Pursuing his wish to perpetuate « the Bauhaus’s ideal »², Lazlo Moholy-Nagy was extremely happy to leave for the United States, after Walter Gropius invited him in 1937, to found the Institute of Design, Chicago, also known as the New Bauhaus. Norma K. Stahle who had recently been nominated director of The Association of Art and Industries, an organization founded in 1922, was the initiator of this new educational institution. Stahle had first offered the directorship of the Institute to Gropius but he declined. Instead, he turned to his friend Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and asked him to see to the creation and the destiny of the school. Moholy-Nagy was thrilled to undertake this challenge, eventhough he hardly spoke English, because it allowed him « to work with his old friend György Kepes » […] to the « sole task that interested him : rapidly establish a broad educational program »³. Actually, what M.-N. most desired at that time, was to go against the american educational system’s « vocational » tendency which, catered exclusively, as far as he was concerned, to the capitalist industry’s thirst of specialists that could respond the demands of mass production. Moholy-Nagy wished his school to be organically interdisciplinary. Thus, he « was challenging the American norms » in education « and aligned himself on the European norms. »⁴

Moholy-Nagy’s philosophy

The philosophy of M.-N.’s pedagogical project was an emulation from the Platonic tradition of Ancient Greece, where body and mind were indivisible, as well as from the Medieval tradition in which education, although targeted toward a select group of people, put its emphasis on « the integration of all abilities, including sports, music, science, philosophy, history, literature, sculpture and painting. »⁶ This universalist tradition anchored itself during the Renaissance all through the Enlightenement. And, in M.-N.’s opinion, education had taken a bad turn during the Industrial Revolution. It was a moment where education, although accessible to a greater number of people, thanks to the ideals inherited from the French Revolution, lost its spirit of unirversality to the benefit of pedagogical methods that favoured the application of mechanical instructions destined towards the machines’ productivity and efficiency for the sole purpose of the bourgeoisie’s prosperity and well being.

Moholy-Nagy was very critical of the liberalarts education’s alleged benefits. In spite of its popularity amongst the period’s intellectuals, as it flowed against the current of the vocational effect, M.-N. thought, nevertheless, that the liberal arts education was too limited insofar as it produced yet another type of « mechanical accumulation » that he called « verbalization ».

Consequently, Moholy-Nagy considered the New Bauhaus as « a laboratory » based on the vision of « a new education […] for the training of artists, architects, photographers, industrial designers and teachers, it embodies the principles and the educational methods of the Bauhaus modified in accordance with the circumstances and demands of this country.»⁹

Krisztina Passuth continues, in the book that she dedicated to this visionary :

The educational program

The first year of training was composed of a « basic course » and represented, for Moholy-Nagy, « the backbone of the educational program » ¹². M.-N. actually considered that the basic course would allow students to find a more enlightened path that would lead them toward a specialization in the latter part of their training. The first year was divided as follows :

1. Technology
   Basic elements of workshop training
   • The use of hand tools and machines
   • Materials. An understanding of the physical properties of structural materials […]
   • Study of shapes, surfaces and textures.
   • Study of volume, space and motion. A training in the fundamental elements of design.
2. Art
• Basic elements of plastic representation
  a) Life drawing, b) Colour work, c) Photography, d) Mechanical Drawing, e) Lettering, f) Modeling, g) Literature, (Group Poetry).
3. Sciences
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Social Sciences
• Liberal Arts¹³

Therefore, if after his first year of training the student wished to select a specialization, it meant, rather, a workshop’s option and certainly not a slide towards the vocational effect. « Since the industrial designer must be versatile, he must be trained in the most diverse fields. »¹⁴ However, Moholy-Nagy, was conscious that too great a scattering of interests could also represent a danger for the student in that he would not be able to master a skill in particular and that it could, on the contrary, lead to a kind of dilettantism. An objective that M.-N. did not seek in the least.

Integration was the key word in the philosophy of Moholy-Nagy’s educational program. By integration, he meant the finding of links that exist between the artistic, technological and scientific spheres, but also the intellectual integration of experimental modes based as much on intuition as on empirical data.

The financial struggles

Unfortunately, the New Bauhaus’s life was very brief. In spite of its great popularity manifested in 1938 through the enrollment of 35 students for the first semester and 25 for the second, the members of the Association of Arts and Industries’s Board concluded, without Moholy-Nagy’s knowledge, that the Institute would close its doors definitely. The alledged motive invoqued for this sudden turn of events was a financial bankruptcy. ¹⁶

Although the teachers signed a petition to keep the school openend and that Moholy-Nagy energetically went about trying to raise funds by solliciting various CEO’s of many corporations, to keep the school afloat, the guillotine fell without further ado.

Not letting himself be discouraged by these bleak circumstances, Moholy-Nagy opened another school in January of 1939. He simply named it the School of Design. Needless to say that he was very careful not to include any German denomination in the new school’s apellation as he did not want to be associated with the nazi and facist movements that were then predominant in pre-war Germany.¹⁷ The School of Design was quite successful, in fact beyond its creator’s expectations. Many students enrolled, but funds from external sources being difficult to raise, M.-N. had to finance the School through his own means and worked without financial retribution, but not without passion, as did all the teachers that accompanied him in this new adventure.

In conclusion, it is without question that Moholy-Nagy’s influence prevailed in an unprecedented fashion, through the decades that followed his experiments, upon the philosophy of many educational programs within Fine Arts and Design Schools or Faculties. Moholy-Nagy’s educational project was at the core of his artistic endeavours coloured with an immense curiosity that led him, through his many experimentations, with new media and the new technologies, closer to his dream of universality : his lifelong vision. Moholy-Nagy’s educational project was most probably his greatest achievement as it contained everything he sought for, from the very begining.

© Sylvie Lacerte & OLATS, 2000