László Moholy-Nagy: “Mechanized Eccentric”

From The Theater of the Bauhaus (1925)

Though better known for his work in visual art, photography, and design, the Hungarian modernist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) was a visionary polyartist whose radical constructivist approach to aesthetics touched on virtually every possible medium, including music and theater.

According to Richard Kostelanetz, Moholy-Nagy “envisioned certain technological innovations still not achieved, such as mobile loudspeakers suspended on overhead wire tracks, and recognized the availability of all materials, including ‘film, automobile, elevator, airplane, and other machinery, as well as optical instruments, reflecting equipment, etc.’”  Moholy-Nagy’s idea of the “Mechanized Eccentric” was conceived as a “concentration of stage action in its purest form,” a “humanless environmental field of lights, sounds, films, odors, music, mechanized apparatus, and simulated explosions.”  All this in the 1920s!

This “Sketch for a Score for a Mechanized Eccentric” was originally included in volume 4 of the “Bauhaus Books” series in 1925.  The book was translated into English and published as The Theater of the Bauhaus in 1961.

October 29, 2010, 4:48pm