Page 53 - Studio International - February 1974

Imperial Ming. We transvalue non- in its volumetric resolution. A singing But remember that these are behind the lens. Moholy was usually
Western cultures in which the historian and dance master presides working garments. Design is equally at pains to eliminate personal
distinction between applied and as a girl enters puberty or declares intended to distribute stress both impressions, using the medium
high art never existed, in which the readiness for marriage. On these days laterally and vertically. And treat these primarily as a means to stimulating
attributes of ritualized life, word the women wear their finest Molas, as evocations of pantheistic belief and a more 'objective' visual sense: he
and music, object and image, working garment and highest art animist spirit. Stylized, but without regarded the camera as a mechanical
make life itself an art, if the form. Forming the front and back of hieratic stance, the patterns are as eye which could counteract the
very concept of art exists. The Inuit blouses, these cotton panels, sinuous as serpents, the Christian intervention of expectation and habit
has always carved — the tools of appliqué in reverse, are not only part cross is a darting centipede, the in perception by showing things
his survival. In 1949 the Canadian of everyday life, but the witness to it number 9 a coiled embryo, the letters literally in a new light, or from a new
government, having eroded his and to yesterday. In content and of the alphabet squatting men. angle. A façade is photographed from
traditional sources of existence, evolution the Mola is a little quilted Bananas blow in the wind, flowers below, deliberately exploiting
decided the application of a history painting. bloom, fruit grows and the eels swim the 'mistake' of the amateur
native skill to an alien form, the They grew from 18th-century body in the stomach of the big fish. Read photographer; streets and parks from
useless art object, could provide him painting. 'The women are the these as paintings. Clarity and three- above, making the most of textures
with a twentieth-century subsistence. painters and take great delight in it. dimensionality depend not on the and light effects invisible from our
Carved harpoons are no match for The colours they like and use most are relief and texture but on an intuitive habitual viewpoint. The precision of
atomic whaling vessels. red, yellow and blue very bright and juxtaposition of colour. Execution the framing is what gives each image
belies substance. Invisible stitches, its distinctive character : Moholy sees
even textured cloth, fluid edges his motif in terms of the diagonal
reflect a painterly premise, a return to rhythms of Russian constructivist
the days when they tempered their (and of his own) painting. A cat, a
colours with oil, stored them in nude and a boat in tow, also
calabashes, and laid them on the photographed from above, but in
surface of the skin with pencils of negative, explore the ways in which
wood, gnawed at the end to the we read form and texture in an image
softness of the brush. when the light-dark values are
Compare the grandmother Molas to reversed. The close-up of a bee on a
the airport of today, blatant banal segment of honeycomb reveals the
birds. For the Peace Corps has finer textures of a semi-translucent
arrived on the San Blas islands and structure too small to be readily
with the best of western intentions appreciated by the naked eye.
has introduced the sewing machine (Moholy's ultimate essay in revealing
and standardized designs acceptable gradations of texture inaccessible to
to the tourist at centres in Nargana normal experience would have been
and Tupile. And two enterprising somewhat macabre if he had seriously
Americans commissioned 4000 considered carrying it out : a time-
patterns suitable for sleeves, belts ... lapse film exploring the face of one
Our transvaluation is as much a individual from birth to old-age.)
threat as the native fungi and damp Moholy's fascination with the
to the perishable Mola. evanescent quality of light effects was
Jennifer Oille to emerge in nearly all his work,
whether in painting, sculpture,
This panel is an exceptional example of the lovely ... They make figures of Moholy-Nagy, photographs, kinetics, film, or on the stage.
non-ethnographic type mola. It was made photograms and fotoplastikes at Photography had a special
extra large, and solely for decorative use. birds, beasts, men, trees and the like
up and down every part of the body Nigel Greenwood, London, January. significance for him from early on in
Now art historians and art but the figures are not extraordinary Moholy spent a couple of years in his career, because of its dependence
marketeers have discovered the Kuna, like what they represent and are of England before starting up the New on the action of light on chemical
the last remaining vestige of the Differing Dimensions as their Fancies Bauhaus in Chicago, and his grainy emulsions, and the photograms (from
Carib, the indigenous people of lead them.' In the 18th century, under evocation of Etonian dignity striding 1922) were amongst his first attempts
Middle America. Fiercely independent, Huguenot influence, body painting top-hatted across the misty playing to explore light as 'a new medium of
they rejected the encroaching became cloth painting and in the 19th fields would look good in a glossy expression'. Objects, including
European civilization of the mainland, century, with scissors, needles and publication. (In fact, it was Moholy's own head, produced their
migrating in the 19th century to the thread from passing sailing ships, commissioned for Bernard own distinctive traces when placed on
San Blas Islands in Panama's Gulf of cloth painting became the Mola. Fergusson's 'Eton Portrait' 1937). But photographic paper and exposed to
Darien. No Kuna girl could marry A woman rubs her hands in the it is hardly characteristic in its Moholy-Nagy The Shooting Gallery 1925
outside the tribe. No foreigner could salve made from the leaves of the betrayal of the intrigued outsider Es ta te of Moholy-Nagy, Dr Klihm, Munich
remain on the islands after sundown. Sappi Karta tree in which the Spirit of
In 1925 they successfully thwarted the Arts dwells. She bastes two to
Panamanian attempts at assimilation seven layers of material of
and as a result recognize her contrasting colours together, draws
sovereignty and enjoy her the design on the outer, cuts it out,
constitutional rights but retain total folds the edges under and stitches
local autonomy. So they preserve a them to the layer beneath. She draws
matriarchal society, a self-sufficient smaller elements of the design on the
economy based on the land and sea, next layer and so the process
a web of beliefs entwining shaman, continues downward. She
medicine man and a religion, Pap incorporates an undifferentiated
Ikala, reminiscent of Christianity. God, wealth of visual and verbal
Tiolele, created man and the universe, experience—the pantheism of bird
visited a flood on his children for and beast, fish and flower; the
their errant ways and disciples, Neles, myths and monsters, tales and tools
to instruct them in proper ways —the of tribal life; the Coca Cola bottles and
foundations of Kuna culture and law. Christian symbols of the white man's
Life is art. The chief carries the world ; the abstract geometries of
power stick, a sceptre surmounted by ages past, their meaning forgotten,
a rotund little man or beast ; carved their forms perpetuated. Each little
medicine dolls accompany the element of experience resides in and
medicine man ; sculpted animals, becomes part of a perfectly
like turtles, act as decoys in hunting. balanced labyrinth of circle and
Often polychrome, each is remarkable square, oval and rectangle.