Page 42 - Studio International - July August 1975

coloured beams in three-dimensional photography), he occasionally
space". No-one would sponsor him; contrasted areas of bare rough canvas
but he realized his aims in another form with the variable light absorption of
in the Light-Display Machine" of 5930, different qualities of paint surface,
a kinetic work of immense sophistication ranging from forms brushed with a
which has survived the fads of the 196os smooth glaze to areas of matte impasto.
unscathed. It seems to have failed to Increasingly, he turned to industrial
make an impact in 193o, probably materials as the ground of his paintings
because few people were able to tune (though he continued in the main to
their perceptions to a complex yet use oil on canvas). On a metal or synthetic
unfocused form of experience in which ground, the contrast in quality of surface
the modulation of deep shadows and between painted areas and ground would
brilliant reflections on the surrounding be much more marked, and the facture
walls was at least as important as the more 'optical' in effect. Aluminium
changing relationships between the has a dull reflectiveness which allows
light-modulating elements of the forms worked in oil to give the illusion of
machine itself. On the other hand, floating as if disembodied: this kind
Moholy's film Light -Play Black White of space was more reminiscent of that of
Grey, made from close-ups of the the photograms than of paintings
machine in action, was an immediate executed in conventional media.
Light Display Machine 193o success, and the reason could be that the Occasionally Moholy seems to be playing
(Replica of the original in the Busch- film provides a ready-made focus and with possibilities suggested by
Reisiger Museum, Harvard) eliminates the challenge the machine Malevich, whose work he greatly
Height 151 cm, base 69.8x 69.8 cm. itself poses to peripheral vision, the admired (along with Mondrian's). But
perception of transitions of light in where Malevich's suprematist elements
three-dimensional space. would hover ambiguously in an
within this spectrum had a profound
effect on Moholy's sensitivity to value The Light-Display Machine is illusionistic white space of infinite
gradations and modulations of light in unthinkable without Moholy's depth, Moholy's coloured elements in
other media. A curious footnote in photogram experiments and his the 1926 painting G8 are made to float
Painting Photography Film suggests that subsequent investigations into what he in real space, casting real shadows. They
it must even have coloured his reaction called 'optical facture'. 'Facture' (in are painted on three levels: on the
to the urban landscape of Berlin in the The New Vision rendered limply as opaque ground, and on the under and
early 'twenties : `surface aspect' or 'surface treatment')" upper surfaces of a transparent
`The interplay of various facts has was another Russian Constructivist synthetic called galalith laid over the
caused our age to shift almost concept which Moholy adapted to his ground. Moholy's reading of Malevich is
imperceptibly towards colourlessness own ends. 'Optical facture' denotes any revealing: he saw the 1917 White on White
and grey: the grey of the big city, of treatment (such as high polish) which purely as an exercise in optical facture, as
the black and white newspapers, of the results in an elusive, dematerializing the ultimate transitional work between
photographic and film services; the effect, in contradistinction to the strongly (material) pigment and (immaterial)
colour-eliminating tempo of our life tactile appeal of a more textural and light. The white surface was an 'ideal
today. Perpetual hurry, fast movement, light-absorbent facture. In a plane for kinetic light and shadow effects
cause all colours to melt into grey. characteristic early construction Moholy which, originating in the surroundings,
Organized grey-relationships ...will, allowed cuboids of various metals and would fall upon it'." It functioned like a

of course, emerge later on as a new other shiny materials to disappear into film screen.
aspect of the biological-optical their own reflections in the polished Moholy's recognition of the
experience of colour. Intensive base-plate. He sometimes even used significance of the film medium had
examination of photographic means painted with 'facture' in mind: when much in common with Benjamin's later
working in oils on canvas (for instance in observations : its nature as mass medium,
will certainly contribute much to this.' 20
In the photograms, Moholy had not the 5922 Tate Gallery painting K VII, transcending the limitations of the
only hit on a 'productive' use of the which owes much to Moholy's traditional art work; the alertness
photographic medium (by no means new, appreciation of value gradations in required of the cinema audience
but new to him) 30, but had also
discovered the elusiveness of form as
generated by the play of light alone. This
discovery was to become his lifelong
obsession. He soon came to locate the
photogram (Man Ray's and his own)
within the tradition of light projection
from the early colour-organs to the
reflected light-play experiments of
students at the Bauhaus, a tradition which
promised to offer an alternative to the
`technological detour' of pigment.
Although the cameraless photogram
fixes the movement of light in a static
form, Moholy saw it as the point of
departure for photographing light effects
thrown onto a screen and for 'light films
which could be shot continuously',
superseding the limitations of the
animation techniques used by Eggeling
and Richter in their early abstract films.' 1
Moholy's aim was to articulate 'a light-
space-time continuity' in which light was
not merely an adjunct of form but the
artist's primary means of expression. For
years he hoped to find someone who
would let him loose with twelve Construction 1923
projectors in a bare room where he could Various materials (probably copper and
work with the interpenetration of nickel). Photo: Bauhaus Archive, Berlin

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