László Moholy-Nagy

dated and inscribed 'plastik' in pencil and with the photographer's 'foto moholy-nagy' stamp and inscribed 'Withdrawn 24 Feb 75, The Arnold Crane Collection' by Crane in pencil on the reverse, 1924 (Painting, Photography, Film, p. 108)

The collection of Arnold Crane

Donna Schneier, Inc., New York

Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1975

This photograph is on heavy double-weight paper with a very glossy surface. The image area is essentially in excellent condition, with only a very faint soft handling crease in the upper-center portion of the image. The print has a white margin, and there is a .5cm tear in the left border, and a 1 cm. sq. loss in the right edge – neither of these affects the image. The reverse of the print exhibits moderate age-darkening, wholly appropriate for a print of its age. There are the linen-tape remnants in each of the four corners on the reverse. Moholy's stamp is in black ink.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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This fotoplastik was first published in Die Bühne im Bauhaus (The Theater of the Bauhaus) in 1925, reproduced within Moholy-Nagy's chapter, Theatre, Circus, Variety, and titled The Benevolent Gentlemen (Circus Scene).  It was again reproduced later that year in Moholy-Nagy's Malerie, Fotografie, Film, there titled Circus and Variety Poster, and captioned, 'Combinations of the possible produce a richness of tension.'  In her Moholy-Nagy: The Fotoplastiks: The Bauhaus Years, to which this catalogue entry is indebted, Julie Saul recounts Lucia Moholy's (Moholy-Nagy's first wife's) description of the evolution of the title of this work: 'To start with we playfully addressed [it] as ''the well-wishing gentleman'' . . . until we realized that it needed a lead; and so within less than a year, it was changed to ''circus'' and, soon after, to ''circus and variety poster.'''  The development of the title, over time, was very much of-a-piece with Moholy-Nagy's own conception of his fotoplastiks.  He wrote, 'every [fotoplastik] has its own title, sometimes even several.  Often it will be the observer who will find the most appropriate title' (Photography is Creation with Light, 1928). 

Moholy-Nagy first began making photomontages in 1922 or 1923, calling them fotoplastiks to differentiate them from work that had been done in the medium up to that point.  He continued making them throughout the 1920s, producing them in quantities roughly equal to his photographs and photograms.  Moholy-Nagy saw his fotoplastiks as an extension of the photomontages created earlier by the Dadaists, which he regarded as 'unruly' and 'far too individual to be readily conceivable.'  In contrast, Moholy-Nagy saw his fotoplastiks as compositions 'directed towards a target: the representation of ideas.' 

Simply put, Moholy's fotoplastiks involved the combination of cut-out photographs within a hand-drawn background on paper.  As in The Benevolent Gentleman, the photographic figures are juxtaposed dynamically with the graphic elements, creating a cohesive, if sometimes abstract, constructed environment.  The Benevolent Gentleman is distinctive among the fotoplastiks for the presence of the series of multiple arcs in the center of the composition.  The arc is a key compositional preoccupation in Moholy-Nagy's paintings and drawings of the early 1920s, such as Glass Architecture III, 1921-22; Composition E IV, 1922; Composition Q IV, 1932 (cf. Passuth, pl. 36, pl. 38, pl. 55, among many other examples). In other fotoplastiks (Dreaming of the Boarding House Girls, 1925, being a notable exception), full circles and extended diagonals tend to be the dominant graphic motifs. 

For Moholy-Nagy, the original paper collage composition represented the penultimate stage to completion.  It was only once the collage was photographed and realized as a photographic print that it constituted the finished fotoplastik.  Despite their reproducibility, prints of Moholy-Nagy's fotoplastiks were never, in actual practice, made in quantity, and surviving examples are infrequently seen.  As of this writing, it is believed that a print of The Benevolent Gentleman has never before been offered at auction.  Another print of this image is in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 

This fotoplastik has been reproduced in several of the photographer's own books, as well as in later monographs and critical assessments of his work, including:  

Moholy-Nagy: Fotoplastiks: The Bauhaus Years (Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1983), p. 36

Oskar Schlemmer, László Moholy-Nagy, and Farkas Molnar, The Theater of the Bauhaus (Wesleyan University, 1987), p. 51

László Moholy-Nagy, Painting, Photography, Film (Cambridge, 1987), p. 108

In Focus: László Moholy-Nagy (Getty Museum, 1995), pl. 4