Go and see the actual sculpture/machine if you are in Cambridge MA:
https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/299819
#LászlóMoholyNagy #Bauhaus #LightSpaceModulator #HarvardArtMuseums
One of the earliest electrically powered kinetic sculptures, Light Prop for an Electric Stage holds a central place in the history of modern sculpture. Representing the culmination of Moholy-Nagy’s experimentation at the Bauhaus, it incorporates his interest in technology, new materials, and, above all, light. Moholy sought to revolutionize human perception and thereby enable society to better apprehend the modern technological world. He presented Light Prop at a 1930 exhibition of German design as a mechanism for generating “special lighting and motion effects” on a stage. The rotating construction produces a startling array of visual effects when its moving and reflective surfaces interact with the beam of light. The sculpture became the subject of numerous photographs as well as Moholy’s abstract film Lightplay: Black, White, Gray (1930). Over the years the artist and later the museums made alterations to the sculpture to keep it in working order. It is still operational today.
Beckmann's triptychs offer mythopoeia for his age and ours, free of religosity, reactionary fantasy, and political dogma.
Actors | Harvard Art Museums
In the early 1930s, in the face of escalating threats by nationalist critics to practitioners of the German avant-garde, Beckmann increasingly turned to allegorical and mythical subjects and began to work in an ambitious triptych format. The triptych, or painting in three parts, references the tradition of religious painting in the West, but also, as a result of its sheer size, makes a claim for public recognition. Painted during World War II while Beckmann was in exile in Amsterdam, Actors depicts a theater rehearsal. The construction of space challenges illusionistic perspective, as evident in the disjointed stage occupied both above and below, and jolts viewers out of passive spectatorship. For Beckmann, theater was a direct metaphor for existence in wartime. Several figures here are often identified as the artist’s fellow émigrés, and the self-sacrificing king at center as Beckmann in younger years. Tired of the “lousy, uncreative efforts” of the “unknown stage directors” orchestrating wailing sirens or bombing campaigns, Beckmann designed his own “stage sets” of complex, layered meanings.
The atrium at the Harvard Art Museums by Renzo Piano
#Fensterfreitag #WindowFriday #photography #Harvard #Cambridge #HarvardArtMuseums #RenzoPiano #architecture #architecturephotography
Six faves from the #MCN2023 program in chrono order, 4/6:
The HAM API: 10 Years and Counting
Who IS David Odo, our new director, who started on June 26? He was nice enough to do a Q&A with us despite a whole lot of meetings on his schedule. https://georgiamuseum.org/gmoa_blog/get-to-know-our-new-director-a-qa-with-david-odo/
The Georgia Museum of Art will have a new director in late June: David Odo, director of academic and public programs, division head and research curator at the Harvard Art Museums.
https://georgiamuseum.org/gmoa_blog/welcoming-a-new-director-david-odo/
Pepa Montero
Jonathan Emmesedi
penciledpage
bancks
Rob Lancefield
Georgia Museum of Art
Harvard Art Museums