Z VIII, Lászlo Moholy-Nagy (1924)
Of all the paintings in this exhibition, this was the one that held my attention the longest. Its connection with the exhibition theme was not immediately obvious but it was a singular point of calm in a line-up of loud and assertive paintings demanding serious scrutiny. Looking at an abstract arrangement of related geometric forms in muted colours makes it own demands - principally that the viewer is prepared to accept its legitimacy as a work of art and not worry about the absence of figuration. While there’s not much of a case to be made for overlapping and intersecting semi-transparent shapes as windows into the human condition they can be a rich source of visual pleasure when choreographed with sensitivity and precision. All his career Moholy-Nagy was a restless experimenter and this is one of a series of related compositions painted in his second year of teaching at the Bauhaus where he replaced Johannes Itten who together with Paul Klee represented the spiritual tendency of the early years Bauhaus. Moholy-Nagy had no such tendencies and took full advantage of the opportunity to button himself into his boiler suit and get to work in his studio. This painting comes at the high point of his interest in Constructivism-inspired composition - he would continue to explore his favoured themes (transparency, asymmetry, dynamism, spatial ambiguity, transformation) in photography, collage, assemblage, typography and graphic design. Constructivists sought to integrate their practice into state-led programmes to advance social progress and eliminate inequality which finally connects us back to the exhibition theme.
Stadt, Otto Moller (1921)
Elsewhere in the exhibition, which was drawn from the collection of the Neue Nationalgalerie, artists could be seen engaging with major themes - Weimar-era decadence, Prussian militarism, socialist utopianism, horrors of modern warfare, dehumanising labour. This is a personal selection of paintings that caught my eye - Expressionist paintings are given short shrift, ships, trams and trains keep turning up and there’s a bias towards unfamiliar (on my part) material. It was interesting to see so many disturbing visions of the not so distant past, a period whose first hand witnesses are almost all deceased. And a comfort in the sense that the visions of the artists who shared in the collective experience of the chain of catastrophes that stains the period under review, still have a part to play in the avoidance of a reprise.
Carlo Mense, Double Portrait (Rabbi with Young Woman) 1926
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