nuclear I, CH 1945

László Moholy-Nagy made "nuclear I, CH" with who-knows-what! I'm just imagining him, back then, maybe with a set of tools we wouldn't even recognize. Look at the surface, so smooth, almost like it appeared out of nowhere. Those colors are doing something! They're like flags, but also just pure shapes hanging in the air, teasing and clashing. It's kind of like he built the painting out of different parts, like putting together a machine. That black grid at the bottom—what's that about? It's so precise and then, BANG, the circle up top explodes with these wild, juicy colors. Like a controlled experiment gone gloriously wrong. It's a way of seeing, isn't it? It's like he was asking, "What if we could see the world in pieces, all at once?" Artists are always borrowing and stealing from each other, and I bet Moholy-Nagy was looking at what other painters were doing and then saying, "Nah, I'm gonna try this."