Image in Motion

Few artists were as devoted to new materials and technologies as László Moholy-Nagy. Apart from his own natural inclination, he was enthralled by the new possibilities perhaps because he saw a profound historical metaphor in them. Control over machines and other man-made objects gave rise to a feeling that mankind was embarking on a straight road leading towards a good future, and one of the most important companions along this road would be the artist-cum-engineer.

By the time Moholy-Nagy arrived in Berlin in 1920, the explosive development in the technologies of recording had already brought results. Wherever he turned there was photography, film, radio, gramophone recordings and, above all, the telephone which had accelerated all forms of communication. He must have felt it inevitable, indeed ineluctable, for the spirit of radical revival, which had brought about new technologies, to manifest itself in all the works that could be produced employing these technologies.

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In making a film, Moholy-Nagy was perhaps most interested in light, even more so than in motion. His paintings show transparent planes dissolving into each other, and this transparency was a proof to him of the ability of light to penetrate through the material. When making a photogram, the light driven along a forced course in the laboratory is caught on thinner or thicker materials, and depending on the density of the material, in other words, the amams to be penetrable, verified Moholy-Nagy's belief that everything is possible; this conviction which can be found at the heart of all his works and writings might have sparked off his often quoted "everyone is talented".

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Éva Forgács