WRITTEN & DESIGNED BY: DYAN CANNON

During the 1920s, Hungarian artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was an instructor at the famous Bauhaus school, located in Germany, teaching foundations with a focus on using different mediums such as photography. While there, he experimented with a photographic process where one places an object, usually an object that is flat, on top of light sensitive material while exposing it to light. This process is referred to as a photogram. This form of photography was considered a misuse of the medium because it was cameraless, created without a camera. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy thought of his photograms as light paintings. He was interested in the mysterious light effects that he could achieve with this process. He particularly liked the shadows produced. He eventually thought a better name for the photogram would be shadowgraph. Although photograms were not the first cameraless kind of photography to come into existence, they were still resonated as shocking and innovative. In his photograms, Moholy-Nagy tried to unify art and

technology into an industrial design, drifting away from the 19th century pictorialist conventions. He separated objects from their natural settings by using distorting viewpoints, radical cropping, strong figure-ground relationships and compositions oriented on the diagonal, creating a more surreal type of photography mixed with the elements of industry. The photogram is amongst some of the earliest abstract photography created to this day. Moholy-Nagy would later go on to become a director at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) based in Chicago. This school was coined as the New Bauhaus because the school would carry out the same philosophy as the original Bauhaus school. An example of Moholy-Nagys work is Photogram No. 1- The Mirror, which consists of the shadow effects of a circular object and an angular object. To create gradations of light values rather than simple silhouettes, MoholyNagy used lenses, mirrors and other translucent objects. The shadowy effect in this photogram creates a 3-D illusion and capitalizes on the concept of movement or energy caught in space.

THE MIRROR

DOUBLE PORTRAIT

A decade before Moholy-Nagys photograms, a French artist by the name of Marcel Duchamp was leaving his mark on the art world with his ready-mades. Duchamp had already started with his experimentation of testing the boundaries of what classifies art as art while in Paris before coming to New York in 1915. There, in New York, Marcel Duchamp designated his experimentations as ready-mades. The ready-mades Duchamp produced were a protest to the philosophy of what art was considered at the time. Like Moholy-Nagys art, they were abstractions, wherein he insisted that art can be ideas instead of worldly things. The readymade phenomenon began actually as an assisted readymade with Duchamps Bicycle Wheel created in 1913 where a bicycle wheel was placed on top of a stool. The difference between an assisted ready-made and a pure ready-made is that a pure ready-made is a single object. An assisted ready-made is sometimes referred to as a rectified readymade. Bicycle Wheel had a lot of different aspects within the objects that he liked

such as the spinning of the bicycle wheel. He found humor within the use of the unicycle because it played with the idea of immobility, the direct opposite of the wheels function. Duchamps single most famous ready-made was his Fountain brought to the public eye in 1917. Duchamps Fountain piece was generated simply by taking a porcelain urinal manufactured by J.L Mott Iron Works and turning it upside down. The artist then added a special touch to the piece by signing it R. Mutt before submitting it to the Society of Independent Artist, an open exhibition to those who submitted pieces. After submitting his Fountain by R. Mutt readymade, the society of which he was the director turned away the art piece and denied it entry into the exhibition. Marcel Duchamp chose to resign as director from the Society of Independent Artist after this incident. In essence Duchamp took an ordinary article in life, placed it so that its usefulness as that object disappeared and then created a new thought for that object. Along with Duchamps other ready-made ventures, he produced are the

installed ready-mades. The idea of an installed ready-made was that the focus was more on the environment surrounding the object versus the initial object. An example of an installed ready-made is Duchamps Trebuchet composed in 1918. Trebuchet was located in Duchamps studio as a coat hanger that was nailed to the floor. Humor can be found in this creation as well due to its reference to chess, a game the artist was very fond of and would eventually pursue in replacement of art. Marcel Duchamp also consciously chose to limit the amount of ready-mades that he chose to output. Dying at the age of eighty-one, he had only produced twenty-one of his ready-mades, which were created between 1915 and 1923.

FOUNTAIN

BICYCLE WHEEL

Besides the fact that Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Marcel Duchamp were similar in the fact that both were challenging the parameters of art with their abstractions, they both depended on preexisting objects in order to create something entirely new to the art world. To make each image unique, Moholy-Nagy used common objects such as baby rattles or dog muzzles to create unusual shapes to emphasize his light effects. Duchamps readymade art uses objects that are not normally considered art. However, this type of art must have an artists input, or at least have an idea about it of why an artist is designating the object as art. Another similar factor is that the art created by these particular artists falls into the manipulation category. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy chose to manipulate the way a photograph was produced with the use of light and objects in a different way than the norm. For example, in his Oval Study/Photogram 1926, he had complete control over the arrangement of the objects in the photogram and the manipulation of the light. There appears to be an egg-shaped object

alongside some long thin lines, which look like guitar strings. The egg object seems to be the most striking of the objects, not because of it shape only, but because of how it is stationary and exposed to the most light. Moholy-Nagy creates a very eerie feeling with his shadows and silhouettes. The lighting also gives the photogram a 3-dimensional feel to the objects, drawing them out of the photogram. Marcel Duchamp manipulated the way art was perceived in both a physical and philosophical manner. Duchamp, in essence, took an ordinary article in life, placed it so that its usefulness as that object disappeared and then created a new thought for that object. Each of these artists was majorly influential in and out of their selected fields. Duchamp was the first artist to form the idea of found art. The philosophy of found art is the same as ready-mades; using non-art to form art. Another form of art influenced by Duchamps ready-mades is trash art or junk art. Trash art is created with items that have been disposed of and in certain cases come straight from the trashcan. These two offsprings have

been highly debated along with the ready-mades for some find them difficult. Moholy-Nagys photogram opened the door to the idea of what photography was and could be. The artists both posed a question and answered it through their passion.