An Inscribed Copy
THE NEW VISION
Fundamentals of Design, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy: THE NEW VISION [Fundamentals of Design, Painting, Sculpture, Architecture]. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938 [The New Bauhaus Books Series 1: Gropius and Moholy-Nagy, series editors]. First edition thus. Quarto. Oatmeal cloth stamped in blue. Partial photographically printed dust jacket. 208 pp. 221 black and white photographs and text illustrations. INSCRIBED by the author on front free endpaper. Book Design and Typography by the author. Oatmeal cloth mildly soiled and spotted. Spine slightly cocked and trivial spotting to textblock throughout. The rare dust jacket exists here in a fragmented state, with only the front panel and jacket flap present. Fore edge fold heavily worn, and other three edges worn and chipped as well. Neatly creased from folding. Presents reasonably well under archival mylar. A nice copy of a book rarely found in collectible condition, enhanced by an association inscription, and virtually unknown with dust jacket. A very good copy in a scrappy dust jacket.
Ink inscription to front free endpaper reads: “To Wiley Sanderson Jr. / with best wishes / L. Moholy-Nagy / Mills 40.” The Mills reference pertains to the Summer 1940 coursework undertaken by Moholy at the invitation of Alfred Neumeyer at Mills College in Oakland, California [S. Moholy-Nagy, p. 180].
7.75 x 10.25 hardcover book with 208 pages and 221 black and white photographs and text illustrations of art, architecture, sculpture, displays, movie sets, furniture, etc. "Revised and enlarged edition" (title page verso) of the original 1930 American imprint (Spalek #3819; see Freitag #6626, giving the date as 1932), with a new foreword, plus index, Spalek #3820.
An amazing book that expands upon Moholy-Nagy’s 1928 treatsie The New Vision (originally published as Bauhausbuch 14). Moholy's treatsie on modern design was intended to inform laymen and artists about the basic elements of Bauhaus education and the merging of theory and design. This volume also served as a remarkably effective self-promotional tool as Molholy-Nagy tried to re-establish the Bauhaus in Chicago as the New Bauhaus, and subsequently as the Institute of Design.
One of Chicago's great cultural achievements, the Institute of Design was among the most important schools of photography in twentieth-century America. It began as an outpost of experimental Bauhaus education and was home to an astonishing group of influential teachers and students.
- foreword
- introduction
- preliminaries
- the material (surface treatment, painting)
- volume (sculpture)
- space (architecture)
- index
The list of artists included in this volume reads like a veritable rosetta stone of the modern movement: Joseph Albers, Alexander Archipenko, Hans Arp, Herbert Bayer, Giacomo Balla, Peter Behrens, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, Theo Van Doesburg, Max Ernst, Albert Gleizes, Naum Gabo, Walter Gropius, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, Barbara Hepworth, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Gorgy Kepes, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Man Ray, F. T. Marinetti, Mies Van Der Rohe, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, J.J.P. Oud, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Rodchenko, Oscar Schlemmer, Joost Schmidt, Kurt Schwitters, Frank Lloyd Wrightand many others.
From the Foreword: "The New Vision was written to inform laymen and artists about the basic elements of the Bauhaus education: the merging of theory and practice in design.
"America is the bearer of a new civilization whose task is simultaneously to cultivate and to industrialize a continent. It is the ideal ground on which to work out an educational principle which strives for the closest connection between art, science, and technology.
"To reach this objective one of the problems of Bauhaus education is to keep alive in grown-ups the child’s sincerity of emotion, his truth of observation, his fantasy and his creativeness. That is why the Bauhaus does not employ a rigid teaching system. Teachers and students in close collaboration are bound to find new ways of handling materials, tools and machines for their designs.
"This book contains an extract of the work in our preliminary course, which naturally develops from day to day while practiced.
"The work of the Bauhaus would be too limited if this preliminary course served only Bauhaus students; they, through constant contact with instructors and practical workshop experience, are least in need of its record in book form. More important – one might say that the essential for the success of the Bauhaus idea is the education of our contemporaries outside of the Bauhaus. It is the public which must understand and aid in furthering the work of designers coming from the Bauhaus if their creativeness is to yield the best results for the community.
