This provocative book examines crucial philosophical questions Laszlo Moholy-Nagy explored in theory and practice throughout his career. Why paint in a photographic age? Why work by hand when technology holds so much promise? The stakes of painting, or not painting, were tied to much larger considerations of the ways art, life, and modernity were linked for Moholy and his avant-garde peers. Joyce Tsai's close analysis reveals how Moholy's experience in exile led to his attempt to recuperate painting, not merely as an artistic medium but as the space where the trace of human touch might survive the catastrophes of war. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: Painting after Photography will significantly reshape our view of the artist's oeuvre, providing a new understanding of cultural modernism and the avant-garde.

About the Author

Joyce Tsai is Curator of Art at the University of Iowa Museum of Art and Clinical Associate Professor of Art Education at the University of Iowa.

Reviews
"An excellent study . . . Tsai works chronologically through case studies that variously illuminate the changing terms of Moholy's utopian humanism and its abiding relationship to technology and pedagogical technique." * Los Angeles Review of Books *



Book Information
ISBN 9780520290679
Author Joyce Tsai
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 23mm