause to wonder if they had, indeed, been inside already. This sense of uncertainty could, perhaps, result in the viewer entering the store upon the belief that they were returning.
Source material for his fotoplastiks were usually taken from periodicals, wide-ranging visuals from film stills, as well as his and other photographers’ work (Katharine Ware, Vision in Motion: The Photographs of Moholy-Nagy, n.p.). The content of these resulting images—and the photograph’s capacity to be mass reproduced – was celebrated above all else. This aligns with his steadfast belief in the importance of modern technology and the potential of reproducibility. Moholy-Nagy considered art an educational tool for societal impact, and the camera the most efficient tool for mass distribution. As a result, very few of his ‘original’ photomontages and collages have survived and the ones that do reside in institutional collections. It is worth noting that while Moholy-Nagy was a proponent of photography, he still did not reproduce his fotoplastiks in high quantity. As such, the present lot—a vintage print of one of the artist’s most renowned series—is a very rare object.
As noted, the J. Paul Getty Museum collection includes a print of the present lot and two additional variants (fig. 2), one of which is also in the collection of MoMA. Another vintage print of this image resides in the institutional collection of the The Berlinische Galerie, Berlin.