DESIGN QUARTERLY 68
DESIGN AND LIGHT
György Kepes [Author], Peter Seitz [Editor]
György Kepes [Author], Peter Seitz [Editor]: DESIGN QUARTERLY no. 68: DESIGN AND LIGHT. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1967. Original edition. Slim quarto. Saddle stitched thick printed wrappers. 32 pp. 93 black and white illustrations. Organic offset shadow inside front cover, and light wear overall, but a very good or better copy.
8.5 x 11 soft cover book with 32 pages and 93 black and white illustrations. In this special issue of Design Quarterly Kepes carries on the pedagogical tradition of fusing art and science that his mentor Moholy-Nagy pioneered at the Bauhaus and in Chicago at the Institute of Design. The three illustrtaed essays presented here carry the torch first lit by Moholy-Nagy and Gropius in their Bauhausbücher series.
- Introduction by Peter Seitz
- Light as a Creative Medium
- Light and Color
- The Creative use of Light in Design and Architecture
- About the Author
Includes work by Richardo Legometa, Moshe Sadfie, Norman Carlberg, David Smith, Y. Rechter & M. Zarhy, Hammel, Green & Abrahamson, Inc., Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gyorgy Kepes, Robert Preusser, Erwin Müller, Karl Gerstner, Julio Le Parc, Wurster, Meyer & Sandfield, Herbert Gesner, Goerge-Pierre Seurat, Otto Piene, William M. Murray, F. Stahly, Ervin Hauer, Paul Talman, Richard Lippold, Mies Van Der Rohe, Brinkman & Van Der Vlugt, Ashley Havinden, Sir Basil Spence, Heinz Waibl, Pier Luigi Nervi, George Kostritsky, William Lamb, William Wainwright, & Michio Ihara, Louis I. Kahn, Marcel Beuer & Hamilton Smith, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, R. Buckminster Fuller, and Philip Johnson as the Beaver.
Guest editor György Kepes chronicles a history of light, both its creation and perception, used for artistic expression. Having worked with László Moholy-Nagy in Berlin and having led the Department of Light and Color at the Institute of Design in Chicago, Kepes draws upon innumerable examples of experimental work with light. Artistic and scientific experiments with light came to the fore in the 1960s when its status a new medium of expression was evident in everything from liquid light shows at rock concerts to Dan Flavin’s signature use of fluorescent light tubes. The Walker would also host the exhibition Light/Motion/Space that same year, featuring the work of artists such as Otto Piene, Julio Le Parc, and the USCO collective.
“No less important than the outer vision with which we explore our environment is the inner vision we use to explore ourselves and to find significance and meaning. Our inner world is peopled with sense images--visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactual --formed from the traces in our systems left by our sensory traffic with the environment. These images inside our heads we use to focus experience, code our sensations, crystallize feelings, build our dreams, and set our goals. Without these images our experience would not cohere and our memories would be disconnected and meaningless.” — György Kepes, 1960
György Kepes (1906 - 2001) was a friend and collaborator of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. Also of Hungarian descent, Kepes worked with Moholy first in Berlin and then in London before emigrating to the US in 1937. He was educated at the Budapest Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In his early career he gave up painting for filmmaking. This he felt was a better medium for artistically expressing his social beliefs.
From 1930 to 1937 he worked off and on with Moholy-Nagy and through him, first in Berlin and then in London, met Walter Gropius and the science writer J. J. Crowther. In 1937, he was invited by Moholy to run the Color and Light Department at the New Bauhaus and later at the Institute of Design in Chicago. He taught there until 1943. In 1944 he wrote his landmark book LANGUAGE OF VISION. This text was influential in articulating the Bauhaus principles as well as the Gestalt theories. He taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1946 to 1974 and in 1967 he established the Center for Advanced Studies. During his career he also designed for the Container Corporation of America and Fortune magazine as well as Atlantic Monthly and Little, Brown.
Design Quarterly began as Everyday Art Quarterly, published by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis starting in 1946. The editorial focus aimed to bring modern design to the masses through thoughtful examination of household objects and their designers. Everyday Art Quarterly was a vocal proponent of the Good Design movement (as represented by MoMA and Chicago's Merchandise Mart) and spotlighted the best in industrial and handcrafted design. When the magazine became Design Quarterly in 1958, the editors assumed a more international flair in their selection of material to spotlight.