"To prepare this understanding is the main task of The New Vision. It is my hope that it will stimulate those are interested in art, research, design and education."
Wiley Devere Sanderson [Detroit, 1918 – Athens, GA, 2011] a Pinhole photographer and Professor Emeritus of Arts at the University of Georgia received his first camera—a Kodak Brownie Box camera— when he was eight years old. In high school, he was an Assistant Instructor for Eastman Kodak. He attended Olivet College and Mills College where he studied with Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes in 1940. He served as Instrument Flying Instructor in the Army Air corps from 1940-1945. He then completed his BFA in Industrial Design from Wayne State University in 1947 and received his MFA in Metalwork at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1959.
Sanderson joined the Art faculty at the University of Georgia in 1949 and taught for 40 years, retiring in 1989. He initiated the Weaving Textiles and Metal works programs in the department. In 1953, he introduced Pinhole Photography, one of the first photography courses in the U.S. at the college level. In 1964, he became Area Chair of Photographic Design and was replaced by 4 full time faculty members in Fabric Design and Metalwork of Jewelry. Mr. Sanderson photographed extensively in Italy, China and Israel. His pinhole photographs are in numerous museums and collections including the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), The Bibliotheque National (Paris), The American Academy (Rome), The Royal Photographic Society and The Fox Talbot Museum (England).
László Moholy-Nagy [Hungarian, 1895 – 1946] was a born teacher, convinced that everyone had talent. In 1923, he joined the staff of the Bauhaus, which had been founded by Walter Gropius at Weimar four years before. Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger and Schlemmer were already teaching there. He was brought in at a time when the school was undergoing a decisive change of policy, shedding its original emphasis on handcraft. The driving force was now "the unity of art and technology.” Moholy-Nagy was entrusted with teaching the preliminary course in principles of form, materials and construction - the basis of the Bauhaus's educational program. He shared teaching duties with the painter Josef Albers, whose career was to develop in parallel with his.
The hyper-energetic Moholy-Nagy also ran the metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar and later in the purpose-designed buildings at Dessau. The metal shop was the most successful of departments at the Bauhaus in fulfilling Gropius's vision of art for mass production, redefining the role of the artist to embrace that of designer as we have now come to understand the term. The workshop experimented with glass and Plexiglas as well as metal in developing the range of lighting that has almost come to define the Bauhaus. The lamps were produced in small production runs, and some were taken up by outside factories. The royalties made a welcome contribution to the school's always precarious finances.
Although always a painter and designer, Moholy-Nagy became a key figure in photography in Germany in the 1920's. In 1928 Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus and traveled to Amsterdam and London. His teachings and publications of photographic experimentations were crucial to the international development of the New Vision.
In 1937 former Bauhaus Master László Moholy-Nagy accepted the invitation of a group of Midwest business leaders to set up an Industrial Design school in Chicago. The New Bauhaus opened in the Fall of 1937 financed by the Association of Arts and Industries as a recreation of the Bauhaus curriculum with its workshops and holistic vision in the United States.
Moholy-Nagy drew on several émigrés affiliated with the former Bauhaus to fill the ranks of the faculty, including György Kepes and Marli Ehrman. The school struggled with financial issues and insufficient enrollment and survived only with the aid from grants of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations as well as from donations from numerous Chicago businesses. The New Bauhaus was renamed the Institute of Design in 1944 and the school finally merged with the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1949.
In Chicago Moholy aimed at liberating the creative potential of his students through disciplined experimentation with materials, techniques, and forms. The focus on natural and human sciences was increased, and photography grew to play a more prominent role at the school in Chicago than it had done in Germany. Training in mechanical techniques was more sophisticated than it had been in Germany. Emerging from the basic course, various workshops were installed, such as "light, photography, film, publicity", "textile, weaving, fashion", "wood, metal, plastics", "color, painting, decorating" and "architecture". The most important achievement at the Chicago Bauhaus was probably in photography, under the guidance of teachers such as György Kepes, Nathan Lerner, Arthur Siegel or Harry Callahan.
Moholy-Nagy served as Director of the New Bauhaus in its various permutations until his death in 1946.