Wednesday / October 19, 2016 / 5:30 PM - 7:15 PM
Totality vs Perfection: Moholy, Mies, and the Function of Cities
NEW LOCATION: Union League Club, 65 West Jackson Boulevard
Author Thomas Dyja (The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, published 2013) gives us a portrait of life at the Institute of Design and its leader, László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). He will address Moholy’s place in the canonical design world. Though the mutual distaste between Moholy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, FAIA (1886-1969) was very much a matter of temperament, it also had deep philosophical roots that sprung from a shared time and place. Dyja will examine their relationship in greater depth through an exploration of their respective approaches to architecture and cities. Mies’ work was built and visible, but Moholy's takes us onto movie sets and theater stages, and the landmark CIAM IV conference in Athens in 1933 on The Functional City.
Moholy and Mies are both buried in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery.
This presentation was arranged to coincide the exhibit Moholy-Nagy: Future Present at the Art Institute of Chicago. Painting, photography, film, sculpture, advertising, product design, theater sets, László Moholy-Nagy did it all. Future Present, the first comprehensive retrospective of Moholy-Nagy’s work in the United States in nearly 50 years, brings together more than 300 works to survey the career of a multimedia artist who was always ahead of his time. Moholy, as he was known, came to prominence as a professor at the Bauhaus art school in Germany (1923–28). In 1937 he founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago, a school that continues today as the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He remains the most internationally recognized visual artist ever to have resided in Chicago. Moholy-Nagy: Future Present is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles. It will be on display at the Art Institute from October 2 through January 3, 2017.
There is no charge to attend the lecture, but reservations are required through AIA Chicago or through the Society of Architectural Historians/Chicago chapter (jrfree3500@aol.com or 773/929-0329).
László Moholy-Nagy. LIS, 1922. Kunsthaus Zürich, 1981/6
[© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York]
