INSCRIBED ASSOCIATION COPY

THE NEW VISION
FUNDAMENTALS OF DESIGN, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

[New Bauhaus] Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: THE NEW VISION: FUNDAMENTALS OF DESIGN, PAINTING, SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE (The New Bauhaus Books Series 1: Gropius and Moholy-Nagy, series editors). NYC: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938. First edition thus. INSCRIBED BY MOHOLY-NAGY. A very good hardcover book bound in full, decorated buckram with slight internal browning to edges and endpapers in a tattered example of the rare dust jacket. Dated ink inscription to Charles Neidringhaus on title page by Moholy-Nagy.

Outstanding Book design and typography by the author. Signed copies of THE NEW VISION are virtually unknown -- and an association copy of this avant-garde publication presents a singular opportunity.

7.75 x 10.25 hardcover book with 208 pages and 221 b/w photographs and text illustrations of art, architecture, sculpture, displays, movie sets, furniture, etc. "Revised and enlarged edition" (title page verso) of the original 1930 American imprint (Spalek #3819; see Freitag #6626, giving the date as 1932), with a new foreword, plus index, Spalek #3820.

An amazing book that expands upon Moholy-Nagyšs 1928 treatsie The New Vision (originally published as Bauhausbuch 14). Moholy's treatsie on modern design was intended to inform laymen and artists about the basic elements of Bauhaus education and the merging of theory and design. This volume also served as a remarkably effective self-promotional tool as Molholy-Nagy tried to re-establish the Bauhaus in Chicago as the New Bauhaus, and subsequently as the Institute of Design.

One of Chicago's great cultural achievements, the Institute of Design was among the most important schools of photography in twentieth-century America. It began as an outpost of experimental Bauhaus education and was home to an astonishing group of influential teachers and students.

Contents:

• foreword
• introduction
• preliminaries
• the material (surface treatment, painting)
• volume (sculpture)
• space (architecture)
• index

The list of artists included in this volume reads like a veritable rosetta stone of the modern movement: Joseph Albers, Alexander Archipenko, Hans Arp, Herbert Bayer, Giacomo Balla, Peter Behrens, Constantin Brancusi, Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, Theo van Doesburg, Max Ernst, Albert Gleizes, Naum Gabo, Walter Gropius, George Grosz, Raoul Hausmann, Barbara Hepworth, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Gorgy Kepes, Paul Klee, Fernand Leger, El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich, Man Ray, F. T. Marinetti, Mies van der Rohe, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, J.J.P. Oud, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Rodchenko, Oscar Schlemmer, Joost Schmidt, Kurt Schwitters, Frank lloyd Wright and many others.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) was born in Bacsbarsod, Hungary. Injured during World War I, he turned to painting and made contact with the Budapest avant-garde in 1918. In 1922, Maholy-Nagy participated in the International Dada-Constructivist Congress in Weimar and began experiments in photography with his wife Lucia. Appointed master at the Bauhaus in 1923, he made his first film, Berliner Stilleden, in 1926. Although always a painter and designer, Moholy-Nagy became a key figure in photography in Germany in the 1920's. In 1928 Moholy-Nagy left the Bauhaus and traveled to Amsterdam and London. His teachings and publications of photographic experimentations were crucial to the international development of the New Vision. In 1937 he was invited to found the New Bauhaus in Chicago by the Association of Arts and Industries. Moholy-Nagy served as teacher and director there from 1937 until his death in 1946.

Charles Niedringhaus graduated as one of 5 students in the first graduating class of the Institute of Design in 1942. As a student, he served as Institute Director László Moholy-Nagyšs asssitant in the Basic and Product Design Workshop, as well as assisting the Director in two seminars on Contemporary Art and Design problems. The student Niedringhaus designed and built a prototype machine dubbed the "Smell-O-Meter." This device proved less useful than the machine he co-developed with Nathan Lerner for forming plywood that was used in making most of the school's furniture.

After graduation, Niedringhaus' skills in furniture design and production quickly came to the attention of Hans Knoll -- always on the lookout for designers to work for what was then Knoll Associates. Niedringhaus began his long and fruitful career with Knoll when he assisted Herbert Matter with the production of the KNOLL INDEX OF DESIGNS in 1950. Then Niedringhaus and Florence Knoll were granted a patent on July 21, 1953 for their design of a sofa/daybed on angular steel frame.

Throughout his long career with Knoll, Niedringhaus often acted as an artistic liaison linking the inspired visions of designers such as Isamu Noguchi with Knoll's engineers, draughtsmen, and marketing departments. This confluence of art and business was fundamental to Knoll's identity and success. That same confluence of art and business first encountered as Moholy-Nagyšs student in Chicago helped Charles Niedringhaus secure his rightful spot in the pantheon of American Modernism.

REFERENCES: Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: THE NEW VISION and ABSTRACT OF AN ARTIST. NYC: Wittenborn, 1946. pgs. 24-5: figs. 2 a.-b.; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: VISION IN MOTION. Chicago: Theobald 1947. pg. 46: fig. 20; pgs. 88-9: figs. 86-92; Herbert Matter (designer), Knoll Associates: KNOLL INDEX OF DESIGNS. NYC: Knoll Associates, Inc., with Hockaday Associates, 1950; David Travis, Elizabeth Siegel (editors): TAKEN BY DESIGN: PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE INSTITUTE OF DESIGN, 1937-1971. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

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