More Business November 1938
[The Voice of Letterpress and Photo-Engraving]
László Moholy-Nagy, George [György] Kepes
Chicago: American Photo-Engravers Association, Volume 3, Number 11. Folio. Saddle stitched letterpressed self-wrappers. 20 pp. Profusely illustrated text with photomontage plates, photographs, and work samples.Original photomontage cover by George [György] Kepes.Wrappers splitting at binding edge but still secure. Faint dampstain to lower corner and guttters. Well thumbed, but overall a very good copy. Distributed exclusively within the printing and graphic arts industry thus making surviving copies truly rare.
11 x 14-inch magazine in letterpressed self-wrappers with 20 pages of artwork and original text devoted to the New Bauhaus (later School of Design; Institute of Design). More Business was the house organ for the American Photo-Engravers Association, and Editor Louis Flader gave Professor Moholy-Nagy free rein to design the November 1938 issue. The resulting tour-de-force of editorial design was impressively enhanced by stellar engraving (naturally) and fine one-, two-, and four-color letterpress printing and survives today as the purest expression of Moholy’s vision of an American Bauhaus.
Contents:
• New Approach to Fundamentals of Design: L. Moholy-Nagy
• Education of the Eye: George [Gyorgy] Kepes
• Photography
• Photomontage, Photogram
• Color Photography
• Volume and Space
• Sciences
• Lettering by Hin Bredendieck
Includes student work from classes taught by Kepes, Henry Holmes Smith, and Alexander Archipenko. Includes work by Moholy-Nagy, George [Gyorgy] Kepes, Juliet Kepes, Richard Koppe, Grace Seelig, Charles Niedringhaus, Nathan Lerner, Leonard Niederkorn and other students from the short-lived New Bauhaus.
The November publication date was timed to coincide with the W. W. Norton release of Moholy’s revised and expanded The New Vision. The date also overlapped the exhibition schedule for “Bauhaus 1919-1928” at the Museum of Modern Art. Unfortunately the New Bauhaus shuttered before this issue was published.
References: Borchardt-Hume, Achum: ALBERS AND MOHOLY-NAGY FROM THE BAUHAUS TO THE NEW WORLD. NEW HAVEN: Yale University Press, 2006. pp. 97, fig. 49. Travis, D. and Siegel, E. (eds): TAKEN BY DESIGN: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE INSTITUTE OF DESIGN, 1937-1971. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Wingler, Hans: THE BAUHAUS: WEIMAR DESSAU BERLIN CHICAGO. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1969. pgs. 586-7, figs. c, d.
Bauhaus Master László Moholy-Nagy [Hungarian, 1895 – 1946] came to the United States in 1937 after accepting 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 first renamed the School of Design in 1939, then 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.
Fascinating example of Industrial Chicago’s acceptance of the Association of Arts and Industries short-lived sponsorship of the New Bauhaus in Chicago from 1937 to 1938, and a remarkably effective self-promotional tool for Moholy-Nagy’s efforts to re-establish the Bauhaus in Chicago.
W. B. Wheelwright wrote”The New Bauhaus, American School of Design recently established by the Association of Arts and Industries in Chicago, amounts practically to the transplantation of the famous Bauhaus of Dessau, Germany.”
“The influence of The New Bauhaus upon graphic arts is but one phase of its many educational aims. The student may elect which course prepares for his intended vocation. As much interest has already been aroused that an evening course is also to be given beginning on the seventh of February.”