Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the exhibition photographs of an unconventional Constructivist dressing table exhibited by Marcel Breuer at the 1923 Bauhaus show "Art and Technology: A New Unity." It discusses the ways in which Marianne Brand explores the opticality of her designs, countering criticism of her works as stylish and replete with a fetishistic shine. The book also discusses Moholy-Nagy's Light Prop for an Electric Stage in relation to jazz improvisation, cinema, and the artist's multimedia theater designs, as a kind of paracinematic construction that tests perception and the materiality of image production. It also focuses on non-Western modernism in the 1950s to enquire into Iwao Yamawaki's "in-between" designs and Tokyo interiors, some of them executed with his wife Michiko, published in Japanese Houses Today.